Sittingbourne-based Netflix documentary producer Jason Reed speaks out: online article at  Kent online, 24 March 2015

Jason Reed, who suffers from M.E. has spoken extensively on the uses of medicinal cannabis.

“To feel the literal definition of exhaustion, to have pain course through your body like a derailed freight train, to be so sensitive you cannot touch your own skin, or to be unable to look at the dimmest of lights.

Well, these problems are not conducive to leading a ‘normal’ life.

“It doesn’t take much for a prescribed drug to knock me off my axis. Knowing how badly I react to most substances, I was always exceedingly wary of taking any drug.

“When I hit my mid-20s, with health forcing me to give up music, I reluctantly relented and took the advice of fraught onlookers to try cannabis.

“It’s funny, if you say to a stranger you use lavender for therapeutic purposes, it’s instantly understood.

“If you say the same about cannabis, that has actual evidence to support its efficiency, you may well be the recipient of a sceptical and stigmatising glare.

“So now, I seek to promote the voices of others with multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s, ME, fibromyalgia, to name a few.

“A by-product of our current drug laws are that they create an underclass. It predicates stigma and a deep sense of societal and individual shame.

“To seek relief is a basic human necessity, and the time has come to end judgement and end the barbaric criminalisation practices that serve no other use that political profiteering.”