OPPOSITION Spokesman on health Horace Dalley says that while his side fully supports the Government’s commitment to a medical marijuana industry, it will not support wholesale use of the drug.

“We are 100 per cent in support of medical marijuana, but we are not in favour of any wanton, wholesale smoking of marijuana, especially by our teenagers and children. We are not in favour of that,” Dalley warned as he spoke in the sectoral debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday.The former health minister said that he and his successor in the ministry, Dr Christopher Tufton, are at one in terms of the development of the medical marijuana industry, but his side did not support the introduction of ganja edibles, either.“We are not in favour of marijuana cookies, marijuana cheese, marijuana this: We are not in favour of it. Our country must be protected,” he told the House.Earlier this month, Dr Tufton made a call on the World Health Organization (WHO) to remove cannabis from its current classification as a Schedule I Drug (illegal drug) under United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) list of scheduled drugs, which deems it to have no medicinal benefits, to a Schedule II drug.Despite several American states legalising the weed for medicinal and recreational purposes in the past few years, marijuana has not budged from Schedule I, the DEA’s most serious category of illegal substances, which places it alongside heroin, ecstasy and LSD, which are considered drugs “with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse”.Schedule II drugs are considered less dangerous in a tightly controlled field, including cocaine and meth.Bipartisan legislation proposed in the American Congress in April, however, would make marijuana a Schedule III drug, removing it from its current standing. By reclassifying ganja in the same category as anabolic steroids, the Congress would make it easier for ill patients and scientific and medical researchers to obtain marijuana, according to the authors of the Bill, newly elected Florida representatives Matt Gaetz, a Republican, and Darren Soto, a Democrat.The two congressmen are seeking to roll back the US federal Government’s ongoing prohibition of marijuana by removing the hurdles hindering researchers’ ability to understand the plant’s potential benefits.In February, 2015, under the previous People’s National Party Government, the Jamaican Parliament passed a Bill decriminalising up to two ounces of ganja, and establishing a licensing authority to regulate a medical cannabis industry. The Cannabis Licensing Authority was set up to deal with regulations on the cultivation and distribution of marijuana for medical, scientific and therapeutic purposes.The Jamaica Labour Party has continued the pursuit of a medical ganja industry, but there has been disagreement between various segments of the public and political sector as to whether the Government should continue pursuing legalisation of the drug, or restricting its use to the manufacturing of medical drugs.