If you are looking to escape a lengthy jail sentence and for whatever crime you decide to commit, the government are making it all to easy as they stoop lower in their quest to demonise cannabis, its use, and its users.

Simply put all it takes is for the astute criminal to talk of "voices in the head", pay reference to lengthy cannabis use, and the Great British judicial system, allied to the anti-cannabis brigade, will do the rest...its as easy as that.

James Bryceland, 43, had abused drugs since his teenage years and become a paranoid schizophrenic who heard voices in his head.

They told him his partner, Jacqueline Hughes, 35, was having an affair and he bludgeoned and stabbed her to death as she lay in bed beside a toddler and a six-year-old boy.

At the High Court in Glasgow, Bryceland denied murdering Ms Hughes on 19 August last year in their Glasgow home.