{"id":41266,"date":"2020-02-12T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/02\/12\/with-brexit-done-why-wont-boris-johnson-fix-british-medical-cannabis\/"},"modified":"2020-02-19T00:46:09","modified_gmt":"2020-02-19T08:46:09","slug":"with-brexit-done-why-wont-boris-johnson-fix-british-medical-cannabis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2020\/02\/12\/with-brexit-done-why-wont-boris-johnson-fix-british-medical-cannabis\/","title":{"rendered":"With Brexit Done, Why Won\u2019t Boris Johnson Fix British Medical Cannabis?"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Last summer, Boris Johnson, the rumpled former\u00a0tabloid journalist<\/a>\u00a0and ex-mayor of London now serving as the\u00a0press-hating<\/a>\u00a0prime minister of the United Kingdom, surrounded himself with weedheads.<\/p>\n

With the hire\u00a0of Blair Gibbs, a longtime cannabis-policy reform advocate<\/a>\u00a0and legalization supporter to a senior position at No. 10 Downing Street, it seemed Johnson was preparing for a post-Brexit Britain where medical cannabis was at last available to all Britons \u2014 and, within as little as five years, commercial recreational cannabis would follow.<\/p>\n

But with Johnson\u2019s adversaries in Jeremy Corbyn and Labour vanquished, and Britain finally exiting the European Union, where are we? In just the same place we were before, if not worse: cannabis illegal,\u00a0sick children forced to break the law or pursue expensive and potentially harmful pharmaceutical cures,\u00a0and nobody happy about any of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Except, maybe, for Johnson, who \u2014 despite supporting medical\u00a0cannabis back in 2008, when he didn\u2019t have any power<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 now doesn\u2019t have to make any difficult decisions. Meanwhile, families\u00a0of sick people are selling their family homes to pay for medicine.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Today I\u2019ve signed the letter urging the UK Government to stop the blockage on medical cannabis for children and families who are needlessly suffering.#EndOurPain<\/a> #MedicalCannabis<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/yW4Ipkbzxy<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Amy Callaghan MP (@AmyCallaghanSNP) February 5, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

With an election in the balance, Johnson promised in October to discuss medical cannabis access for epileptic children personally with a member of Parliament.\u00a0As the Daily Record reported<\/a>, Johnson broke that promise in January, dispatching instead an apparatchik to meet with elected officials.<\/p>\n

Currently, medical cannabis is \u201clegal\u201d in Britain, but can\u2019t be dispensed through the National Health Service except in extremely limited circumstances, meaning access is only for the rich or the lawbreakers. It can cost up to \u00a33,500 pounds a month for a cannabis prescription through a private doctor, the BBC reported.<\/p>\n

Since Nov. 1, 2018, when U.K. law \u201clegalized\u201d medical cannabis, only 18 patients have managed to get a prescription through NHS,\u00a0as iNews reported<\/a>. (Keep in mind that\u00a0\u201csaving\u201d the U.K.\u2019s vaunted single-payer healthcare system was part of how Brexit was sold to the masses<\/a>,\u00a0before leading Brexiteers then started calling for U.S.-style privatization<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Even when patients do obtain a prescription, treatment options are limited.\u00a0Only two \u201ccannabis-based\u201d medicines have been approved for use in the United Kingdom<\/a>:\u00a0Epidiolex<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Sativex<\/a>, both developed by Britain-based GW Pharmaceuticals. One is prescribed for epilepsy, and the other is to treat multiple sclerosis \u2014 meaning anyone else, with chronic pain, or wasting syndrome from cancer, or insomnia, or autism, is screwed, even though companies like Canada-based Tilray have been advertising cannabis-oil imports since last summer.<\/p>\n

A massive clinical trial project<\/a>, meant to supply as many as 20,000 U.K. citizens with medical-grade cannabis products by 2021, is in the beginning stages, but in the meantime, policy in the U.K. is well behind that in other European countries like Italy and Germany \u2014 and well behind most U.S. states.<\/p>\n

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Even though the law allows NHS to prescribe medicinal cannabis, families of v sick children aren\u2019t being offered it<\/p>\n

They are desperate and they need help. @MattHancock<\/a> must listen so that families can access life-changing medicinal cannabis on the NHS
@End_our_Pain<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/NzVIpnBt8v<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Caroline Lucas (@CarolineLucas) February 5, 2020<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

During an appearance on the BBC, Matt Hancock, Johnson\u2019s secretary of health, blamed delays on drug companies, insisting that \u201cit comes down to the drug companies to make them in the right way. They need to come to the table on this.\u201d Except that\u2019s a half-truth: NHS could subsidize drug costs, but is choosing not to. The NHS and related health officials could allow patients to access whole-plant medicine, if the Home Office allowed for citizens to grow cannabis at home \u2014 but none of that is happening.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s Johnson. While a privileged teen at Eton, the U.K.\u2019s posh prep school, Johnson is known to have had a \u201cjolly nice\u201d time smoking spliffs \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s admitted as such.<\/a><\/p>\n

Other world leaders oversee far more draconian drug policies. It\u2019s not a list you want to be on: Vladimir Putin\u2019s Russia, Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s Philippines, Xi Jinping\u2019s China. The difference is that none of them have called for reform or promised to do something about it, before changing their minds.<\/p>\n

Now, as prime minister, Johnson is\u00a0deporting<\/a>\u00a0longtime U.K. residents for minor cannabis offenses, and conveniently forgetting whatever rationale it was that led him to understand legal weed was a good idea back in 2008. In the meantime, in the post-industrial cities in Britain\u2019s version of the U.S. Rust Belt, a drug-overdose crisis is\u00a0brewing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Does this sound familiar? It should! More and more, Johnson\u2019s U.K. is resembling Donald Trump\u2019s America, with one very large difference \u2014 without the (blue) states where cannabis is legal.<\/p>\n

TELL US,<\/strong>\u00a0do you have hope for medical cannabis in the U.K.?<\/p>\n

The post With Brexit Done, Why Won\u2019t Boris Johnson Fix British Medical Cannabis?<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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Last summer, Boris Johnson, the rumpled former\u00a0tabloid journalist\u00a0and ex-mayor of London now serving as the\u00a0press-hating\u00a0prime minister of the United Kingdom, surrounded himself with weedheads. With the hire\u00a0of Blair Gibbs, a longtime cannabis-policy reform advocate\u00a0and legalization supporter to a senior position at No. 10 Downing Street, it seemed Johnson was preparingContinue 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":[13276,50,3156,139,81,4613,2190],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41266"}],"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=41266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41267,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41266\/revisions\/41267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}