Ex-British police officer to head cannabis legalisation committee

A former British police officer is set to head a new committee to work towards legalising cannabis use in the country, the media reported on Saturday.

Tom Lloyd, formerly of Cambridgeshire police, will chair the National Cannabis Coalition (NCC), an alliance of groups calling for legal access to the drug for recreational use for adults and for medicinal use for anybody who needs it, The Guardian reported.

The organisation aims to move from grassroots protests to political campaigning, targeting decision makers in British drug policy.

"A major problem in drug law reform, and the resistance to it, is that people look at people, whether they are heroin users or stoners, and they just think they are not serious people," Lloyd said.

Two police commissioners have recently said they will not target small-scale cannabis users and growers. Next month MPs will debate cannabis legalisation in Westminster after more than 200,000 people signed a parliamentary petition calling for reform.

"The world is changing: Uruguay has now legalised it; you have got legal production in states in America; in half the states you can get medicinal cannabis. America is a very powerful player," Lloyd said.

"It's difficult to draw a line between what might be medicinal use and what becomes what we call recreational use, because anybody who wants to consume cannabis to de-stress is doing something which is probably an improvement to their health. I don't think there is a distinction between the two," he added.