On Nov. 1, medical cannabis became available with a doctor\u2019s prescription in the United Kingdom \u2014 at least legally. As for cannabis in patients\u2019 hands, there is none, aside from what the black market will provide.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s early yet \u2014 less than a week in \u2014 but there\u2019s already a significant problem with the medical marijuana program in the U.K.: Nobody, including the very people whose personal odysseys inspired the \u201cchange\u201d in the law, appears to be able to access any of this now-mythical legal medical cannabis.<\/p>\n
It gets worse.\u00a0According to members of Parliament interviewed by the Belfast Telegraph,<\/a>\u00a0the actual medical guidance offered to doctors and other gatekeepers standing between patients and their preferred medicine is acting as a roadblock, a \u201cbotched and cruel\u201d affair that means very little on the ground has changed.<\/p>\n U.K. law changed only after the well-publicized suffering of sick people like\u00a0Billy Caldwell<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Alfie Dingley<\/a>, boys with severe epilepsy, who were forced to go to great lengths (in Caldwell\u2019s case, becoming a near-literal refugee in Canada, where the cannabis oil that solved his seizures is easily accessed and abundant) to secure the marijuana-based medicine that offered them healing and relief.<\/p>\n It was only after medicine intended for Caldwell was seized by authorities at Heathrow Airport that Sajid David, the U.K. Home Secretary,\u00a0announced that cannabis would be rescheduled effective<\/a>\u00a0Nov. 1. That in turn triggered a flurry of bureaucratic activity, including recommendations from physicians\u2019 groups \u2014 which have been criticized by patient advocates as well as influential British charity groups as \u201chighly restrictive.\u201d<\/p>\n It is likely to remain this way until such time as there\u2019s a sufficient \u201cevidence base\u201d to support marijuana\u2019s use in a clinical setting. Does this sound familiar?<\/p>\n It should: It\u2019s the same vicious cycle that cannabis is locked into in the United States. There is not enough scientific evidence to prove the illegal drug works in the way its adherents swear it works; since it is illegal, it\u2019s hard to study. Since it\u2019s hard to study, there\u2019s not enough evidence to support its legalization. And around and around we go again.<\/p>\n \u201cDue to the limited evidence base, the Government are only allowing prescription of cannabis products to be administered by those clinicians listed on the Specialist Register of the General Medical Council (GCM) and to patients where there is a clinical need which cannot be met by a licensed medicine and all other treatment options have been exhausted,\u201d\u00a0as the British Brain Tumour Charity explained.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cDue to the limited evidence base, the Government are only allowing prescription of cannabis products to be administered by those clinicians listed on the Specialist Register of the General Medical Council (GCM) and to patients where there is a clinical need which cannot be met by a licensed medicine and all other treatment options have been exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNHS England announced very few patients will actually be eligible for a prescription and we\u2019re calling on the Government to urgently review the interim guidance for the prescription of cannabis-based medicinal products,\u201d the charity wrote on its website on Nov. 3.<\/p>\n As for Caldwell: According to the Telegraph, he\u2019s been informed that he does not qualify for a prescription. As of Nov. 3, the Caldwells were back where they were when they started: On a plane, headed to Canada, where the boy can access cannabis oil.<\/p>\n It\u2019s true that what\u2019s happening in the United Kingdom is already significant progress compared to a year ago, when marijuana-supporting members of Parliament could not even have their bills heard \u2014 and in fact, found their efforts blocked by their supposed colleagues \u2014 and when medical-cannabis patients were reduced to holding protest smoke-outs at the Westminster Palace gates. At the same time, Caldwell\u2019s torturous ordeal reveals how much longer there is to go before something as simple as a plant extract can be provided to people in demonstrable need.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/b>, are you surprised U.K. patients still can\u2019t access medical marijuana?<\/p>\n The post Despite \u2018New\u2019 Access, U.K. Medical Patients Have No Marijuana<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 1, medical cannabis became available with a doctor\u2019s prescription in the United Kingdom \u2014 at least legally. As for cannabis in patients\u2019 hands, there is none, aside from what the black market will provide. It\u2019s early yet \u2014 less than a week in \u2014 but there\u2019s already aContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3394,4657,50,53,415,2190,1572],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30371,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30370\/revisions\/30371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nRead More: Despite \u2018New\u2019 Access, U.K. Medical Patients Have No Marijuana<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"