Barely legal

How ludicrous is the state's position on cannabis.

The courts, usually so reluctant to punish law breakers, seem to relish making an exception when it comes to little old ladies caught growing the herb for medicinal use. All of a sudden, the Law’s the Law, notwithstanding how happy these bewigged fools are to indulge a real criminal, say someone who had broken into an old woman’s house and beaten and robbed her - that’s all excusable in the eyes of our judiciary, indeed the ‘justice’ minister Ken Clarke would be issuing on-the-spot fines for rape, if he thought he could get away with it, but I digress.

Doctors are moaning because they can't prescribe Sativex, a pharma product derived from the sacred plant, no doubt developed with tax-payer-funded largesse. It sits idle, due to tight-fisted bureaucrats who doubt its efficacy justifies the cost - £77 per week.

I think I see a solution. It’s called freedom. All the government has to do is get out of the way and bin its destructive prohibition of the plant. That will not happen in the short term, because the government is populated by a bunch of gutless hypocrites, who are happy to smirk over their own use of the drug, but won’t dare do anything radical. The problem, or one at least, is these politicians have no principles in the ordinary sense of the word. A principle to them is something to conjure with only when necessary to mislead the public.