Cannabis oil will be available on prescription to people with chronic pain across the UK within a month, it has been reported Currently cannabis-derived medicines are only prescribed in exceptional circumstances, when permission is granted by a panel of medical experts, but the Home Office is set to relax the rules. Home Secretary Sajid Javid has sanctioned the ‘rescheduling’ of cannabis-derived medicines in Parliament and an announcement is expected within two weeks paving the way for it to be prescribed almost immediately.
There will be specialist doctors who will prescribe cannabis medicines and patients will no longer be forced to try other drugs before using cannabis-derived treatments. People suffering with chronic pain, epilepsy, nausea as a result of chemotherapy and MS will be among those who will be first to be prescribed the drugs. Genevieve Edwards, from the MS Society, told the Sunday Telegraph: ‘This is very encouraging progress for thousands of people with MS who have been forced to choose between living with relentless pain and muscle spasm or breaking the law.’ The turning point in the long-running campaign to legalise medical cannabis treatments was in June when the Home Office allowed Charlotte Caldwell’s 12-year-old son Billy to keep drugs prescribed to him in America after they had been seized at Heathrow Airport.