Self-check · United Kingdom

Which of the UK rules is about to apply to you

Five questions. None of them decides whether cannabis is right for you — a doctor does. They decide something else: which of the rules that actually govern this in the UK you are about to run into, before you pay a clinic to find out.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent or stored — we cannot see your answers and could not if we wanted to.

This is not a medical assessment. We compare your answers with the published rules and point you to the guide and to the verified lists. Whether a cannabis-based medicine is right for you is always a doctor's decision.

The rules this check draws on

Every answer above leads to one of these outcomes. All of them are set out here in full — with the provision — so they can be read and checked without clicking through.

Are you hoping for this on the NHS?

This is the question that decides the shape of everything else.

Yes, through the NHS. Expect no. Rescheduling in 2018 made prescribing lawful and licensed nothing; NICE guideline NG144 recommends against cannabis-based products for chronic pain outside a trial and limits the rest, so NHS bodies do not fund the unlicensed products. The number of NHS prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis products is withheld by the government because it covers fewer than five patients — it is not "three", it is unpublished. In practice the route is private.
SI 2018/1055; NICE NG144; PQ 117459 (13 Jan 2023), PQ 40028 (26 Mar 2025)
Privately, through a clinic. That is the route that exists: a specialist-led clinic, an initial consultation, usually a multidisciplinary review, then a prescription dispensed by a pharmacy licensed for Schedule 2 drugs. Clinic fees are the clinic's to publish; medicine prices are not published here.
MDR 2001 reg 16A; HMR 2012 reg 167

Who would start the prescription?

My GP. A GP cannot initiate. Regulation 16A(1)(a)(ii) requires the product to be for use in accordance with a prescription or direction of a specialist medical practitioner — a doctor on the GMC Specialist Register. What a GP can do is continue under shared care once a specialist has initiated. You can check any doctor against the GMC register for free.
MDR 2001 reg 16A(1)(a)(ii); GMC register
A clinic's specialist. Then the one free verification the UK gives you is worth using: the doctor named on your prescription must be on the GMC Specialist Register, and the register's public search shows whether they are. That verifies the legality of the prescription itself. It does not verify the clinic.
MDR 2001 reg 16A; GMC register

Has the clinic told you it is "CQC-registered"?

Yes, it says so. Registration with the Care Quality Commission means the provider is registered to carry on a regulated activity — treatment of disease, disorder or injury. It is not approval to prescribe cannabis and not a quality mark for cannabis care. It is still worth checking, because several brands that market themselves as cannabis clinics appear in no regulator's register at all, and our directory names them.
HSCA 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regs 2014, Sch 1 para 4
Not sure / it does not say. Check before paying. A provider treating patients in England must be registered with the CQC (Healthcare Inspectorate Wales in Wales). Our clinic directory lists only providers whose record could be found, with the record's own identifiers, and lists separately the brands that could not be found.
CQC register; HIW register

Do you drive?

Yes, regularly. This is where lawfully treated patients get hurt. Section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988 sets a specified limit of 2 µg/L THC in blood. There is a medical defence in s.5A(3) — the drug was lawfully prescribed and taken in accordance with directions — but it is lost under s.5A(4) if you drove contrary to advice about how long to wait, and it does not touch s.4 (driving while unfit through drugs), which has no limit and no such defence. Carry evidence of the prescription and the directions.
Road Traffic Act 1988 ss.4, 5A(3)–(4); SI 2014/2868
I do not drive. Then the largest legal risk a UK patient carries does not apply to you.

Will you take it abroad?

Yes, I am planning a trip. A UK prescription is a UK document. Leaving with a controlled drug for more than three months' supply needs a Home Office licence, and that licence is an export and re-import document for the UK border only — the Home Office's own guidance says other countries apply their own law and a traveller can be fined or imprisoned. Check the destination's rules, not the UK's.
Home Office guidance on travelling with controlled drugs
No. Then this part does not apply now — but it is the part people forget until the airport.