Andrew Walters is not your typical Salford Chasid.
The independent, “libertarian socialist” councillor is a big believer in the positive power of the proverbial “herb”: marijuana.
And while he is an advocate for a more liberal approach to the drug in general – he says he once attended a council meeting on Zoom from a Dutch coffee shop – there is nothing hazy about his mission.
He wants UK health policy to catch up with the weight of evidence about the medical benefits of cannabis. For him, in fact, it is a halachic imperative.
The councillor for Kersal and Broughton Park in Salford – which has been described as the most Jewish electoral ward in the north of England – told the JC: “There are huge amounts of people in the Orthodox community who have been helped through medicinal cannabis.
“In the Orthodox community, there is, in one sense, a bigger stigma, but in another sense, a smaller stigma than in the secular or in the non-Jewish community.”
This is because, according to him, there is a halachic argument in favour of at least considering the medicinal benefits of cannabis.
He says: “According to halachah, a medication that’s been proven to work three times has got the status of something which is at least worth further investigation, rather than the Western style of what’s known as the ‘gold standard’; double blind, placebo-controlled testing.”
Medicinal cannabis has been legal in the UK since 2018 and an estimated 30,000 patients have been given prescriptions for it.
More and more members of the community are getting in touch with Walters to enquire whether they may be eligible for it, he says. “I get people calling me up all the time, saying, I’m on Tramadol and morphine due to problems in my spine.”
Salford council, of which he is a member, has recently called on the mayor, Paul Dennett, to ensure medicinal cannabis users are not discriminated against by police and other authorities.
He said that he thought “drugs policy must be doctor-led, not politician-led. I can’t quite understand the logic of thinking of a politician saying this drug you can prescribe, and this one you can’t.”
According to Walters, “drugs policy can and should, and only must be based on public health issues and must be evidence based. And the current drugs policy in the UK is not.”
What made him such a passionate advocate for drug policy reform? Walters described himself as a “big warrior for social justice”, although he doesn’t like the “negative connotations associated with the word ‘liberal’”.
Asked whether he had taken drugs, Walters recalled attending a Salford council meeting on Zoom, during which he was “listening to the police talk about how they’re raiding this cannabis farm and that cannabis farm”, but he happened to be “in a Dutch coffee shop at the time”.
Would he legalise marijuana for recreational use, as has been done in more liberal states in America? “Oh yeah. Absolutely. 100 per cent.”
Why? “Because it’s the healthiest, and most safe way of doing it.” He continued: “When did you ever see a drug dealer say, ‘I’m sorry, can I check your ID please?’”
Buying cannabis in an “unregulated criminal market” leads to safety concerns, he says. “You don’t know if there’s other things that shouldn’t be there. We don’t know what conditions it was grown in.” Not to mention the problem of “human slavery”.
The recent change of government might not result in a change of policy on drugs. Labour’s manifesto mentioned drugs three times, each time alongside crime and antisocial behaviour. And, while Walters is not arguing that alcohol and tobacco should be banned, he said evidence has shown that they cause more harm than some illegal drugs.
