I sent a Facebook message to my Member of Parliament (Norman Lamb) last week, reminding him who I am (we both appeared on the Victoria Derbyshire show about medicinal cannabis), informing him that I intend to ask my neurologist to apply to the Home Office’s “Expert Panel” for medicinal cannabis on prescription, and asking him to support this application.
I received a reply from him this afternoon, and he has stated that “I strongly support your position” and has offered to give me an official letter stating that fact. I’m really pleased, because I think it makes it less likely that my neurologist will simply refuse to make the application.
I don’t think that I have a snowball’s chance in hell of being prescribed medicinal cannabis, because the process (for applying for medicinal cannabis on prescription) put in place by our government is intended to be so complicated and have so many conditions attached to it that nobody will ever actually qualify.
This is why it is so important to make the application – to highlight and publicise the fact that the official process doesn’t work for patients. Since the government made the headlines by announcing that cannabis would be legalised for medicinal purposes, the general public believe that this is the case. The sad fact is that, in reality, absolutely nothing has changed for the vast majority of medicinal cannabis patients – all medicinal cannabis patients apart from two little boys (who shamed the government into making their announcement), in fact.
And that was always the intention of this government.