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Can cannabis oil really treat epilepsy and what would impact of medicinal reclassification be?

PA Wire/PA Images
PA Wire/PA Images

The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced the government is to review reclassifying cannabis for medicinal use in the wake of challenges by families whose children’s life threatening epileptic seizures were banished by cannabis products.

Earlier this month, days after having his supply of anti-epileptic cannabis oil confiscated at Heathrow customs, 12-year-old Billy Caldwell was in hospital suffering his first seizures for months.

Last year Billy became the first person to receive an NHS prescription for medical cannabis, through his GP in Northern Ireland, but the Home Office intervened forcing his mother, Charlotte, to go to Canada earlier this month.

Now Billy and six-year-old Alfie Dingley, another boy with epilepsy whose family has been campaigning for medicinal cannabis legalisation, have been granted emergency licenses for cannabis products – with future cases to be reviewed by a panel of medical experts.

A change in status could put the drug in line with heroin which can be prescribed where doctors deem it necessary.