“It was like a miracle” – MS sufferer who supplied hundreds of patients with medical cannabis

Over the past 25 years, Lezley and Mark Gibson have supplied £500,000 worth of cannabis-infused chocolate free of charge to MS patients across the country. Having faced prosecution five times, they are now both benefitting from a legal medical cannabis prescription. 

In 1985, at the age of 21, Lezley Gibson was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Her doctors told her that within five years she would be incontinent and in a wheelchair. Thirty six years later, Lezley is neither – and she believes she has cannabis to thank.

“Everything that I’d ever seen about MS was very gloomy”, Lezley said.

“I was destroyed when I was told about the diagnosis.”

At the time, Lezley was in the midst of starting a business, having just opened her own hair salon.

“I had big plans for myself, but then halfway through opening my own salon, I was diagnosed with MS and that was my career over. It’s very difficult to cut hair when you’re shaky and you can’t walk properly,” she said.

“It was a very hard time for me; I found it very difficult. I was your typical 21-year-old. I was into clothes and makeup, I was a hairdresser and I loved people and dancing. But that was the end of that.”

A year after her diagnosis, Lezley met her now-husband, Mark. As a recreational user at the time, Mark introduced Lezley to cannabis and she said the effect it had on her condition was “miraculous”.

“I had never really come across cannabis before, but I noticed when I was with Mark and his friends that I felt an awful lot better, not just because of the relationship but because I was consuming cannabis,” Lezley recalled.

Lezley and Mark Gibson

Prior to taking cannabis, Lezley’s body felt tense and was prone to spasms.

“I never felt very comfortable,” she said.

“My body never really worked properly. But I noticed with the cannabis in my system, my body was calmer, my spasms disappeared and all the other little things faded into insignificance.”

The pain and nausea that she experienced on a daily basis began to fade as well. Meanwhile, her eyesight and speech, which she had begun to lose over the past few years, improved.

At the time, in the mid-1980s there was very little information about cannabis as a therapeutic drug, but Lezley was finding that consuming the plant was having a much more positive effect on her condition than the medications prescribed by her doctors.

“I’m not a fan of drugs of any description… they’re far too strong,” Lezley said.

“They put me on steroids, which made me double in weight and grow a beard, which was fantastic at 21. After that, it absolutely terrified me.

“With everything they offered me, they said ‘it might make you worse’, which wasn’t very appealing. But with cannabis, there weren’t any of the side effects. It was nothing like what the doctors were offering me.”

She added: “The only side effect I found with cannabis was it made me feel quite nice and there are not many things that do. I have MS so I don’t get to feel nice very often.”

As Lezley continued to benefit from taking cannabis, she decided not to keep it to herself. She wanted to make other people with MS aware of its benefits and how it had improved her condition.

Lezley (right) produced cannabis-infused chocolate for other MS patients

In 1995, she was a guest on the popular BBC One chat show, Kilroy. On the show, she met other people like her, including Claire Hodges, an influential activist who campaigned for the therapeutic benefits of cannabis and later played an important role in GW Pharmaceuticals earning its licence to produce Sativex.

Lezley became good friends with Hodges and soon found herself in a circle of fellow MS-sufferers campaigning for the benefits of cannabis. One of these campaigners was Elizabeth Ivol, who was producing cannabis-infused chocolate from her home in Orkney.

Unfortunately, Ivol was raided by the police and soon lost the ability to continue producing the chocolate as her condition worsened. She asked Lezley and her husband, Mark to take over the operation.

The couple found themselves making cannabis chocolate for hundreds of people with MS. The very real possibility of them being raided by the police rarely left their mind, but they were determined to continue helping patients.

“There was success with the people who used our chocolate and this is why we kept going,” Lezley said.

“In one instance a lady from a nearby village wrote me a letter. She’d been bedridden for four years so her husband came knocking on my door to get some chocolate. Within a week of her using the chocolate, she was taking her grandchildren to the park and sewing curtains. It was like a miracle.”

Over a two year period, Mark and Lezley supplied 33,000 bars of THC chocolate, free of charge to MS patients across the country.

Lezley and Mark continued the operation for over two decades

But such a large operation was difficult to conceal from the local police and the couple were raided three times between 1995 and 2003.

“I have a daughter and my poor daughter has witnessed all of this since it began,” Lezley said.

“It was a difficult time. When I did the school run you had all the women standing in little groups and it was definitely them and me. A lot of people thought I was just a ‘druggie’ which I can assure you I am not.

She added: “Even members of my own family had an opinion, but I had to do what I had to do – I had to be well and that was how I was well. If people didn’t believe me then that was their fault, not mine.”

In 2003, a police raid resulted in them being charged with conspiracy to supply £500,000 worth of the illicit chocolate.

It wasn’t their first run-in with the law. In 1999, Lezley had been charged with possession for carrying a small amount of cannabis flower. She successfully pleaded not guilty, arguing that using cannabis prevented an MS attack, with the jury accepting her argument.

This time, they weren’t so lucky.

The judge agreed that what they were running was an ‘altruistic enterprise’ with little to no money made during their time supplying cannabis to MS patients.

But unfortunately, the jury found them guilty and the couple along with a collaborator, Marcus Davies, were sentenced to 18 months in prison which was then suspended for two years due to Lezley’s condition and Mark’s responsibility as her primary carer.

Lezley and Mark kept their heads down for the next 15 years, but after the police were informed of the couple’s cannabis consumption, their home was raided once more in 2019.

Lezley and Mark (left) were found not guilty in 2020.

The police only found three bars of cannabis chocolate for Lezley’s own personal use, but a discovery of Mark’s modest-sized grow room set off another court case.

In between being charged and appearing in court, Lezley became one of the first patients in the UK to receive a medical cannabis prescription, which Mark believes prompted the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to rethink their position.

Although Lezley and Mark both freely admitted possession and production of cannabis, the CPS decided not to offer any evidence and the couple were found not guilty in January 2020, a year after being arrested.

“To be found not guilty when you’re not denying any of the facts and you clearly are guilty in the eyes of the law, that’s a real seismic shift,” Mark added.

“We were both prepared to go to court, run it to the jury and stick to our principles and our staunch refusal to plead guilty. However tiring it is, sometimes you just have to stick to your guns and say you’re not going to bend.

“We did absolutely nothing wrong but treat our illnesses with an herbal remedy.”

Mark and Lezley both have a legal medical prescription now and although they believe things are headed in the right direction, they remain critical of a system that shuts many people out.

Mark continued: “What we’ve got now is what I would call economic legislation. Those who can afford it can have it, and those that can’t afford it can’t have it and that’s wrong.

“How is it fair to prosecute somebody around the corner who is medicating for an ailment and bought the cannabis illegally because they can’t afford the consultancy fee and prescription?”

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