The NHS route
Open on paper since 1 November 2018, closed in practice: NHS England has prescribed unlicensed cannabis-based products to fewer than five patients in total. Treatment in the UK is private and self-paid, indefinitely.
United Kingdom
Medical cannabis: what it is, when the evidence says it helps โ and how to get it legally in the UK
What may be prescribed and for which conditions the evidence holds up, who may prescribe it and what it costs โ and the clinics, pharmacies and medicines checked against the CQC, the GPhC and dm+d, with the prices operators publish.
In three steps
How this site works
Is this for you?
How it works in the UK
Choose a provider
What applies today in the United Kingdom
Who prescribes
Initiation sits with a doctor on the GMC Specialist Register; a GP may continue a prescription under a shared-care agreement. Clinics are regulated by the CQC as providers, not as cannabis clinics.
What is prescribed
Two licensed medicines and a market of unlicensed specials โ flowers, oils, cartridges โ imported under MHRA licences and dispensed by GPhC pharmacies against a private prescription.
Driving
A statutory THC limit of 2 ยตg/L in blood, with a medical defence for a patient who takes the medicine as prescribed and is not impaired. The defence must be raised; it is not automatic.
Four questions, in the order a patient asks them
Is this for me at all
What can actually be prescribed in the UK, for what, and by whom โ without promises.
How to get a prescription
Why initiation sits with a doctor on the GMC Specialist Register, and what a clinic's CQC record does and does not prove.
What it costs
Why the NHS route is closed by a guideline rather than a prohibition, and what the private route consists of.
The law, day to day
Driving, travel, possession โ where a lawfully treated patient is most likely to be hurt.