In 2022, a prodigiously talented young artist named Louis Petit was preparing to return to the UK, having been effectively exiled in the Netherlands as a teenager so he could access the medical cannabis he needed to control his epilepsy. Six years earlier, Louis, then 12, had been diagnosed with a rare form of the neurological disease when medical cannabis was still illegal in the UK.

But in Rotterdam, where it was legal, doctors helped him discover that a medical cannabis oil called Bedrolite, in combination with the right mix of anti-epileptic treatment, could slow and eventually stop his seizures. This was something his neurologists in the UK had previously considered impossible.

By the time Louis won a place at City and Guilds of London Art School in 2022, the UK government had legalised medicinal cannabis, pressed by parents needing the drug to treat their epileptic children – most notably Charlotte Caldwell and Hannah Deacon.

Louis assumed his troubles were behind him. “It seems naive now, but I think both me and my mum thought Britain would welcome me back, saying, ‘Thank God you’re better’,” Louis told me. But Louis has never been able to get a prescription for medical cannabis through the NHS. Instead, like almost everyone who needs the drug in this country, his only access has come through the expensive private sector. And now the producer of Bedrolite, a Dutch company, Bedrocan, has declared bankruptcy.

This means there is a high chance that, in the near future, the drug that keeps Louis well will stop being available privately, in a huge blow to all patients who rely on it. If this was people with diabetes facing a shortage of insulin, or people with high blood pressure running out of beta blockers, politicians would be falling over themselves to be seen trying to secure the long-term supply. But because this is epilepsy and........

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