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Regulation of Cannabis

Had the previous Home Secretary not declassified cannabis, there is no way that the evidence that the Home Secretary has courageously given the House today would have justified his announcing such a declassification today. He has said that he has an open mind. Will he ensure that a priority for his research programme will be to research the use of cannabis by the young people to whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) referred? His experience is the same as that of every constituency represented in the House: this is destroying young people’s lives, but they are unlikely to respond to the police. We are losing street-worker programmes through a lack of funding and we need to reinstate them. I hope that the Home Secretary will have a conversation with me about how to tackle that matter, because unless we can get those young people to co-operate, their lives will be ruined.