A MEDICINAL cannabis grower has called on a former Health Minister to retract and correct comments made during a debate on legalising the class B drug for recreational use.
Evan Smith, a Canadian whose company Cicada has been granted a licence to cultivate medicinal cannabis but is yet to go into full production, said that Deputy Karen Wilson had misled the House about the mental health impact of the drug.
Deputy Wilson, a former nurse and health services executive, served as Health Minister in Deputy Kristina Moore’s Council of Ministers.
In an email sent to the States Greffier, Mr Smith said: “I am writing to express my concern regarding the misleading statements made by Deputy Karen Wilson in the Assembly today.
“Deputy Wilson claimed that mental health wards are overflowing due to cannabis prescriptions and that these referrals have increased as a result of such prescriptions.
These statements are false and are contradicted by the following freedom of information requests, which were in response to her previous similar remarks as Health Minister.”
One of those FoI requests asked for the number of people who had received an alcohol or drug referral to Health and Community Services from 2019 to the present by year, including specific referrals from the Emergency Department to the Alcohol Liaison Nurses.
The answer to one showed that in the years between 2019 and 2023 inclusive, the numbers of non-opiate drug referrals (not including alcohol) were 70, 48, 44, 73 and 18 respectively.
The second asked for the number of new cases of psychosis and related disorders diagnoses over the past five years and the number of patients with a diagnosis of psychosis.
The answer stated: “The requested information is not held in a central record.
Whilst details of diagnoses will be documented within individual patient records, manual analysis of individual case notes would be required to identify all those in scope, with significant interrogation required to establish date of first presentation/diagnosis in each case.
“It is estimated that manual examination of records available to ascertain diagnosis data would exceed the timescales prescribed in the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014. Therefore, Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied.”
Mr Smith said: “The FoI responses clearly indicate that there is no evidence to support Deputy Wilson’s claims. Ideally, Deputy Wilson should issue a retraction or correct the statements publicly.”
The JEP contacted Deputy Wilson but had not received a response by the time of going to print.