Fleetwood MP’s support for medical cannabis push

Medical cannabis was legalised in the UK last year, but patients still struggle to get a specialist prescription for the drug, which NHS guidelines say can be used to treat children with severe epilepsy, as well as sickness and chronic pain associated with chemotherapy.

Campaigners at End Our Pain are now calling for all doctors, not just specialists, to be allowed to prescribe cannabis to their patients where appropriate, and for patients to be able to go with their prescription to a pharmacy and collect it as they would any other drug.

Ms Smith said she has joined others in writing to the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, urging him to help patients whose conditions may be eased by the use of medical cannabis.

Ms Smith said: “I’m alarmed that campaigners have been unable to find a single new NHS prescription for a wholeplant medical cannabis product being written for any patient in the UK.

“The reality is families are watching children suffer when there are medicines out there that could help them, or they’re taking expensive and stressful trips abroad for medical cannabis.”