Bill Turnbull is backing the introduction of medical marijuana in the UK.

Image Source/ Sunday Post

The 63-year-old presenter is currently battling prostate cancer and after trying out some different products derived from cannabis for his new Channel 4 documentary, Bill Turnbull: Staying Alive, Bill hopes politicians will consider its health benefits.

Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said:

‘It’s such a dark area, unlit area, that needs a lot more examination.

‘We need to have a proper conversation in this country about the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, because it is legal for medicinal purposes in more than 20 countries – intelligent, advanced countries – and we should be one of them.

‘We have something which has been used for medicinal purposes for centuries, and it’s only been illegal for about 100 years.

‘I’m not talking about recreational use, simply for medicinal reasons’.

In the documentary, viewers can see Bill getting high on the drug and getting the giggles and while he doesn’t feel he needs medical marijuana right now, he would turn to it in the future if other treatments stop working.

He explained:

‘I felt embarrassed about it. But if it helps other people in my situation then it’s worth doing.

‘If it got to a stage where I thought all else had failed then I’d probably go for it in a more concentrated way’.

Bill also revealed his own method of coping with the emotional fallout from his disease.

He said:

‘I’m not dying yet, I just don’t feel that way. I understand that I may succumb to the disease eventually and that’s a very real possibility, a probability. But not for some time.

‘So every day I go down the bottom of my garden, usually at night-time, and I shout at my cancer and tell it to get stuffed. I use much stronger language’.