CANNABIS has been catapulted back on to the political agenda with a series of high profile calls for debate on its decriminalisation.

Bolton South-east MP Dr Brian Iddon, chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Misuse of Drugs Group, has long been a prominent advocate of legalisation.

Here he exclusively argues that existing cannabis laws do more harm than good THE General Election is out of the way. The Labour Government have been returned with another huge majority and the general feeling is that this Government can afford to be a lot more radical than the last. Now is the time to make unpopular and difficult decisions. So, the drugs debate has lit up yet again.

It is clear that we are not winning the "War on Drugs". In 1997, the last Government spent £1.75 billion combating or treating the aftermath of illicit drug sales. This Government have doubled that expenditure. Yet, as more and more drugs are seized by the enforcement agencies street prices slump and sales rise.

The Metropolitan Police have announced their "Brixton experiment".

Personal cannabis use there will result in a warning from the police rather than a caution or a prosecution.

There is nothing new in this announcement in my opinion. Police forces all over London and elsewhere in the country have been effectively ignoring personal cannabis use for some years.

Indeed, this has been one of my reasons for calling for the decriminalisation or, preferably, the legalisation of cannabis. It seems unfair to me that the police can use a different interpretation of the law in different parts of the country.

It has never made sense to me to give hundreds of thousands of young people a criminal record just for possessing very small amounts of cannabis for their own use, thereby making visits abroad and job applications much more difficult.

More harm is being done to society than is being caused by the drug through enforcement of our present drug laws. I do not believe that the use of cannabis is without risk, nor do I believe that we should encourage people to smoke it. But, whereas tobacco kills 130,000 people every year and alcohol kills about 30,000, there are no known deaths directly attributable to cannabis.

The former Minister for the Cabinet Office, Dr Marjorie Mowlam, has now declared her support for the legalisation of cannabis, so have several newspapers, including those organs of Tory opinion The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph.

Peter Lilley, a former Tory Cabinet Minister, has also come out of the long grass, and even Keith Hellawell, the UK Anti-Drugs Co-ordinator, appears to have done a U-turn in announcing that he no longer believes that cannabis is a "gateway drug" to harder drugs.

Millions of people (probably eight to 10 per cent of the population) have used cannabis, and the State regards them all as criminals, but very few have graduated to other drugs.

Sir Keith Morris, who was Britain's Ambassador to Colombia in the 1990s, believes that the "War on Drugs" is futile.

Several serving or former police Chief Constables, including Barry Shaw (Cleveland), Francis Wilkinson (Gwent), and Colin Phillips (Cumbria) have been critical of the present Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and believe in its reform.

A Sky News poll showed that 70 per cent of the population agree with Mo Mowlam.

A recent debate on Channel 4 produced a verdict that 65 per cent of the studio audience believed that the drugs laws are in need of reform. I have appeared on scores of TV and radio programmes across the country when the results have been similar.

So, why will the Government not let Members of Parliament have a proper debate in the House of Commons?

I want to decouple the sale of cannabis from the criminals, after all it is in the best interest of the "pushers" to get people addicted -- then they make much more money.

Of more than 110,000 possession offences every year 80,000 are for the possession of cannabis. Even the police can see that dealing with these people is a distraction from the real menace, the addictive drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

And, the cost of the paper work and taking people through the justice system is enormous. Few people who use cannabis have to go out and steal to support their physiologically non-addictive habit.

GW Pharmaceuticals are conducting clinical trials on cannabis and extracts of cannabis plants. Sixty of the more than 400 chemicals present in most of the 20-plus species of the cannabis plant are psychoactive, and it is probably the stigma and illegality attached to cannabis that has prevented medicinal chemists from investigating the use of these chemicals for the good of mankind until now.

GW Pharmaceuticals are now in Phase III of the clinical trials and hope to have a product ready for launch by 2004. Evidence for the effectiveness of their products should be available later this year.

New methods of application are being investigated because the Government are unlikely to license a product which relies on application by smoking. It is looking likely that the new medicines will be applied using a nasal spray.

In Britain, products are being tested on those suffering from multiple sclerosis and the acute pain immediately following removal of tonsils or abdominal operations.

If, as it looks likely, cannabis or its extracts, such as THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), are shown to have clinical effectiveness, what will the Government do?

It is possible that they will license these products for medicinal use but unlikely that they will decriminalise or legalise the use of cannabis, either as the plant (grass) or resin, and the debate will continue for another generation.

The bold thing to do would be to end this debate once and for all and concentrate on minimising the use of the more harmful drugs, including some that are available over the counter or by prescription in pharmacies (e.g. the benzodiazepines to which very many people have become addicted).

Legalisation of cannabis would mean that its sale would become controlled for the first time. There would be no advertising, products would only be sold to adults, they would be free of contaminants, and outlets would be licensed by the Government.

It would be important not to tax the product too highly, otherwise black-market sales would continue.

The debate appears to have reached a new pitch, which I welcome, and I would also welcome the views of my constituents.