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A British mother has accused the U.K. government of issuing a “Death sentence” against her epileptic son after seizing his supply of medical cannabis. This Monday, Charlotte Caldwell and her son Billy flew into Heathrow Airport from Canada, carrying a six-month supply of CBD oil, which was confiscated by British customs officials. Twelve-year-old Billy Caldwell suffered from as many as 100 seizures a day until he traveled to the U.S. to receive medical cannabis treatment in 2016. During the time that he was taking the medicine, Billy went for as long as 300 days without having a single seizure. Throughout 2016, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency sent cease-and-desist letters to several CBD producers and retailers operating throughout the U.K., demanding that they stop producing the medicine.
Despite the effectiveness of the medication, the U.K. Home Office wrote a letter to Caldwell’s doctor this year, demanding that he stop writing prescriptions for medical cannabis. “He had no choice but to comply. The prescriptions stopped there and then.”
With only one dose of medicine left for her son, Charlotte Caldwell flew to Canada to enroll Billy in a clinical trial at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. This Monday, the family returned from Canada with a six-month supply of CBD oil, which was immediately seized by customs officials at Heathrow Airport. “It’s one thing not giving a child medication when they need it, but it’s another thing to take it away when they already had it – it’s actually criminal to do that.”
Later that day, Caldwell met with Home Office minister Nick Hurd to plead with him for the return of her son’s medicine. “I have asked him to give Billy back his medicines, but he said no.” Caldwell also noted that it is dangerous for her son to run out of CBD oil after using it consistently for 19 months. Stopping the medicine abruptly “Can cause really bad side-effects – they wean them down slowly,” she explained. “So what Nick Hurd has just done is most likely signed my son’s death warrant.”
The amount of medical evidence showing the effectiveness of CBD oils as a treatment for epilepsy in children has been growing constantly over the past two decades, and a growing number of U.S. states and global governments have accepted the non-psychoactive oil as a legitimate medicine.
Neither the U.K. nor the U.S. government has accepted the overwhelming evidence fully, and both countries still officially classify CBD as a dangerous and medically-useless substance.
Caldwell said that she will be watching after her son’s health while fighting for his right to resume treatment. “Now we are back to square one. By the time I wake on Tuesday and start to fight for the oil to be returned, he will have missed four doses,” she told Belfast Live.
