Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Meet the Tory minister who will not see Billy’s mum as her husband’s firm grows CANNABIS
MP blasted over ‘hypocrisy’
THE UK drugs minister will not be meeting campaigning mum Charlotte Caldwell – because her husband’s company grows cannabis.
Victoria Atkins has been accused of “hypocrisy on a grand scale” after it emerged she voluntarily recused herself from speaking for the Government.
Her husband Paul Kenward is managing director of British Sugar which is licensed to grow the drug at a 45-acre greenhouse in Norfolk.
The firm produces a non-psychoactive cannabis oil used in children’s epilepsy medicine.
Charlotte, from Castlederg in Co Tyrone, was stopped at Heathrow airport on Monday and the medicinal oil which had been prescribed for her son Billy in Canada was confiscated. Yesterday Peter Reynolds, the president of Clear, which campaigns for drug law reform, blasted the minister’s position as “hypocrisy”.
He told the BBC: “The Tory party’s policy on drugs is directly opposed to the evidence and Victoria Atkins supports that.
“Mr Kenward is producing high CBD cannabis for use in Epidiolex, GW Pharma’s cannabis extract epilepsy medicine.
“Ms Atkins has tried to brush this off, calling it ‘a
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very different substance [from the] psychoactive version of cannabis’. Anyone with even the most basic knowledge of plant science will know this is nonsense.
“The difference between different strains of cannabis is the same as the difference between different varieties of tomatoes. Whether they’re Ailsa Craig or Alicante, they’re all tomatoes.” A Home Office spokesman said: “In 2016, British Sugar was granted a Home Office licence to grow a non-psychoactive variant of the cannabis plant. Victoria Atkins MP declared this fact in Parliament when speaking in a debate.”
They added Policing Minister Nick Hurd leads on policy specifically relating to ministerial cannabis licensing decisions, discussions regarding legislation or the rescheduling of cannabis and the control of cannabinoids.
It was Mr Hurd who ordered the confiscation of Billy’s trial oil.
Before she was appointed drugs minister, Ms Atkins told the House of Commons during a policy debate last year: “We are talking about gun-toting criminals. I do not share the optimism of others about tackling the problem through regulation.”