IN A community gripped by a drugs crisis, the call today by hospital trust medical director Dr David Grimes for the outlawed drug, cannabis, to be given to patients is sure to shock.

But it is a fact that, all the time, doctors lawfully prescribe drugs that are illegal on the street - heroin among them.

So why not the "soft" drug, cannabis?

Dr Grimes is one of many in the medical profession who believes it can give multiple sclerosis sufferers relief. Others are not so sure.

Yet taking aside that debate - and, ideally, the issue should be resolved by independent medical research - is it not a nonsense that doctors are free to prescribe all kinds of controlled "hard" drugs that they believe will help their patients, but not this particular soft one?

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