Liverpool Mum takes medicinal cannabis fight to Westminster
It prevents her son from having up to hundreds of seizures each day
Last updated 2nd Nov 2021
Three years after medicinal cannabis was legalised in the UK, a Liverpool mum's telling us she's still having to spend thousands of pounds a month to keep her son alive.
Today, Joanne Griffiths is heading from Merseyside to lead a protest outside parliament calling for change.
Joanne's son Ben has a rare form of epilepsy which caused him to suffer up to hundreds of seizures a day, before medicinal cannabis oil began to help.
Joanne said: "It's beyond cruel that we're being denied this access. We need help with that. We've fought and we've battled for three long years now and we're just not getting anywhere. People need to come together within the departments to make sure something does happen.
"We've seen parents selling their homes. It's heart-breaking what's happening. It's just so unfair when there are three other children, and two of them on the very same medication that my son has, but he can't have access. Yet they have a clinical decision from a doctor to say 'here's a prescription', it's just that we have to pay for it."
"£2000 every month just to keep their child alive"
In 2018, the UK Government approved the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes and made it available on the NHS.
Since then, only 3 NHS prescriptions have been passed, with those issued a private prescription having to pay around £1200 per month.
Ms Griffiths will be among a group of campaigners in London today, demanding to speak with MPs over the failure of the policy.
They'll be asking why an NHS prescription for cannabis oil still can't be obtained, despite it being legalised three years ago.
Joanne has called on the Government to make sure changes are made.
The mother said: "We have a clinical decision, we just need the funding. We're begging you to step up and really help us now before one of the children gets seriously ill because a parent can't afford to pay up to nearly £2,000 every month just to keep their child alive.
"It's been a really hard three years. We've had to go abroad ourselves and collect the medication from the Netherlands because the prices are so high here. It's just madness. It needs a change, it needs a policy putting in place to enable the ones that are already taking it to have access to it."
A campaign group on Twitter called End Our Pain is similarly calling for change in regards to making cannabis prescriptions more accessible.
The group regularly retweets cases of children suffering with epilepsy that are unable to access medicinal cannabis, calling on Secretary of Health and Social Care Sajid Javid to intervene.