Carly Barton’s amnesty – a campaign for legal cannabis
Carly Barton was hit by a stroke in her early 20s. She discovered that cannabis alleviated the continual pain, what she describes as a “ridiculous amount of all-over pain – it just feels like you’re burning from the inside out, like my bones have been replaced by red hot pokers.” But cannabis was illegal in the UK.
Medics gave her strong painkillers. Over time she developed a tolerance to the effects of the legal opiates – “a cocktail of substances which included morphine and fentanyl.” She says: “I was struggling to feel the world as I hobbled along in a zombified state; this was not sustainable. I started looking at end-of-life clinics online.”
She became the first person in the UK to be legally given herbal cannabis . But with regulation comes increased costs. It cost £2,500 of her own money for three-months of pain relief. Her prescription comes from a private specialist. The NHS won’t provide it. “We are going to be put in a position where the rich are patients and the poor are criminals,” she told the Daily Mirror.
“I am going to openly break the law until I can access my medicine or they give me some kind of exemption,” said Carly in April. “I do not see myself as a criminal. There are two doctors who have prescribed it to me and now there is a vague law which does not seem to see it as a potential medicine.”
Carley’s Amnesty is a campaign she runs which seeks to allow other patients afflicted by chronic pain to use cannabis legally.
Posted: 28th, August 2019 | In: Key Posts, News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
