Epileptic boy Billy Caldwell can go home with cannabis medicine, says family
The Home Office has rubber-stamped a special exemption licence meaning severely epileptic Billy Caldwell can go home with his medicinal cannabis, a family spokesman has said.
His mother Charlotte, of Castlederg in Co Tyrone, Northern Ireland, had seven bottles confiscated at Heathrow Airport customs on June 11 after she brought them in from Toronto.
Last month a 20-day emergency licence was granted for 12-year-old Billy after he was admitted to hospital in a critical condition having suffered multiple seizures.
Following the public uproar over the confiscation of the cannabis oil from Ms Caldwell as she attempted to bring it into the UK, a new panel assessing claims for its use was set up. On Wednesday, the temporary expert panel began accepting applications for licences for the drug from senior clinicians
The Home Office announced the panel will make “swift” recommendations to ministers, who will then sign off on applications within two to four weeks. If given approval, doctors can then start writing prescriptions for their patient, while ministers decide whether to remove cannabis’s banned status as a medicine.
Its hugely in favour of being legalised very soon, as thousands of parents with suffering children, elderly people suffering, and also people within their early 20s suffering with chronic pains and illnesses, the amount that cannabis can do and cure with young billy as a huge example, UK ministers are looking to remove cannabis’s banned status as a medicine and legalise it, with the doctors power to provide any citizen suffering from chronic pains, illness can be given a prescription to be able to claim their medical cannabis from certain chemists available on the high streets.
AC