Movers & Shakers: Cannabis

Want an NHS prescription? Dream on...

“Put Pot on the NHS - outrage as judge backs cannabis.”

I am imagining the kind of tabloid headline which might follow this week’s episode of Movers and Shakers - and, no, I’ve not been on the wacky baccy. In fact, my distinguished colleague Sir Nicholas Mostyn (aka The Judge) leads a very nuanced discussion about the medicinal use of cannabis, while making his own views clear.

It is a complex subject and we are fortunate to have with us in the pub one of the world’s leading authorities on the properties and uses of cannabis, Professor Mike Barnes, who is there to take us through CBD, CBN, THC and other acronyms.

Nick “the judge” Mostyn and Mark Mardell in the pub

First, we hear from three listeners who are enthusiastic users of various forms of cannabis and who I found via the Movers and Shakers’ excellent Facebook group. All of them - like most of us - suffered from insomnia.

James, a Brit living abroad in sunny climes, first tried importing cannabis from Amsterdam, and then looked closer to home.

“I found a local supplier, and what I would do is I’d smoke a small joint about an hour before getting to bed. What I found was that this just really relaxed me, and I just had no trouble getting to sleep.”

Frank went through a process of trial and error as he attempted to get hold of cannabis in a form that actually worked for him. Eventually, after a consultation with a major medical cannabis company, he was supplied with oil which he used in a chocolate brownie:

“I take it around 6:30pm, 7 o’clock. By 8 o’clock, all my tension and the stiffness goes out of the muscles. My face relaxes. I can feel all the way down to my toes.”

Maggie was only diagnosed with Parkinson’s four years ago, but she’d suffered from insomnia for many years. An American friend suggested she tried cannabis:

“I take the tiniest amount in jelly form, and I cannot see any harm in it for me, whatsoever. I read that there are difficulties that people foresee in terms of addiction. I don’t believe the tiny amount that I take could be considered to be problematic. It has changed my life.”

We then discuss our own experiences with cannabis. Paul Mayhew-Archer and I stand out as the old fogeys, having never tried it. Mark Mardell has tried the cannabinoid oil you can buy legally in the UK but has a close friend with Parkinson’s who has been a regular user all his adult life, has continued with it since diagnosis, and is “ok with it.”

Both the judge and Gillian Lacey-Solymar have tried cannabis products while on visits to Canada, where it was legalised for medical use in 2001 and recreational use in 2018. It did not work for Gillian - “all I got was a rash” - but the judge says the cannabis gummis he chewed before bedtime on a skiing holiday seemed to give him a much better night’s sleep than he experienced at home.

But our expert witness says cannabis isfar more than just a cure for insomnia. “It helps anxiety, it helps pain, it helps epilepsy,” explaina Professor Barnes."And that’s a little bit of its own downfall, because that leads people to say, ‘Well, this must be some sort of snake oil, because it can’t do all these things, right?’”

The professor, a fierce advocate for the use of cannabis in healthcare, is impatient with what he hears from the sceptics: “Uninformed opinion generated by, frankly, prejudice and stigma. And a lot of opinion I hear is simply incorrect. And in science, we can have an opinion, but it should be an opinion formed on the basis of understanding the facts. And a lot of my medical colleagues simply do not understand their facts.”

He then gives us some facts. There are 147 different cannabinoids - products of the cannabis plant - of which only six get you high, the best known being THC. “So if you buy it on the street, what you’re buying generally, is high THC cannabis, because the point of buying it on the street is to get you high.” For most medical uses, apart from alleviating severe pain, you would not want high THC cannabis because you are not trying to get high.

You can now get cannabis for medical use in the UK - for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and for managing sickness during chemotherapy. But the most surprising fact that Professor Barnes gives us is that so far just six people have been given an NHS prescription:

“About 75,000 people are now prescribed cannabis legally in this country, all bar six privately….. I have no evidence, but I would suggest most of those people started off by asking their doctor, ‘can I have this? I’ve heard it’s good. Can you prescribe it?’ And the answer would have been no.”

Judge Mostyn points out the injustice in this situation:

“Getting cannabis now is ‘open to everybody’ as they say about the law, like the Ritz Hotel. It’s one law for the rich. One law for the poor.”

The judge says he is now going to use his “sharp elbows” to push for cannabis to be prescribed on the NHS for use by people with Parkinson’s. Having seen him in action I would advise the naysayers to batten down the hatches.