Theresa May was all about drug control because her husband is high up in a company that pretty much has a monopoly on medical cannabis export.

It looks like you’re confusing Theresa May and Victoria Atkins:

www.bbc.co.uk/…/uk-england-lincolnshire-44109060

…stackexchange.com/…/did-the-husbands-of-theresa-…

New labour, in the early 2000s, made moves to be more lenient on cannabis, and they were absolutely hounded by the conservative press for it, which then prompted them to reverse track.

No. New Labour under Tony Blair didn’t just make moves, they changed they law in 2001 and reclassified cannabis from class B to class C. This was fine and even up until 2006, the Blair government stated that they would not be reclassifying cannabis to class B. Then, after Gordon Brown (whose father was a Christian minister) became prime minister in 2007, his government changed the law again in 2008 and reclassified cannabis back from class C to class B, based on lies which they themselves produced.

I’m not sure where you got the idea that the right wing press had anything to do with it. This was entirely the doing of Gordon Brown (whose father was a Christian minister).

…wikipedia.org/…/Cannabis_classification_in_the_U…