Scotland: first prescription of medical cannabis for a child with epilepsy

Last week, little Murray Gray became the first Scottish patient to obtain a prescription to legally take medical cannabis. Karen Gray, the child's mother, had made a habit of going to the Netherlands every three or four months to obtain cannabis, despite the risk of being stopped at UK customs. It was the only treatment she could find to improve her son's seizures, and she had previously taken CBD medication, but without any convincing success, since the child had been hospitalized after taking Epidiolex.

The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, authorized the use of cannabis-derived medicines last year, but they can only be prescribed by medical specialists and cannot be imported until a prescription has been issued. In reality, very few patients have access to medical cannabis.

«This is incredible news,» says Gray. «We knew we would, at some point, get stopped at customs, it was always very stressful going through the airport.» That's what happened to the mother of Billy Caldwell, also an epileptic, to whom the government had finally returned the substance.

Karen Gray's next battle will be to get the NHS to fund her son's medication. The couple spend almost £1,500 a month on Murray's care. For the time being, they're managing to raise these sums through private donations, but at £170 for a 10ml bottle of Bedrolite, they're going to have to find other sources of funding quickly. «It's a huge struggle. The NHS has to step in and pay for it,» says Karen Gray.

In the UK, two other children with epilepsy, one in England and the other in Northern Ireland, are already receiving funding for Bedrolite, and Gray would like to see this extended to his son. All it would take is for a doctor to prescribe medical cannabis for the treatment to be reimbursed by the NHS.

She was part of the group that asked Health Secretary Jeane Freeman to authorize «compassionate funding» for the drug from the Scottish NHS. She had also signed the petition that led to the legalization of medical cannabis, after collecting over 230,000 signatures.

At the beginning of July, a survey revealed that 47% from the British favour the legalization of recreational cannabis, even though legalization does not appear to be not be for right away.