CANNABIS should be legalised, Adver readers have said.

More than four-fifths of those who voted in the online poll agreed that recreational cannabis use should be legalised. Of 340 votes cast, only 17 per cent said the law should stay the same.

Political pressure is growing to review the law on cannabis. Lord Hague, former Conservative Party leader, joined those calling for a change in approach towards the drug. Writing in the Telegraph he said the idea it can be “driven off the streets and out of people’s lives by the state is nothing short of deluded”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable backed calls for reform, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that decriminalising cannabis would be a “sensible step for the country to take”.

“The second step would be to look at the various experiences of legalisation to make absolutely sure that we do not produce an epidemic, that we actually control use very considerably,” he said.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt suggested “a different way” was needed following widespread outrage over the confiscation from mother Charlotte Caldwell of cannabis oil supplies which she brought from Canada for her 12-year-old son Billy, who has acute epilepsy.

The Government announced a new expert panel of clinicians would be established to give swift advice on the prescription of cannabis-based medicines to individual patients.

But the Prime Minister hinted the Government would look only into the operation of the current system of licences for use in individual cases, rather than reviewing the wider law.