Allow athletes to use cannabis, says sports minister

Richard Caborn stunned MPs by suggesting cannabis should be removed from the list of banned substances for competitors.

The real threat to the spirit of the 2012 Games, he said, comes from a new generation of performanceenhancing substances, such as growth hormones and genetic manipulation.

Giving evidence to the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee, the minister said the police should be left to deal with athletes caught using social drugs.

The banned from the World Anti-Doping Authority (Wada) includes cannabis, cocaine and other substances.

However, Mr Caborn suggested the list should reviewed. The Minister's intervention came despite a report from his own department and UK Sport detailing how the 2012 Olympics was under "significant threat" from designer drugs.

"We are not in the business of policing society. We are in the business of rooting out cheats in sport. That's what Wada's core function is about."

He said the anti-doping code was based on three principles: performance enhancement, harm to the athlete and harm to the sport.

"I would give far more weight to the performance enhancing of those three and I would also look very seriously at the list, to take off what I believe are some of the social drugs."

In his speech, the Sports Minister also ruled out introducing laws that would making doping at the London games a criminal offence.

Similar legislation has been introduced in Spain, Italy and Greece, but Mr Caborn said he was against it as it would be "disproportionate".

By contrast, Arne Ljungqvist, the head of the International Olympic Committee's medical commission, told the committee that Britain should follow the previous host city of Athens in 2004 by prosecuting athletes who fail drugs tests.

He said: "It sends a powerful message to an athlete that is of great benefit in the fight against doping."

The UK Sport study said it had identified "new threats" from the use of human growth hormones, genetic manipulation and blood doping. The report said: "There is potential for unscrupulous scientists to design new, undetectable substances specifically synthesised to beat the system'.

"By 2012 gene doping could be a very real threat... and, as it uses natural body systems and manipulates the host's DNA, it will be difficult to detect and prove."

The study highlighted the 2003 probe into the case of Dwain Chambers and the US laboratory that made the steroid for which he tested positive.