Sitting in his garden in Essex, Ed takes a puff from his blunt. “I really don't care about what anyone thinks,” he says, “but I never have. This is my medicine, this is my antidepressant, it makes me feel happy and I’m not harming anyone.”
Eighteen years ago when Ed was fitting a staircase, he fell and slipped a disc in his back which later developed into degenerative disc disease in his spine. After multiple chiropractor sessions left him in agonising pain, he turned to a solution he trusted, cannabis.
This is not the first time the dad of two from Essex has turned his life around using the plant.
With the flick of a lighter Ed overcame an alcohol and cocaine addiction but now he has moved to the medical cannabis community and is one of the 32,000 people in the United Kingdom with a legal prescription.
In October 2018, then Home Secretary, Sajid Javid changed the law to allow expert doctors to legally prescribe unlicensed cannabis based medicinal products in certain circumstances after he listened to concerns from parents of children with severe epilepsy.
But only certain qualifying conditions are available for licensed prescriptions on the NHS. These are spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, seizures related to certain rare forms of epilepsy, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
Chronic pain patients are now having to turn to private clinics, but with barriers in place such as cost and lack of legal knowledge, up to 1.8 million people are still using illicit cannabis to treat health conditions.
Ed is all too familiar with this inaccessibility as he had to wait until 2021 to find a clinic that he could afford.
“I could have become legal in 2019, but the market was in shambles at the time. It was highly expensive. I mean it wouldn't benefit me at the time paying all that money and getting a product that was subpar and a small amount of product for such a large amount of money.” Ed said.
The cost of Cannabis Based Products for Medicinal use (CBPMs) vary greatly depending on the dosage and type of product prescribed. However, clinics across the UK are popping up to offer more affordable prescriptions and payment plans.
One of the largest projects providing a more accessible route into medical cannabis is T21. They allow patients to access certain qualifying medical cannabis products at a discounted price in return of collecting data to build up real world evidence on the effects of Cannabis-Based Medicinal Products.
After carefully searching, Ed found Cantourage Clinic , which was in his budget and he now currently spends £50 every three months for a legal prescription. Meaning he spends roughly 52p a day to be relieved of his chronic back pain.
Now in his late thirties, Ed uses a vaporizer every day and has reclaimed his life as a father and carer for his wife, who lives with multiple health conditions including lupus, crohn's disease, arthritis, endometriosis, and brittle bone disease.
He describes switching from illicit cannabis to medical cannabis has taken the pressure off his back, quite literally.
“The pain was at a seven constantly, I was on the floor and it felt like a 20 stone bloke was kneeling on my back." Ed said. "Consuming the cannabis still feels like there's someone's knee on my back but the pain has now dropped down to a three, I can now function on a daily basis."
"I didn’t realise how much of a difference becoming legal would be, because when the police come knocking at my door, I don’t care, it’s helped my wellbeing massively."
Ever since his diagnosis, Ed had exhausted all forms of other treatments and took a daily cocktail of diazepam, co-codamol and naproxen which left him in a zombie-like state.
“I’m telling you now, my eyes would be rolling in my head and I've got to look after my wife, my two kids. I've got two dogs as well so not being able to function, it sent me into a depression and a zombie like state." Ed said
Whilst a lot of medical cannabis users choose to carry medical cards, also known as Cancards with them, Ed has chosen to carry his physical prescription with him when he leaves the house which protects him from being questioned by authorities.
Despite this extra layer of protection, judgemental eyes still watch Ed as the misconception tied to cannabis and crime is still present within society.
He recalled one situation when he went to Tesco after using his medical vape when two women began to make offensive comments against him in the queue. This infuriated Ed but he handled the situation and stood up for himself.
“I actually, I had my vape on me so I had a puff and went into Tesco, and they do smell. There was a woman in the queue doing the old smell thing looking around and then she's laughing to another woman. I told myself not to say anything because I'll get myself into trouble but I changed my mind.
“I went oh, excuse me. I'm prescribed this medicinally, if you've got a problem with the smell, I do apologise, there's nothing I can do about that but for you to be laughing and snickering at me with the people behind the desk at Tesco, you make me feel like a druggie.” He said.
After speaking to the manager, Ed was able to receive an apology and one thing he took away was the importance of having courage to educate members of society.
That incident did not dishearten Ed though, he walked away with his carefree personality and was inspired to prove a point so he packed up his car, grabbed his hiking boots and set off to climb up Mount Snowdon in the rain.
(Copyright- Ed)
You may have heard the phrase ‘climbing a mountain is a metaphor for life’ but this trip meant much more to Ed. He climbed with his friend Nick to remove the stigma that he is a ‘lazy stoner’ and to raise awareness for medical cannabis, cancer and dementia in remembrance of his father all whilst still living with his chronic pain.
“It wasn’t easy, I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for the cannabis, and you know what, the only thing that hurt was my legs, my back didn’t hurt, I had my vaporiser the whole way which helped immensely.
"We are frowned upon by society, even though I don't care, my wife does, so if I'm going out with my wife, I have to make sure I can't smell because she suffers from anxiety and that’s because of the stigma around it, I want to break it.” Ed said.
Next year, Ed will reach the summit of Mount Snowdon again but this time members of the medical cannabis community will be climbing with him.
Ed said: “If I can get a hundred people climbing and we're all vaping, we make a big stand, I'm trying to just say to people, we're not lazy stoners, we do have lives, we are people and please don't judge us.”
"We might be able to help millions of people" : Unlocking the full potential of medical cannabis
In order to obtain a prescription, GPs must refer people living with chronic pain to specialist pain services, where private clinicians determine whether cannabis-based products for medicinal use are appropriate. Additional evidence must also be provided to demonstrate that all other mainstream treatments have been exhausted.
The Cannabis Industry Council's Cannabis Working Group (CWG) believes that this system is extremely flawed and are now working to pass over prescribing powers to GPs through their 'Protect Our Patients' Campaign.
The underlying issue, according to Dr Sunil Arora, co-chair of the CWG, is that cannabis is traditionally perceived as a drug. Getting past that bias presents challenges as people struggle to see the flower as medicine.
Dr Arora was once a non-believer himself however after his father had severe back pain during his junior doctor years, his career took a turn.
“When I was a junior, I was prescribing things and I just felt they weren't really working. And then I'd ask some people, how are you living? You're coming to me and you're describing all these symptoms and then you're still functioning. And then some of them told me they were using cannabis.” he said.
“My father took me everywhere that he went to in order to try and get some treatment. And nothing really ever worked for him.” Dr Arora said. “And he probably felt that he wasn't really ever being listened to about what was going on and I think that affected me subconsciously."
This fuelled Dr Arora to look into the drug more but he was surprised after he was met with hostility by his consultant colleagues.
“I asked about it at the time and they’d say they’re just trying to get drugs off you and to discharge them from the clinic. This made me really uncomfortable to have that mindset, and then I thought too many people are telling me this works, so I need to pursue it.” He said.
Dr Arora then made the brave decision to move into the private prescribing world to join My Access Clinics. But still feeling nervous, he chose not to tell his peers about his career switch. This then began to impact his own mental health.
“I started to prescribe THC for patients and they were all sleeping for the first time in years but I was staying up all night worried about what was going to happen to them because I had no one to talk to.”
With the UK industry failing to teach Dr Arora, he hopped on a plane and travelled around the world to Canada, Australia and the US to explore the powers of medicinal cannabis and to build his own network of trustworthy contacts that could guide him through the learning process.
“Speaking to doctors over there, they were very real with me and I think it was very lucky and meeting those colleagues abroad where they said look, it works in some patients, and with some patients it’s not going to work.” He said.
Dr Arora is now the Medical Director at My Access Clinics and one of the UK's leading private prescribers of medical cannabis. But he is still passionate about driving forward the plant as an accessible and respected treatment option for patients.
Although some people have no choice but to turn to the black market to self-medicate, he warns that it comes with great risks due to unregulated products not containing pure compounds but instead, an undefined amount of CBD and THC with pesticides often being present too.
By allowing GPs to prescribe medical cannabis, there could be health, economic and social benefits for the UK. These could include reducing interactions with the illicit market, bringing down crime, boosting understanding among the medical community and reducing NHS waiting lists but Dr Arora shared that there is a bigger picture emerging.
“Traditionally GPs know their patients, and if they know about these particular indications that medical cannabis can be used for chronic pain and psychiatric conditions, they could suggest it to more people and then get a message out there." Dr Arora explained. "Even if it's just a referral to a clinic or having a conversation with them, it starts to open up that door.
“If medical cannabis is benefiting you, we can try and work out why that’s the case, then we might be able to help millions of people because your particular condition and symptoms is helping doctors figure out what they can do to help.”
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