UK: Cannabis Country

In a quiet corner of England, an unlikely new crop emerges.

Behind a fence of electrified razor-wire, monitored by TV and patrolled by guards, a top-secret farm is about to produce a crop of cannabis. And it will all be perfectly legal.

Instead of being smoked for pleasure, the crop will be harvested to relieve pain.

Ministers, the Government's Chief Medical Officer, and the Britsih Medical Association have all given their support for research into the medical properties of the drug.

GW Pharmaceuticals is the first research company in the country to be granted licences to carry out research and development at the 4 million pound greenhouse in the South East.

Its founder, Dr Geoffrey Guy, said he intends to find out the best form of treatment - apart from smoking - and identify the illnesses it could treat safely and effectively.

"There is eveidence that cannabis may have a number of medicinal uses," he said.

"The relief of pain and spasticity in multiple sclerosis and other neurological disorders such as paraplegia and neuralgia, as an appetite stimulent in treating AIDS pateints, for the prevention of nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy and in the eye disease glaucoma.

"But there have been very few research programmes or controlled clinical trials. Our aim will be to establish te medical facts."

The Home Office has said it might be willing to change the law to allow prescribing of cannabis-based medicines if it can be proved they benefit patients.

Cannabis is currently classed as a drug with no therapeutic value. If it became licensed its use could be restricted, but not banned in the same way as morphine or oher controlled substances.

Dr Guy, 43, has been in the pharmaceutical industry since he left London University 20 years ago and is investing a large sum of his own money into the farm. He first suggested the idea of researching the drug's medicinal properties to the last Tory Governemnt and recalled: "That was four years ago and they gave us a pretty frosty reception."