Teagan Appleby's seized medicinal cannabis returned

Emma Appleby with her daughter Teagan in the Netherlands

A mother who had medicinal cannabis for her daughter's severe epilepsy confiscated as she arrived back from Holland has had the drugs returned.

Emma Appleby had a three-month dose of THC oil and cannabidiol (CBD) seized at Gatwick Airport on 6 June.

She said she was told she needed an import licence for the drugs for her nine-year-old daughter Teagan.

Mrs Appleby from Aylesham in Kent said she had been left "exhausted and drained".

She said the three-month supply worth about £2,500 had been seized by the Border Force who told her she needed an import licence despite her having a private prescription with her.

In April Mrs Appleby bought a three-month supply of THC and CBD from a Dutch pharmacy

"All I want is the best for my daughter - medicinal cannabis has transformed her life," Mrs Appleby said.

"Teagan's seizure rate has plummeted from as many as 300 seizures a day to now maybe just a couple a day, and only when she is sleeping," Mrs Appleby said.

"But I am being forced to raise thousands of pounds to pay privately for it, and to pay hundreds of pounds more to go abroad to actually get it and then fight all the bureaucracy to get it through customs."

Mrs Appleby had spent £4,600 raised through crowdfunding on a previous visit to a pharmacy in The Hague, Netherlands in April.

The three-month supply was seized when she landed at Southend Airport in Essex and she and her partner Lee had to obtain a prescription from a specialist UK consultant to get it back.

Doctors have been able to issue prescriptions for medicinal cannabis since 2018, but Teagan had not received one.

Peter Carroll, director of the campaign group End Our Pain, described the guidance for prescribing medical cannabis as "restrictive".

"Children and their families are suffering unnecessarily," he said.