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UK: Cannabis battle woman insists she wants to die Shirley English The Times Friday 04 Jul 2003 A WHEELCHAIR-BOUND Orkney woman said yesterday that she would try to kill herself again after attempting suicide on the day the Crown dropped charges against her of supplying cannabis to fellow multiple sclerosis sufferers. Elizabeth Ivol, 55, was rushed to hospital unconscious on Wednesday after taking an overdose of 25 paracetamol at her South Ronaldsay home. She was discovered by her neighbour who raised the alarm. That day the Crown Office decided to formally drop drug handling charges against her on medical grounds. Speaking from her bed at Balfour Hospital, Orkney, yesterday Mrs Ivol said she was bitterly disappointed that the case had been dropped because she had wanted to fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to get cannabis legalised for medicinal purposes. She is believed to be the first person in Britain to have been taken to court for using an illegal drug for medical reasons. She said that waking to find she had survived the overdose was like a nightmare. "I'll make sure I do it properly next time. I don't want to live anymore. This disease has taken over my body and life is just too painful for me to carry on," she said. Mrs Ivol, a divorcee who does not have any children, had threatened to kill herself at the end of her cannabis trial at Kirkwall Sheriff Court because she said her life was no longer worth living. In court she had admitted growing, handling and supplying cannabis-laced chocolates for free to fellow MS sufferers around Britain to ease their pain, but she pleaded not guilty to the charges because she said she did not believe she had done anything wrong. "Once I knew the case had been dropped I knew I could fight no longer," she said. "I just decided when I went to bed that there are plenty of people who can carry on the fight for the medicinal use of cannabis to be legalised." She said that she smoked a joint early on Wednesday morning before taking ten paracetamol tablets. "I wasn't feeling guilty or upset, just happy that things were coming to an end and that I was in no pain," she said. She woke later to find that the paracetamol had not worked and swallowed the rest of the tablets. "I smoked half of another joint and figured out it would be at least another four hours before anyone found me and that the paracetamol should have worked by then. But I was still fully conscious when my next door neighbour came round just before eight o'clock and I told her what I'd done," she said. The hospital said yesterday that Mrs Ivol's condition was comfortable and tests were being carried out to determine the extent of damage caused by the overdose. The Independent MSP Margo MacDonald called yesterday on the Scottish Executive to seek the public's views on whether or not the cannabis laws should be changed. "There are two different questions to be resolved here. One is the question of the humanity and the common sense of allowing an MS sufferer to gain relief from pain this way. The other is the widespread acceptance that cannabis is a drug of choice that will not go away," she said.
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