Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:39 pm on 17 January 2018.
I don't think that's borne out, actually. I'll try and go through why in the remaining time available. Because what the motion advocates is the use of herbal cannabis and circumventing our long-established and respected regulatory and appraisal processes. Those processes are in place to safeguard patients and ensure public money is being spent on proven clinical and cost-effective treatments. Without an evidence base, without clarity on purity, dosage and strength and the conditions for treatment, we would also place prescribers in an untenable position. Because you have to understand, if you're not going to have a cannabis-derivative drug that, at present, you can have available—. The fact that cannabis itself is not a lawful recreational drug doesn't make any difference to that. It's about the ability to isolate the cannabinoids and then to test them in a rigorous, safe process and make sure they are cost-effective as well. That's the only bar to getting cannabinoids available in a drug form to be available within the national health service. If you then make a raw form of the drug available, or a herbal form, then you can't know the potency of that. You can't know what condition you'd prescribe that for and the strength for that particular condition as well. It's a practical challenge, as opposed to a principled objection to medicinal cannabis, and that's the point. It's about how we take a genuine evidence-led approach to making medicines available on the health service. [Interruption.] I don't know if the Llywydd will allow me even further latitude on time to take a further intervention.