LONDON — Britain’s home secretary, Sajid Javid, ordered a review on Tuesday of the nation’s policy on the medical use of marijuana, days after a 12-year-old’s cannabis-based epilepsy medicine was confiscated at Heathrow Airport, prompting a national discussion as the boy fought life-threatening seizures and politicians procrastinated.

The boy, Billy Caldwell, suffers from status epilepticus, a kind of seizure that can last for hours. When a seizure takes hold he sometimes starts to turn blue. And without treatment, one could be fatal. Over the weekend, Mr. Javid authorized the use of the medicine to treat him.

The spectacle of one boy’s agonizing battle against an inflexible bureaucracy has made Prime Minister Theresa May’s response look flat-footed, while prompting a wider debate about legalizing the drug itself for recreational use.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph, William Hague, a former leader of Mrs. May’s Conservative Party, argued that by retreating and allowing the cannabis oil to be used, the government had “implicitly conceded that the law has become indefensible.”