MPs urged to rethink vote on cannabis

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A letter signed by former chief scientists Sir David King and Lord May - as well as medical research chiefs Professor Colin Blakemore and Sir Gabriel Horn - has demanded ministers rethink the proposal due to be voted on by peers today.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wants to move cannabis from class C to class B, where it will sit alongside amphetamines and barbiturates. But the experts say she is ignoring repeated recommendations from her own drug advisers that it should not be upgraded.

The scientists write: "In recommending this change to parliament the Government has rejected the explicit advice of its appointed experts, the advisory council on the misuse of drugs, for the first time in its history."