‘Access to medicinal cannabis must improve’, expert urges

Hardly any children have received medical cannabis in the seven months since its prescription was legalised, doctors say.

Former drugs tsar Professor David Nutt, a psychiatrist at Imperial College London, warned many patients are suffering epileptic seizures as they struggle to get the treatment, despite last year’s change in the law.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, he said most doctors are ‘fearful’ of prescribing cannabis oil after decades of what he called ‘absurd’ prohibition.

The law was changed in November to allow specialist doctors to prescribe medicinal cannabis, following several high-profile cases in which parents were stopped from bringing the drug into Britain for children with epilepsy.

But patients have complained that it is almost impossible to persuade doctors to actually prescribe the drug.

Professor Nutt – who was sacked from his job as the Government’s chief adviser on drugs in 2009 after saying ecstasy and LSD were less harmful than alcohol – said the roll out ‘has been much slower than patients and parents had hoped’.

‘Still only a tiny number of children with severe juvenile epilepsies are being treated, and many others continue to have multiple seizures because neurologists will not prescribe,’ he wrote.

‘There are several likely reasons for this. One is ignorance of the value of cannabis medicines, because few doctors have any training or experience in this area and are fearful of prescribing them off licence.

‘Another reason for resistance could be that parents and patients lead this initiative rather than the medical profession.

‘Some doctors fear that medical cannabis will lead to severe adverse effects such as psychosis, and others that it will lead to more recreational use, which seems unlikely given the current wide use and availability of black market cannabis.’

The new rules say it is legal for specialist doctors to prescribe medical cannabis – but make it clear the drug is not actually licenced as a medicine, so it is up to the doctor ‘to decide whether prescribing these products is in the best interest of the patient’.

Many specialists say there is not enough evidence that cannabis actually works as claimed.

Professor Chris Whitty, chief scientific adviser at the Department of Health, told the Health and Social Care Committee last month that rushing the development of cannabis medicines risked creating a ‘disaster’ like the thalidomide scandal.

He said that while medicinal cannabis has been rescheduled, there is a lack of scientific research proving products are safe and effective and they have not been licensed.

‘I think we need to get the evidence and I really think there’s a question here about whether these medicines will help children and we need to answer it.

‘It’s very dangerous to have a cannabis exceptionalism here,’ he said.

‘These are drugs, they have side effects, they have positive effects – that is clear.

‘What we have to do is balance those two, but they are no different to any other drug in that sense.’

But the mother of Alfie Dingley, a campaigner who fought for the drug to ease her son’s seizures, said it was ‘heartbreaking’ that children cannot get hold of the products they need.

Hannah Deacon – whose seven-year-old son is one of the few children to receive the drug – said: ‘Every child with intractable epilepsy should have the right to try cannabis medicines that could save them from a life of suffering.

‘We became campaigners because we had no choice,’ she wrote in a separate BMJ article.

‘We are our child’s only advocates, and we must do all we can to be heard.’

THE LANDMARK CASE OF BILLY CALDWELL

Billy Caldwell’s mother Charlotte (pictured together) had seven bottles of cannabis oil confiscated at Heathrow Airport customs, prompting a row over cannabis oil

Cannabis oil was thrust into the limelight when epileptic boy Billy Caldwell’s mother had seven bottles confiscated at Heathrow Airport customs.

The 12-year-old sparked a row over the medicinal status of the oil, prompting the Home Office to step in and grant his mother Charlotte an emergency licence for the product that was calming his seizures, which contained THC.

Billy’s bottles were confiscated on June 11 after Ms Caldwell brought them in from Toronto.

On the back of the cases of Billy and fellow epileptic boy Alfie Dingley, six, Home Secretary Sajid Javid called for a review into medicinal cannabis.

In a major shift of policy, he announced in July that some products containing the drug would be available on prescription in the UK from the autumn. 

On the back of today’s change to the law, Ms Caldwell said she wept with joy.

‘For me what started off as a journey which was about the needs of my little boy actually turned into something, proved to be something, a lot bigger,’ she told Sky News. 

‘It proved to be the needs of a nation.

‘Medicinal cannabis gave me back my right as a mummy to hope, but the most important thing medicinal cannabis has done is given Billy back his right to life.

‘Only relatively recently did our Government and country really start to appreciate just how many wee children and people of all ages were affected by the difficulties associated with accessing medicinal cannabis.

‘But it became clear it wasn’t just about what was perceived to be a small number of very sick children and that medicinal cannabis could make a life-changing or life-saving difference to more than a million people.’

Although thrilled by the law change, Ms Caldwell hopes regulations will be expanded to allow more people to benefit from cannabis-based treatments.

‘This is new ground for everybody. We did in a few days what successive UK governments failed to do in more than half a century and made medicinal cannabis legal,’ she said.

‘Then, as now, politicians didn’t realise the complexities involved.

‘There’s a wide range of conditions, each of which can only be treated by certain forms of medicinal cannabis.’