End red t ape that forces patients to break law

THE most distressing thing for a doctor is being unable to care properly for a patient. Yet, that is the situation that has confronted those looking after Billy Caldwell. Earlier this week, the 12-year-old had his first epileptic seizure in more than 250 days after running out of his cannabis oil medication. Within days, he was in hospital in a life-threatening condition.

It took days of needless suffering to convince Home Secretary Sajid Javid to intervene and permit Billy access to the vital medication. In doing so, he made clear he was only acting because this was ‘a medical emergency’. Although welcome, Mr Javid’s actions do nothing to address the fact that it was the Home Office’s outdated rules which were to blame for the deterioration in Billy’s health. For almost a week, they left his GP unable to prescribe the medication that had helped to keep him well. Tragically, Billy’s is no isolated case. There are many like him.

Thousands of medical research papers make clear that medicinal cannabis can benefit cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, HIV/AIDS sufferers and those with multiple sclerosis. The Home Office stance defies logic and denies help to thousands of people.

The only way medicinal cannabis can be prescribed here is through a complicated licensing regime. It takes months, sometimes years, of needless bureaucracy for every child like Billy to go through this complex and expensive process. There is no certainty of a positive decision at the end of it.

For the sake of patients, this must change. It would take a simple law tweak to scrap an absurd licensing regime by treating medicinal cannabis products like other medications. We must move control away from the Home Office to the Department of Health and the Medicines and the Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. As a doctor, I understand the need for debate about wider drugs policy reform. But this should not be confused with Billy’s case, which has nothing to do with widening access to street drugs.

Permitting the use of medicinal cannabis is about improving quality of life for patients. We should all unite behind a change – now.