SCOTTISH ministers have failed to ask Westminster to devolve powers to Holyrood to decriminalise cannabis for medical use, despite the SNP conference overwhelmingly backing a change in the law.
Delegates at the party's national conference in Glasgow last October urged the UK Government to transfer the powers to the Scottish Parliament to allow it to pass such legislation.
However, public health minister Aileen Campbell said in a written answer to a question from Labour MSP Pauline McNeill that “to date there have been no discussions with the UK Government regarding devolving the power to re-classify cannabis."
McNeill, whose late father John suffered from crippling and agonising arthritis in his dying days, has backed the medical use of cannabis to alleviate the suffering of those with chronic conditions
However, the Glasgow MSP said she was disappointed ministers had not acted on a decision taken at their own party conference to pursue the devolution of powers over cannabis to change the law.
McNeill said: "I fully supported the SNP conference decision and I was pleased to see it, but I'm very surprised to get an answer from the minister that the Scottish Government has not approached the UK Government about the issue.
"I was presuming that they would have had to do it after the SNP conference voted for it. The decisive vote in favour of reform was a good thing as it brought that issue into the public domain. But I'd be pretty annoyed if there was no good reason for not following up on the conference decision."
McNeill added: "Unless there's another way to move it forward, I'd at least have expected Scottish ministers to have had some discussion with the UK Government about decriminalising cannabis for medical use. I'm very disappointed that a few months on, no steps have been taken on this."
A Scottish Government spokesperson said ministers favoured the devolution of power over drug abuse, but failed to state whether they would use it to decriminalise cannabis for medical purposes. The spokesperson said: “Under existing arrangements, the treatment and prevention of problem drug use is devolved to the Scottish Government. However, the control of drugs, under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, is reserved to the UK Government.
"Cannabis is included under this Act, currently as a Class B substance, and any decision about changing this legislation would sit with the UK Government. We would like to see this area of policy devolved to allow the Scottish Parliament to consider it in future should it chose to do so.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel