Norman Lamb yesterday introduced his ten minute rule bill calling for the legalisation of and implementation of a regulated market for cannabis. You can view the bill and follow its progress here. It will move to second reading on 22 April.
And here is Norman’s Commons speech from yesterday:
Which is also available on YouTube. You can read the Hansard transcript here.
* Nick Thornsby is a day editor at Lib Dem Voice.
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10 Comments
I asked Norman on Twitter about passive smoking and I’m glad he recognises the need to act. Cannabis is not the same as tobacco – people get “bongs” and make half the building stink with them, so there is an anti-social issue and as I’ve been saying: a health one too.
Thanks
Norman is my fave LD MP
While broadly supporting Normans approach, I am disappointed to see emails from the Lib Dems saying this is the end of the war on drugs – the good thing about Normans approach is it recognises the harm cannabis causes, the right tone is needed for this issue.
Eddie
Norman is one of my very favourite mps , I would be keen for this to get through.I like what you say here , and as someone not having smoked anything , find your concern worthwhile .
Eddie , you and I share outrage at doctors withdrawing emergency service to strike .I am very disappointed no Liberal Democrat mp has criticised the doctors at all, only Hunt , an easy target , who deserves it obviously . Now with their latest plan to strike , so do the doctors , big time!
Well done, Norman. No it’s not the end of the war on drugs. It’s not even the beginning of the end. It could be the end of the beginning. (Where have we heard those words before?)
Thanks Lorenzo. I don’t want to discuss the doctors’ dispute under this article but, whilst I sometimes get too outraged, I am worried about it.
‘the war on drugs’ is a silly phrase (first popularised by Richard Nixon). You can’t have a war against inanimate things. Wars are against a group of people (usually a country) and they stop when both sides agree an armistice, or one side surrenders or collapses. Wasn’t an endless war one of the tools of the dictatorship in Orwell’s 1984?
Ideally we should have, perhaps, a war against drug pushers and exploiters.
But what often happens is war on the addicts and other users, plus the subsistence farmers and labourers in poorer countries.
@Eddie Sammon: “I asked Norman on Twitter about passive smoking and I’m glad he recognises the need to act. Cannabis is not the same as tobacco – people get “bongs” and make half the building stink with them, so there is an anti-social issue and as I’ve been saying: a health one too.”
There may well be an issue with people making buildings stink with bongs, but you should be careful not to fall into the classic trap of thinking that just because something is legalised it means that more people will do it, or that it will become more of a problem after legalisation. First of all, there is no evidence to suggest there would be a significant rise in cannabis consumption post-legalisation. So if your implication is that legalisation would lead to an increase in buildings smelling of bongs then I would say that is quite an assumption, and not something that is backed up by any evidence. Secondly, evidence does suggest that the problems that surround illicit drug consumption are more easily dealt with in a regulated market. The point of this proposal is to make the issues around drug use easier to deal with. To assume that it would make such problems worse is to miss the point entirely.
Kitler, I know someone who has bought a flat but the communal areas regularly smell of weed. It’s not acceptable that if this is for recreational purposes they should be allowed to smoke indoors. At the least they should have to smoke out of a window.
I think too much campaigning in the Liberal Democrats at the moment is about legalisation. What about passive smoking? Near silence, besides the new law on smoking in cars with children in. We should have the same for smoking in buildings with children in, especially other people’s children.
Imagine if you bought a flat then someone moves in next door and decides to regularly stink the place out with cannabis – I think there’s a big issue with smoking in doors in multiple occupancy buildings.