A campaign to allow doctors to write NHS prescriptions for medicinal cannabis has received a boost from Northern Ireland’s politicians.
Five of the main political parties are to write to the Prime Minister, Home Office and the Department of Health’s permanent secretary to ask them to support efforts to make it easier for people to access cannabis oil to treat life-threatening conditions.
It comes after representatives from the SDLP, Sinn Fein, UUP, Alliance and Green parties attended a meeting at Stormont yesterday, organised by the mum of a youngster who needs cannabis oil to keep deadly seizures at bay. Charlotte Caldwell launched the campaign to help people after witnessing a miraculous turnaround in her son Billy’s treatment using cannabis oil.
However, Billy only has three days of medication left after health officials banned his GP from writing a prescription for THC-a — a non-intoxicating form of cannabis that has been shown to help people with a range of conditions from epilepsy to Parkinson’s disease.
The youngster, from Castlederg, suffers from a severe form of epilepsy and could die as a result of his seizures. It will be the third time Charlotte has been forced to leave Northern Ireland to seek treatment for Billy since he was a baby.
