Lucy Stafford - from wheelchair to walking thanks to cannabis

Lucy Stafford is no ordinary 20 year old. She's dynamic, intelligent and passionate science student, but growing up, numbed by the increasingly heavy doses of opiates she had received since the age of 12, Lucy believed otherwise.

Lucy has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome - a debilitating and extreme painful condition caused by a lack of collagen in connective tissues. Before cannabis, Lucy had resigned herself to a future defined by her disease and the inability of her doctors to manage its symptoms.

When Fentanyl, which is fifty times more powerful than heroin, failed to control her pain, Lucy's doctor ran out of options, and in desperation to help his patient attempted to prescribe her Sativex through the NHS. Unfortunately, despite the recent change in the law legalising cannabis based medicines, his request was denied.

However, this sowed the seed for Lucy that cannabis might actually help her and she began her own personal journey navigating the illicit cannabis market, eventually getting a legal prescription through a private cannabis clinic.

Lucy now gets her cannabis medicine prescription through Project Twenty21, the national registry aiming to get 20,000 medical cannabis patients signed up by the end of 2021.

Lucy is also a founding member and patient advocate for PLEA (Patient-led Engagement for Access) and one of the first recipients of the recently launched Cancard - the card scheme started by friend of the show, Carly Barton, that allows to people to verify themselves to police as medicinal cannabis patients.

Oh and during lockdown, Lucy has taught herself to walk again (and is regularly walking 5km). Without cannabis, this would never have been possible.

Useful links:
PLEA
Project Twenty21
Cancard
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