Triple amputee tells MPs medicinal cannabis helps him become productive citizen

Joseph Gibbons, who lost the ends of both legs and an arm in Antarctica, made his case to a Parliamentary select committee looking at the issue.

A snapshot of the stories shared by New Zealanders asking MPs to regulate medicinal cannabis paints a bleak picture.

A woman denied legal access to a drug that could halve the size of her brain tumour; a triple amputee who just wants a good night's sleep; a man who fears his wife will die of pain.

Parliament's Health Select Committee is considering a Bill that would regulate the medicinal cannabis market, and also create an exemption for terminally ill people with less than a year to live to use illicit cannabis.

Joseph Gibbons said he lost the ends of both legs and an arm to frostbite after getting caught in a storm in Antarctica while manning the fuel depots with his wife.

He said his treatment in the United States was greatly helped by the legal use of a drug that's illegal in New Zealand.

"For the first two to three years I was being prescribed anti-epilepsy medications for my phantom pain... which didn't do very much for me," he said. "They're not specifically for phantom pain."

"Another doctor then prescribed me medicinal marijuana, I have had good results with it. I am very happy with it."

And now that he lives here, he said he wants those benefits.

"What I would like to take it for is just for a good night sleep. If I can have a good night's sleep, I can get up the next day and still be a productive, positive citizen," he said.

Another submitter with a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry and psychology, a graduate diploma in genetics, a Masters in Science of cell and molecular biology - and six years at medical school - said there was evidence cannabis could reduce the size of her brain tumour by 50 per cent.

"My medical treatment is currently being withheld from me," Victoria Catherwood said.

She told MPs to "imagine sitting there being told surgery is your only option, plus or minus radiation, and the evidence says in five years time you have a 40 per cent chance of being alive".

Ms Catherwood said she researched the field and found "pharmaceutically conducted, randomised controlled trials that show [her] very tumour could be reduced with cannabis by up to 50 per cent".

"How would you feel if this medicine was cheap and easy to get, but illegal? Or extraordinarily expensive and inaccessible however legal," she said.

"This is my story and this is my struggle."

Her mother has terminal breast cancer that had spread to her lungs, liver and bones.

"I've lived with her three years and witnessed huge benefits from her pain, nausea, vomiting, appetite, and overall wellbeing from using cannabis as a medicine on top of her conventional drugs," Ms Catherwood said.

Many submitters this morning said the bill should go further, to let people cultivate and use their own cannabis. Others urged the MPs to be brave and recommend decriminalising the drug altogether.

The committee chair Louisa Wall reminded submitters the bill was about medicinal cannabis and that there would be a referendum on legalising the drug in 2020.

But the proposed law is not entirely without its opponents, the College of General Practitioners has said any drug would require clinical trials and MedSafe approval before doctors would prescribe it.

The College of Psychiatry held a similar view, adding "we argue that amendments must be made to the current legislation to allow greater opportunities to study the therapeutic benefits of cannabis products".

In its submission, the National Addiction Centre said the Bill was "a tiny but important step in the right direction towards a strongly regulated cannabis market in New Zealand, which would give adult New Zealanders the opportunity to self-medicate, i.e. use cannabis medicinally in the same way they are currently able to use alcohol medicinally".

"The present step is tiny because it doesn't go nearly far enough," it said.

The Bill's due for its second reading in the House by July the 30th.

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