Medicinal cannabis – victory!

This post was written by Karen, who started this petition.

I can’t believe I’m writing this. I just found out that medicinal cannabis will soon be available on prescription, and I’ve even been interviewed on Sky News about our campaign. We won! I’m ecstatic. I know medicinal cannabis can help my son, and I know this will change thousands of other lives too.

I’m not a campaigner, I’m a mum who was fighting to give my son Murray his life back. Murray has a rare form of epilepsy and can have up to 12 seizures a day. I knew medicinal cannabis could help and I was determined to make it available on the NHS for Murray and everyone else that needs it. So I set up a petition on the 38 Degrees website.

Back in March when I set up the petition, I had no idea what to expect. No idea that just a few months later I’d be writing this blog to say thank you. Together, we did it!

Here’s how we got here together:

• Over 240,000 people signed my 38 Degrees petition, calling for medicinal cannabis to be made available on the NHS to help my son Murray and anyone else it could help. 
• I came down to London to hand our petition straight in to Number 10 Downing Street with my MP. 
• Over 25,000 people emailed the Home Secretary asking for a special licence for Murray to get medicinal cannabis – a licence he got just a few weeks ago! 
• All of this pressure, and the stories in the media of Murray and others like him led to the Home Secretary announcing a review into the law on medicinal cannabis.
• When medical experts recommended the government change the rules, over 38,000 leapt into action signing an open letter to make sure the government listened to experts and made medicinal cannabis available on prescription. 

It worked, and to be frank I’m still a bit in shock. I never thought I’d be able to change the law. But after coming together with hundreds of thousands of you, that’s exactly what we did. So thank you from the bottom of my heart, together we’ve achieved something incredible. It’s not just my little boy’s life we’ve changed, but so many more across the UK.

Thank you.

Karen 

P.S. I would like to thank everyone for their help throughout my campaign, Kevan Christie from the Evening News for first highlighting my campaign, 38 Degrees for working very hard to push this through, Alex Cole-Hamilton my MSP and Christine Jardine my MP, my husband Stuart for putting up with me constantly being on my phone campaigning! Lastly Hannah Deacon, Alfie’s Mum who inspired me to carry on fighting.