Transcripts For BBCNEWS Cannabis 20240703

Weve been up and down the uk meeting those who rely on it. 0h, mercy. Once i vape, its like 30 seconds, im like, 0hh the pain just leaves. And find out why being prescribed Medicinal Cannabis is still a problem. These products are not available within our much loved nhs free at the point of need. Its expensive and its something i cant. I i cant live without. Morning. Are you looking forward to school . Are you going to put your order in for breakfast . Wheres table seven, is it down here . Oh, youre cute. Alfies my first born. Hes coming up to 12 years old. He has severe epilepsy. Hes also diagnosed with autism. And hes a very special little boy, as far as im concerned. This will be familiar to many. A busy family morning routine. Who do you want to ask to do your meds . Theres one major difference in the dingley household, though. What about annie doing them, why doesnt annie do them . Good boy, well done. Alfie is taking his Epilepsy Medicine and he really needs it. His neurologist said he has the worst epilepsy hes ever seen. He would have about 150 of these big seizures. So its arms, legs, eyes going back in your head, you stop breathing. I got up very early in the morning and sat with him and looked out the window and i held his hand and i thought about what his funeral might be like, because i thought he was going to die. They brought us into a room and said, weve tried everything and were going to. The last thing were going to give him is intravenous steroids and, if this doesnt work, he will probably die. Alfie and his family have come a long way in the last decade, thanks to a different kind of medicine. So, i give alfie his cannabis oil four times a day. So it comes in a ioml bottle of oil. Draw the oil out into the syringe, and then we get it into him before he goes to school. Thank you alfies family get his cannabis on the nhs. He was the very first child in the country to be given it. Without the cannabis, wed be in hospital in a few days with hundreds of seizures, needing to load him with Rescue Medications to stop his seizures. And it is terrifying. Alfie hasnt had a seizure for over three years, so alfie hasnt been in hospital for over four years. He was costing the nhs anything between £150,000 and £200,000 a year. And hes not now. Many people watching this will think youre giving your child something that will get him high, that we know can induce psychosis. What do you say to that . I would say that thats a massive lack of education because my son has been high on anti epileptics, hes been completely off his head on pharmaceutical drugs. Hes never been high on cannabis. So, im dr david mccormick, i| am a consultant paediatrician, and were in Kings College hospital, london. And you can prescribe cannabis . I can prescribe one cannabis derived medical product to treat epilepsy in children. Davids talking about a medicine with cbd in it. Its approved or licensed for use in the uk. It can only be prescribed on the nhs for very specific conditions. Many Health Problems like alfies arent on the list, but the public were told he could now prescribe the whole cannabis plant, which hasnt been given a licence. It has thc in it, the stuff that can make you high. This is what campaigners say works for a wide range of conditions. But theres a problem. Its legalised, but its not freely available. For me to prescribe. So, this is complicated. The licensed products have gone through a safety regulation process. We know exactly whats in them and we know how much to give. And the unlicensed products . The Unlicensed Productsl could have a whole range of substances in them. So, we literally dont know what people are getting. L and its this version of cannabis, the whole plant, thats almost impossible to get on the nhs. The message went out,. Doctors can now prescribe cannabis derived i medicinal products. As doctors, that put us in a difficult position i because, in truth, we need to apply for cannabis to be | approved by nhs england. The issue is, whole plant cannabis isnt on any hospitals list of approved medicines. I would like to see better| evidence for their efficacy and safety. So, at this time, i dont quite feel the evidencel for me is there. When consultants want to prescribe it, they have to ask the nhs to make an exception and theyre almost always turned down. It does mean we find ourselves in a strange situation right now, in the sense that these products are not available i within our much loved nhs, free at the point of need. I so it seems alfies prescribed cannabis is an exception and we want to know why. There are a small number of children who were approved for individual supply. We therefore have an inequity that a handful of children are getting these whole plant products and theyre supplied by the nhs and, when we apply for funding for others, that is declined. The government told us any decision to prescribe medical cannabis is made by an independent panel of experts. It says, if funding isnt approved, it cant intervene. Well, women are shy, so were not used to showing our bodies. Who am i . Ok, im amanda lowe. Im originally from bermuda. Im a reggae singer songwriter. Im also a Breast Cancer survivor. Amanda is another cannabis user. She gets the drug not through the nhs but via a private clinic. Shes currently taking part in a modelling competition. But to get through a day like this, amanda has to take her meds. She vapes cannabis. It comes in a canister. Take the cap off. So, because im allowed 1g a day, i put that on my scale first. And then, once its measured out, i take it and i grind it up. 0nce thats done, then i have to heat up, and then i vape it. Amandas private prescription is completely legal. A clinic provides it for chronic pain after she had a life changing diagnosis. So im laying in bed, and then i felt something here on my breast. Im like, oh, really . Then i got the call from my doctor and told me to come in. And thats when she told me. You got Breast Cancer. How many operations did you have . In total, were looking at 1a. They removed my breast, but i made the decision to use my own fat up in my chest. When you wake up from such a massive surgery, youre so dosed with pain medication. Once it wore off, i basically screamed down that hospital. Amanda has been living with chronic pain for nearly ten years. She says cannabis is the only drug that works for her. It doesnt matter what im doing. Just literally feels like somebody has taken their fist and just literally just punched the side of my chest in. My whole body is tense, theres absolutely nothing that ican do. But once i vape, its like 30 seconds, im like, 0hh professor david nutt knows a thing or two about cannabis. Hes a neuropharmapsychologist. Cannabis has been legal for medical use since 2018. We now need to look more closely at the use of cannabis based medicines in the Health Care Sector in the uk. It was almost as if they gave it with one hand and took iti away with the other. Unfortunately, by constraining the prescriptions to consultants, that made it almost unavailable. To the people that really need it, the people who are in primary care. Gps cant use it. Fewer than five nhs patients have been prescribed whole plant cannabis in the last five years. I think its outrageous. I think its actually a scandal that so little has happened i in the nhs. Most doctors will not l prescribe any medicine until two things happen. The first is that a drug company does a trial and tells them that they can prescribe it because theyve got a licence. | and the second is that nice, our National Institute that i guides prescribing, says its cost effective. And with medical cannabis, | neither of those things have happened. The private sector have embraced this because they have seen the value. We know over a Million People a day in the uki are using medical cannabis, but almost all of them are getting it from the illegal market and that has major. Problems. They dont exactly know what theyre getting and theyre breaking the law. So its not surprising that some of them want to go and get it prescribed in the private sector. Good to meet you. Thank you so much for today. Thank you. As Professor Nutt went on his travels, so did we. You see lemon groves, you see oranges, avocados are a big fruit that theyre growing. Is avocado a fruit . Yeah. Because you see all of that here, the last thing you expect to see is cannabis. Were off to see where some of the uks medical cannabis comes from. This is our medical cannabis farm. Youve come on a nice day. Sunshine is very| important to us. Plants run on sunlightl and weve got lots of it here in the south of portugal. Euan used to grow fruit in the uk, but hes swapped berries for buds. My history was growing i strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cut flowers. In 2017, i could see that legislation was going to change and that medical cannabis. Was going to become a thing of the future. Im a grower and i guessj a bit of an entrepreneur, so i thought, why not . Lets have a go. This is where the magic happens. So, this is what 1,000 i Cannabis Plants look like. These batches here are growing for the clinics in the uk. This is the first time journalists have been given access to this facility. This is the blend between farming and pharma. So we say pharming with a ph. Every plant has a barcode. And we record the history| of every plant so we know where it is in the facility and what the history of that plant is. Were producing somethingj thats going to go to people who are medically ill. So we must make sure. That we grow very uniform crops, very consistent crops and very safe crops. This is really the best, really the best one that we have. So, today we are harvesting. Its basically cutting out the plants, put them in the boxes. This year the farm will produce two tonnes of medical cannabis. In five years, thats predicted to be 20 tonnes. They are my babies. I come here in weekends to check on them. They are absolutely my babies. But, of course, this is big business. In 2019, the uks medical cannabis industry was worth less than £160,000. By next year, its expected to be worth a billion. I do have some concerns i about that private industry, mostly because i dont knowl what these products contain, how much my patients are getting, and what effects that might have on them in the long term. Were not in this for a fast buck, so we need to keep the patient in the forefront of everything that we do, and thats where our success will come. At the end of the day, the more patients are helped, the more doctors will prescribe and the more successful our business will be. Then i press this. So this is the Cannabis Flower and this is where all the goodness is. We just cut it off the stem. Its now going to go through our Trimming Machine where these leaves will be shaved off the side. This is now packed up and sent to private patients. But none of this crop, not a single flower, will be available on the nhs. Ive seen the stigma surrounding cannabis reduce massively, so thats really good. But im disappointed i that the pace of change hasnt been faster. Yes, we would love it to be available on the nhs. I was diagnosed with tourettes when i was 13. A lot of it was farmyard animal noises, banging, barking, a very shrill noise like almost like the noise a fire alarm makes when its out of battery. Conor is a customer of this booming market. It builds up over time. Winking, blinking, rolling my shoulder. This is the one that often gives me a lot of pain. Sorry, my anxiety� s starting to build up again. Over the years, hes tried lots of different prescription drugs. Every medication that theyve been able to give me, some of them sort of work but they made me into basically a zombie. According to the latest figures, conor� s private prescription is one of more than 140,000 handed out since medical cannabis became legal. I use a medicinal vaporiser. I grind up the flower and it blows really hot air through it into a bag, and then ijust take it through the bag. He says hes had no choice but to go private. I spoke to my doctor and he said that he didnt want to refer me, so i went and referred myself. I went and looked at the clinics. Its about £300 a month. We skimp and save where we can in order to be able to afford it, basically. We are going through our savings. Im hoping that soon, ill be able to work and maybe be able to manage it, because thats the only way if it doesnt become available on the nhs. Does it make you high . Initially, it made me very high but after a few days of taking it, its a mild buzz at most. Tourettes its something i dreamed of as a kid, you know, taking a small pill and it would just disappear and now, i have it, basically. Sings. Music is me. Its like a second breath in me. And for me to be in a studio again oh, mercy. After her catwalk debut, amanda is home in hampshire working on her reggae album. It took me through a lot, especially when i was going through my trials and tribulations with my mastectomy and all the pain. But today is another one of those days. She has a severe pain attack. 0h, mercy. Groans. This is the part where i dont want to deal. This is the part where ive had enough because itjust. The pain comes from nerves damaged after 1a cancer operations. This is the pain that puts me down on bended knees. To be riddled continuously, its like, mm mm, ijust dont want to be here no more. Take this last one. I walk in pain 24 7. But because i have this medicine now, i can vape it and to know that within a couple of minutes, a couple of seconds, my bodys feeling much better. Amanda gets her cannabis from a private prescriber but that wasnt always the case. She was one of millions getting the drug from the streets. 0n the streets, it would be, for 7g, itd be like £55, £60. It was expensive but then, that would last like two weeks and then, ive got to try to find some way to get some more money. Its a familiar story. Its estimated that 1. 8 million Medicinal Cannabis users get the drug illegally. But amandas private prescription still comes at a price. What im left with after i pay my rent and my bills, thats basically everything. So, youre sort of choosing between food and weed sometimes . Definitely, because i need my medication but i also need food. And itjust. Come on now. Come on. You need to put this onto the prescription. It will make a world of a difference. It will make my life much easier to live. 0h. What i think about is the fact that there could be something that could help this go away l a plant that could stop all this, but were not allowed to use. The 27th of may, 2012 i never forget the day. I i was woken at midnight by him screaming and i ran in to him i and he had a massive seizure. We were just thrown into this world that i didnt know existed, and it was really frightening. I the years of alfies relentless seizures took their toll on the whole family. My counsellor said, you have ptsd, so ive done a lot of work to try and get better because i want to enjoy my children. Hannah decided she had to take matters into her own hands and fight. And at that point, ijust thought, ok, i need to start trusting me. And all i did is i went onto google and ijust started researching natural ways of treating epilepsy. 0ne drug kept coming up again and again. Ithought, well, cannabis is a drug ofjoy and fun and everyone takes it when they want to get stoned and eat biscuits. I had to do a lot of research and speak to a lot of families all over the world which i did and then, i realised that it was a medicine. Hannah started a high Profile Campaign for cannabis to be legally available. We did loads of media really, really went for it in the media, broadcast radio, newspapers. I met the Prime Minister on the 20th of march. It ended with a meeting with theresa may, who allowed us to apply for this licence and we got that licence in june � 18. Alfie picks up his cannabis prescription from the family doctor, who dispenses it under direction from a consultant. Hello. Hello there hello. Shall we shake hands . Good man. Its very nice to see you. Its nice to see you. How many bottles do you want of that . 13. Its an odd number, isnt it . 13. The thing to me was doing the right thing for alfie,. And id seen the effect on alfie and, more l importantly, his family. L frankly, ijust wanted to do anything that i could do to improve it. You ready . Under the tongue. Ifelt id changed history. And i felt my sons legacy was that millions of people would get access now to the treatment that he had, which was a wonderful feeling. But her sense of achievement didnt last long. I think they changed the law to take the wind out of my sails because i was a very effective campaigner. The campaign was very effective. All its done is blocked it because all the parents now trying to get access for their children with epilepsy are blocked at every turn. And that broke my heart, actually, and that was sort of the beginning of when i realised that, actually, people werent going to get access on the nhs. So, why is alfie getting cannabis on the nhs . Because we ran a high Profile Campaign and we were the first. The Department Of Health and social care told us . Adding five years after legalisation, here we are. Only a handful like alfie are getting cannabis on the nhs. Im contacted probably every day by parents who are desperate, who could get real benefit from this medicine, and they cant get it. And thats really incredibly sad. Cannabis is still a drug that divides opinion. So, i think theres been this perception that its some wonder drug or, you know, magic bullet for these conditions. I think we need to be clear that these products are not going to help all children, theyre going to help some children, but it is frustrating for those families that they dont at least have the chance to try them. Were onlyjust touching the very, very surface. Of the power of cannabis. As patients struggle to access cannabis on the nhs, the private sector continues to grow. Where i hope this industry is going to be in ten years time is that youll be able to stand there and ill be able to say that this row is a strain for bowel cancer, that row is a strain for epilepsy. But weve got a lot of work to do as an industry to get to that point. The current landscape is certainly confusing. It was unhelpful that the public were told that doctors can now prescribe these products. I did feel it was disingenuous at the time because it shifted the heat from the government to practitioners like myself. Parents were clamouring at our door because they believed we were now in a position to prescribe, and that was not the case. For some reason, cannabis is treated much more cynically than the other medicines. Probably my belief is its because its come from the patients. I think doctors dont like the fact that patients have worked out that theres a medicine that can help them and theyre asking the doctors to prescribe it. Hannahs campaign for access to that most controversial of plants continues. I find it shocking that the government have literally just washed their hands of this problem. Weve got the law changed. Weve changed things. The doctors and the government have to move it forward and have to take it forward. And i hope, in the next five years, id just see it being prescribed on the nhs. That would give me so much pleasure. I hello. We may be officially into autumn but a little dose of summer on the way for some of us over the next few days notjust here in the uk, but widely across europe. And, in fact, temperatures are expected to reach the 30s in spain, france, in the uk even mid 20s expected in the south in the days ahead. Now, at the moment, there is a little Weather Front heading our way. That is going to bring a bit of a mixed bag for some of us. Now, the early hours will be clear, generally speaking, across most of the country and it will be quite a nippy morning in fact, in the glens of scotland, it could be around four degrees, but i think for most of us, in the range of around 7 10 celsius. So, it starts off quite sunny and bright, at the very least, for most of us but out towards the west, this Rain Crosses Ireland and you can see Thickening Cloud there from the south west across wales, the irish sea, Northern Ireland and into South Western Scotland so here, a very different picture to other parts of the country. Outbreaks of rain, at times heavy, in belfast and also gusty winds around coasts. The north of scotland, most of the north sea coast and further south, the weathers looking fine, sunny. I think sunshine for plymouth, for the Isle Of Wight and also for london, where highs will reach 20 celsius. Now, notice that rain never reaches the south. It veers off towards the north and with that also comes relatively humid air to the south of that Weather Front, and that humid and also quite warm air will spread across many parts of the country. That means that early in the morning on sunday, it will be very warm. Look at that 16, 17 degrees celsius at eight oclock in the south. Now, there will be a little bit of rain around in the morning, i think across parts of wales and the midlands, but eventually, the sun should come out in most areas and were talking about the mid 20s in the south east on sunday. A little bit fresher in scotland and Northern Ireland here of around 16 or 17 celsius. Now, the outlook for the rest of europe shows a large area of High Pressure building across the continent. Thats basically going to allow the warm air to spread all the way to Eastern Parts of europe. Therell be a bit of a blip because this Weather Front will introduce temporarily some slightly fresher air to some parts of europe but i think overall, its going to stay on the warm side. Lets have a look at a snapshot, then, for some of our cities into the week ahead and, generally speaking, really quite warm. Live from washington, this is bbc news the countdown to the us shutdown is underway, as members of Congress Fail to reach an agreement on spending. The us senate has lost a trailblazer, with the passing of california democrat diane feinstein. Shes died at the age of 90. Plus, 27 years after the death of tupac shakur, police in nevada charge a former gang leader in his murder. Hello im caitriona perry. The us House Of Representatives has adjourned for the evening here in washington, without a deal on averting a government shutdown. They will reconvene on saturday morning as a deadline looms to find a path forward on spending. The senate will also meet, starting at noon eastern time. Earlier on friday, the house rejected a short term Funding Measure on friday with 21 republicans joining House Democrats to vote no, increasing the likelihood of a shutdown. That Stopgap Measure could have kept the government funded for several weeks while congress worked