Essex man calls for medicinal cannabis to be more readily prescribed
It helps conditions like epilepsy and anxiety
A man from Southend is calling for medicinal cannabis to be more readily available via the NHS to tackle various conditions.
It's been legal since November 2018, but currently only a small number of medicines are licensed on the NHS.
Thousands of patients in the UK, like 33-year-old Emdad Khan, access the drug instead through private prescriptions. As well as being used for mental health issues, it treats a number of chronic conditions such as fibromyalgia, IBS, epilepsy and endometriosis.
Emdad has suffered with mental health issues all his life and was diagnosed with mixed anxiety depression disorder when he was in his early twenties. Since then, he’s been on multiple antidepressants.
He started using cannabis to self-medicate during a particularly difficult period a few years ago and then obtained a legal prescription last September.
He says people still have misconceptions: "When I speak to my colleagues about it, they have these preconceptions and think I'm just getting high.
"That is a side effect but it's not about that. It helps me feel better and connect with myself."
Emdad's hoping to change misconceptions about medical cannabis, so it can be more widely accepted, and used to treat more people: "We need to change people's hearts and minds, as well as the social commentary around it.
"It would also massively help to educate doctors in the benefits of medicinal cannabis so they can safely prescribe it."
Emdad also argues increasing education and availability of medical cannabis through doctors would also limit people self-medicating and purchasing illegal drugs: "For me, the biggest difference between street cannabis then and medical cannabis now is the psycho-social feeling that I’m not a criminal for consuming...
"When I was self-medicating it just felt wrong. Taking part in purchases made me feel very vulnerable and ostracised because I didn't have anyone I could talk to about it because it was illegal."