My Lords, I wish, with a straight bat, to move this amendment standing in my name and in the names of my noble friends. Looking at the names of those who will be contributing to this debate, I willingly admit that I probably know least about this subject—although, in declaring an interest, I probably bring a knowledge which most of your Lordships do not have. I use cannabis. My spine is breaking up. I have tried all the traditional painkillers, but they were worse than what they were actually trying to deal with. So I am not somebody who embraced cannabis as a first option; I was driven to it because no other traditional painkillers helped.
It is important to say what I am not asking for. I am not asking for a free-for-all for people who wish to use cannabis for recreational purposes. I understand their case, although I do not share it. Others may wish to use other opportunities to move that interest. I do not. Nor am I—or the other noble Lords who have signed this amendment—asking for a random control trial. We are asking for something much subtler. This medicine helps people and relieves pain, and it is the relief of pain that I wish this debate to concentrate on.
I am no snake oil salesman. I am not here to claim—on behalf of my fellow citizens who suffer, for example, from Parkinson’s or cancer—that this is a miracle cure. I am not arguing that. I know a number of people with Parkinson’s or cancer who have been
helped by this, and their lives possibly extended. But in this amendment I am concentrating merely on how to relieve pain. In proposing the new clause, I am really making a plea to the Government to renew past conversations about how we might equalise access to cannabis in this country where people are totally concerned with controlling pain. Clearly—and rather appropriately, given the previous set of amendments—the new clause concerns itself with the devices by which cannabis can be delivered to a patient. Above all, it is a plea to change the schedule within which the drug sits, so that—if they so wish—GPs can prescribe this painkilling drug.
I do not know how many times others have been able to speak in a cannabis debate with your Lordships knowing that the person speaking is actually using that drug. My plea is, very simply, that there are pains that traditional painkillers cannot reach and there is considerable evidence that in those circumstances, when all the traditional painkillers have been tried, cannabis can sometimes work.
What is so unfair is that under the present arrangements, I can pay for my cannabis. There are huge numbers of other people, probably in greater pain than I, who cannot buy cannabis, as I do, within the law as a painkiller. I am therefore moving the amendment with its proposed new clause as a plea to the Government, on behalf of all of us who suffer pain in varying degrees and have tried the traditional methods of pain relief. Where that has failed—it often makes one even more ill than when one started to take those painkillers— we have found some redress in cannabis.
As a user and beneficiary, I hope that I therefore speak on behalf of many of my fellow citizens who get relief for their pain from cannabis. I wish to equalise access to cannabis in the way that I have benefited, so that others might too. I beg to move.