Paul McCartney was right — cannabis WILL make the world a better place thanks to its medical uses

HALF a century ago the hippies of the Sixties believed that cannabis could make this world a better place.

In my wild youth I saw far too many people wreck — and sometimes end — their lives with illegal substances to ever be rosy-eyed about drugs.

But those old hippies were at least partly right.

Because as of Thursday, specialist doctors are now allowed to prescribe cannabis on the NHS to relieve the symptoms of childhood epilepsy and multiple sclerosis.

The NHS warns of the many horrible side effects of the drug — panic attacks, memory loss, hallucinations, paranoia, lethargy.

But who could object to its use if it relieves the suffering of the desperately ill?

Fifty years ago, prescribing cannabis on the NHS was unthinkable.

In 1967, Paul McCartney and a host of famous Sixties faces took out a full-page ad in The Times demanding research into its medicinal uses.

They were banging their long-haired heads against a brick wall.

But the Sixties dream has finally come true. Cannabis is healing the sick, and what was hippy- dippy alternative culture 50 years ago is now firmly part of mainstream thinking.

GW Pharmaceuticals produces 300 tonnes of cannabis plants every year under licence from the Government, producing the two medicines used for treating MS and epilepsy.

The biggest drug dealer in the land is the Government.

Attitudes do not simply change over the years — time often has a way of proving the prevailing wisdom totally wrong.

Last year was the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

It is mind-boggling to think that when England won the World Cup, it was still illegal for two men to be in a sexual relationship.

Now politicians, TV presenters and public figures are openly gay. But I can still remember the Saturday night comedians of my childhood and their running joke about gay rights.

“I’m getting out of the country before they make it compulsory!” Boom-boom. How far away, and pre-historic, that attitude seems today.

And the casual, unthinking racism that was everywhere in my Sixties childhood — jokes about black men called Chalky and thick Irishmen served up as light entertainment — now seem as distant as the Battle of the Somme.

We are a far more tolerant country than we were 50 years ago.

Even the British Army is thinking about relaxing its rules on long hair, earrings and tattoos. Far out, Sergeant Major, man!

But will expressions of individuality really work in the Army? It seems unlikely.

We have not quite turned 21st-century Britain into one big dope-smoking, long-haired Woodstock.

Cannabis remains an illegal class-B drug. It is still a criminal offence to produce, possess, grow, distribute or sell cannabis. For now.

But when I take my dog for his evening walk, the streets around our North London home are perfumed by the sweet, musky smell of cannabis as builders knocking off for the day light up a spliff, the modern equivalent of having a pint down the pub.

Personally, I wish I had never touched any drugs in my life. I found them all a bleak, miserable dead end — including cannabis.

But if it can help people with multiple sclerosis and childhood epilepsy, then what else might it be good for?

Would the final days of my parents, who both died of lung cancer, have been easier if they had been prescribed cannabis?

Probably.

By relieving the suffering of MS victims and children with epilepsy, as of this week cannabis is undeniably making our world a better place.

And perhaps time will prove those old hippies were right about other things.

As the old song says: What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding?

J-Less

WHEN Kate Beckinsale turned up at the GQ Men of the Year Awards dressed in nothing but a few discreetly placed swathes of purple silky stuff, I thought that I would never see a celebrity wearing less.

But I have to say that Jennifer Lopez in her green Valentino handkerchief – sorry, dress – really takes the biscuit.

Although I am not sure where she can put it.

Merkel's migrant mayhem

GOD save us from politicians who want to shove their compassion down our throats.

After her CDU party took another battering in recent regional elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced this week that her 13-year reign as German Chancellor will end in 2021.

But Merkel will be very lucky to last that long.

“Mutti” has never recovered from her arrogant, unilateral decision to throw open Germany’s borders to an estimated one million undocumented refugees three years ago.

Germany has been for ever changed by that epic case of self-righteous virtue-signalling. The neo-Nazis are on the rise in Germany now, and big-hearted Merkel must take the blame.

In our own country, the small print of the Budget reveals that we will spend £14billion we simply do not have – we are still borrowing £26billion a year – to blow on foreign aid.

How long will the insanity of our foreign aid benevolence continue?

Our police, Armed Forces and schools are strapped for cash.

Yet we spend taxpayers’ money repairing potholes in Pakistan and lining the pockets of criminal gangs.

The National Crime Agency is carrying out an unspecified number of investigations into British cash being stolen – or given – to crime syndicates in poverty-stricken nations.

One day the politicians who waste YOUR money to show off THEIR compassion will be punished at the polls.

Just as self-righteous Frau Merkel is being punished today.

Filler jab gives me the willies

MODERN men’s aspirations for their average-sized todgers are being wildly inflated by watching the pros perform on porn sites.

Men are lining up to get a bit of filler pumped into their old man.

Stuart Price, 36, was surfing the net looking for hair transplants when he saw an ad for penis fillers. Talk about an impulse buy.

You go out shopping for a Wayne Rooney-style rug and come home with a massively-enhanced member.

Dr Hilary Jones warns in The Sun that men having cosmetic surgery on their manhoods need to be careful.

“You could easily get a knobbly handlebar,” advises Dr Hilary.

I have absolutely no idea what a knobbly handlebar might be.

But I am pretty certain that I do not want one.

Scary Spice Posh mock(-up)

MEL B, the former Scary Spice, was at her magnificently mischievous best when she turned up for a Halloween party wearing a Posh Spice mask, rocking a little black dress and carrying a banner proclaiming “NO, I AM NOT GOING ON TOUR”.

Victoria is of course the Spice Girl least keen on getting the band back together.

“She’s hoping Victoria sees the funny side,” reports a Mel B source. But po-faced Posh hasn’t cracked a smile for years. She is unlikely to start smirking now.

Get real, PC plod

TOP cop Sara Thornton, head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, tells senior policemen that their officers should be catching criminals and not searching the internet for stupid comments.

“We do not have the resources to do everything that is desirable and deserving,” she said.

“I want us to solve more burglaries and bear down on violence before we make more records of incidents that are not crimes.”

Sara Thornton is right. Would you prefer cops to investigate crime in the real world or have them monitoring Twitter and Facebook for offensive comments in digital Dodge City?

The tax-dodging social media giants should be ensuring content on their platforms is within the law.

If it is not – if they promote terrorism, enable paedophiles, allow threats of violence against women – they should be hit with massive fines. It is not the job of the police to monitor them.

A crime is now committed in this country every six seconds. There is an epidemic of knife violence among our children.

Some morons flapping their cakeholes in the sewer of social media are the least of our problems.

'Boris' will burn

THERE is a remarkable attention to detail in the giant effigy of Boris Johnson that is being burned at a bonfire party in Kent.

The Guy Fawkes Boris is having his cake and eating it – a complaint about Brexiteers that is straight from the sneering mouth of Michel Barnier.

Famously unkempt, the BoJo effigy sports mismatched socks and an untucked shirt.

The only thing the bonfire builders have got wrong is Boris’s flowery underwear.

Surely it should be around his ankles?