Justice vs Abuse — Part I: Medical Cannabis Romania
Giancarlo Cristea's story: from Crohn's disease diagnosis to the historic legal victory against DIICOT. Medical cannabis and the right to treatment.
How It Began
From Romania's healthcare system to emigration — and a treatment that works
Eleven years ago I left Romania. Not out of a desire for adventure or new horizons — but driven by pain, despair, and the complete absence of solutions. And by the endemic corruption of Romania's healthcare system.
For years, doctors failed to arrive at a correct diagnosis. Years of wrongly administered treatments, pointless tests, exhausting hospital visits with no results. When, at last, a single diagnosis proved correct — Crohn's disease, a chronic autoimmune condition — I also learned of a treatment that could offer me a real chance. But the path to that treatment was blocked by a corrupt, indifferent and demeaning medical system.
By that point I had dropped to 39 kilograms at 1.70 m — a shadow of the person I had been. I was forced to use the toilet 50 to 100 times a day, vomited 20–30 times daily, and endured constant, unbearable abdominal pain. I was no longer able to function, to be productive, to contribute to anything. I had become completely dependent.
The impact went far beyond physical suffering. Watching myself become a burden for my wife and child, I fell into a deep depression. For years I was haunted by dark thoughts, seeing, in moments of despair, the end as the only escape from a nightmare from which it seemed impossible to wake. I was a prisoner in my own body and mind.
The discovery that changed my life
In 2014, when I weighed only 39 kilograms and was making 50–100 trips to the toilet every day, my brother-in-law offered me a cannabis cigarette. From the very first inhale, the transformation was almost miraculous: the atrocious pain vanished, the constant nausea and vomiting disappeared, the joint pain diminished significantly, and my appetite returned for the first time after nearly six years of illness. Blood tests subsequently confirmed a reduction in inflammatory markers.
My story first reached the national press in August 2022 through a video report published by G4Media.ro in collaboration with ENTR — a European editorial project. The article presented my Crohn’s disease diagnosis (since 2007), fibromyalgia (since 2017), and how legally prescribed medical cannabis in the UK transformed my life.
G4Media / ENTR report, August 2022
But access through the black market was a constant battle: prohibitive prices, inconsistent quality, permanent risk of arrest. For years I treated myself illegally, hiding from authorities. I knew a legal treatment existed — and that in Romania, the path to it ran through the corridors of Fundeni Hospital.
The photographs below are evidence. They are not here for sympathy — they are here for truth. Each image documents a moment from 16 years of living with Crohn’s disease: from repeated transfusions in Bucharest hospitals, to emergency admissions in London, to Infliximab infusions costing thousands of pounds, and finally to the moment I presented the Romanian Parliament with the reality of medical cannabis. These are photographs I took myself, or that were taken in moments when I had no strength to refuse them. I share them because no one should have to prove their suffering in order to legitimise their right to treatment.
The images below document a 16-year medical journey — from blood transfusions in Bucharest hospitals to emergency admissions in London. Each photograph is evidence of what conventional treatments could not control, and what led to finding medical cannabis as a legal, prescribed solution in the UK.
Romania, 2014. After years of failed treatments and multiple hospitalisations, transfusions had become frequent. The decision to emigrate to the UK came out of medical necessity — the Romanian system had no solutions left.
London, June 2015. Just 2 weeks after arriving in the United Kingdom, an emergency surgery for Crohn's disease complications. The series of surgical interventions was only beginning.
UK, 2017. Infliximab — a biological medication administered intravenously every 8 weeks. Cost: ~£2,000 per dose, covered by the NHS. It worked partially, but side effects led to the search for medical cannabis as an alternative.
UK, 2019. The last Infliximab vial — by that point, medical cannabis had already become legal in the UK (since November 2018), and my doctors confirmed it was a viable therapeutic option for Crohn's.
"The doctor at Fundeni Hospital refused my treatment, conditional on bribes I could not afford to pay. When I arrived in the UK after a 17-hour journey, I was taken into emergency surgery. These images are from that period."
Bribery as a Gateway to Healthcare
It took me months to find a hospital and doctors in Bucharest capable of providing that treatment. I found them, eventually, at Fundeni Hospital. But obtaining the treatment was contingent on a laborious bureaucratic process — and on the outstretched hands of the doctors encountered along the way. Hands extended not to offer help, but to demand bribe after bribe, coldly, imperiously, without any shame. Thousands of lei. Tens of thousands of lei. To approve a treatment to which I had a legal right.
It was 2015 — and we are talking about doctors within the national health system, not the private sector. What shocked me was not the sums themselves, but the complete absence of empathy. The brazenness. The impertinence. The greed of those who made the medical act conditional on their own financial gratification. That was the first great humiliation I suffered at the hands of state institutions. The first, but not the last.
That is when I decided to leave. In May 2015 I left Romania.
Just two weeks after arriving in the UK, I underwent emergency surgery for complications of Crohn's disease. Further diagnoses followed: fibromyalgia, generalised chronic pain, and — much later — Autism / Asperger's Syndrome. Both conditions are severe and aggravated by stress — meaning that any significant stressor, including criminal proceedings or the confiscation of treatment, can trigger a medical crisis. Illegal access to cannabis continued during my first years in the United Kingdom — until the law changed everything.
