The Independent on 13th June reported that a 12-year-old boy who uses a cannabis-based medication to control his severe epilepsy suffered his first seizures in months, hours after his prescription was confiscated by Border Force officials in the UK. A spokesperson for the Home Office is quoted as saying that it is “sympathetic to the rare situation Billy and his family face” but it is unlawful to bring the controlled substance into the country. Since he was first prescribed the cannabis oil medication, Tilray, while in America in 2016, he had gone the best part of a year with no seizures. Last year Billy became the first person in the UK to receive a NHS prescription for medical cannabis. But last month the Home Office intervened to order his GP to halt the prescription or risk losing his licence. The cannabis oil’s main component is the substance cannabidiol (CBD), which can be licensed as a medicine in the UK, but it also contains small amounts of THC, the psychoactive component responsible for causing the high in recreational forms of the drug, which is enough to have it classed as a Schedule 1 controlled substance in the UK seen as having no medical value.
