Oscar has 300 seizures a day. We can’t carry on like this... he needs cannabis oil now on NHS

My life as a Crohn’s sufferer has been transformed

Campaigner Alex suffers from Crohn’s disease, which led to severe weight loss, diarrhoea, chronic pain and fatigue. But after taking cannabis he says his life has been transformed.

“Cannabis means I have an appetite,” he says, “it reduces my pain dramatically, stops me from being nauseous all the time and it helps me get to sleep.”

Crohn’s causes inflammation of the bowel, gut and intestines and Alex, of Brighton, has recently had surgery for the condition. He had been taking prescription opiates which made things worse.

“For me, cannabis has been life-saving,” he explains. “Without it I would have become scarily underweight, as many Crohn’s patients do.”

Since he started using cannabis, Alex says he has found THE debate on legalising cannabis for medical use has been reignited.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid, inset, has announced a review of the drug.

And he stepped in to allow Billy

Caldwell, 12, to have cannabis oil to treat severe epilepsy.

Thousands of patients who rely on the drug have to buy it on the black market.

Here, five people – including five-year-old Oscar Smith’s mum

Emma – explain why they want a law change. Oscar has hundreds of epileptic seizures a day and his mum Emma is desperate for him to be able to try cannabis but is unwilling to buy it illegally.

The youngster, from Bradford, West Yorks, has myoclonic astatic epilepsy, a form of childhood epilepsy. Also known as Doose syndrome, it affects two out of 100 children with epilepsy. Emma, also mum to Alex, four, says: “Oscar has tried a range of medication to try to stop the seizures but nothing works.

“We believe he should be given the opportunity to try cannabis oil because it has been proven to work in cases like his, such as Billy’s. We think it could change his life.

“The next step for Oscar is surgery but doctors have said it won’t stop his seizures, it will only reduce their frequency. I believe it should be given to him on prescription, by a doctor. And he needs it now. We can’t carry on like this.

“My husband Jason and I have considered taking Oscar abroad to access cannabis but why should we have to do that?

“It should be available in his own country, on the NHS.” an online community of Crohn’s sufferers from around the world who get the drug through prescriptions – while he has to pay “a fortune” for the drug on the streets.

Alex now campaigns with the United Patients Alliance to legalise medical cannabis.

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