Home Office minister Norman Baker called last week for medicinal cannabis to be legalised. This is the inside story of a campaign that began in 1999, started to gain real traction in 2011 and may finally come to fruition in 2014.

The last British politician to have the courage to follow the evidence on drugs policy and introduce radical reform was Margaret Thatcher. Now Norman Baker isn't normally in the same category as Thatcher but they have both demonstrated courage in the face of opposition from their colleagues and widespread bigotry and ignorance throughout parliament and Whitehall.

A father battling cancer claims cannabis helped cure him of the disease.

Trevor Smith, 54, was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2012. Doctors told him that without immediate surgery to remove his bladder, prostate and lymph nodes - followed by chemotherapy - he would be dead within two years.

But worried about his quality of life after such radical surgery, he decided to try alternative therapies - and began taking cannabis oil after learning about it online.

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In the heart of Cumbria stands a two-bedroomed cottage wrapped in ivy that for half a century has been home to a lady named June. She makes a pot of tea in a cluttered kitchen brimming with fresh herbs in labelled jars, assorted saucepans and drying socks, then potters across the slate floor, and into a garden. Here lies what June calls "her private retreat". An overgrown rose bush dotted with apricot-coloured blossoms creeps over a rusting bench and from one of the many ceramic plant pots comes the scent of rosemary. At the back of the garden stands a decaying shed, lost beneath a white climbing hydrangea, and nestled behind this sits a small grow tent, which June tells me contains a single cannabis plant. She pulls down the zip to reveal the hidden green leaves.

CLEAR would like to ask you to write to your MP in support of the proposal by Drugs Minister Norman Baker to legalise medicinal cannabis. We can't emphasise enough how important this development is and it's vital that we support it as strongly as possible.

Use one of the following template letters or write your own, but remember to keep it short and very much focused on the single, narrow issue of allowing medicinal cannabis under the direction of a doctor. This may seem like a very narrow request falling well short of what you would like to see, but it would represent a huge shift in government policy, a shift the Tories have already ruled out and Labour is unlikely to want to support. More to the point it would mean a lot to some very ill people.

You've undoubtedly heard about what's going on with marijuana in the U.S.

Pot, which was once considered a taboo, is quickly gaining mainstream acceptance. Today, even the President of the United States has openly admitted to having smoked marijuana in his youth. When the news broke, no one even seemed to blink.

We're already seeing how Americans' changing attitude towards the drug has affected our legal system. For example, voters in both Washington state and Colorado have legalized marijuana for recreational use, while some 20 other states have given it the nod for medicinal purposes.

Drug prevention charities have responded with exasperation after the Tories immediately slapped down calls from the drugs minister for the legalisation of cannabis in the UK for medicinal use and dismissed concerns that current drugs laws are overly restrictive.

Less than a week after Nick Clegg said "we are never going to win the war on drugs", senior Lib Dem MP Norman Baker called on the government to review the medicinal properties of cannabis, saying it can help those in need.

• Lib Dem minister has written to Health Secretary calling for review of drug
• Says he has seen 'more and more evidence' of its medicinal properties
• These include the side effects of cancer and Aids treatment
• But the Home Office and Department of Health have rejected his call 

By Jack Doyle for the Daily Mail

Published: 04:58 EST, 14 August 2014 | Updated: 18:08 EST, 14 August 2014

Liberalised drug laws should be introduced to legalise the widespread use of cannabis to relieve symptoms of certain medical conditions, including the side effects of chemotherapy, the drugs minister Norman Baker will say.

Amid concerns that "credible people" are having to break the law to secure the only substance that can help to relieve their condition, Baker is writing to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to call for a review of the medicinal properties of cannabis.

The Islamic Republic has so many problems with heroin and meth, it may be ignoring the rise of weed – a fact that’s making many young Iranians very happy.

For many different reasons,as of late, industrial hemp has been quite thepopular topic everywhere in the world. Not only has the crop been under the spotlight for its versatile nature, but its psychoactive cousin, cannabis, has also been the object of many discussions for medicinal as well as recreational purposes. And while hemp still cannot be grown legally in many places in the world, it remains possible to do so in the United Kingdom, provided one obtains the necessary license.