Wonder drug: is the UK ready for the green rush of medicinal cannabis?

[Joolz]

You might not quite have noticed, but Britain is in the midst of a cannabis revolution. This one plant, its proponents say, has the potential to reshape modern medicine. It’s happening, quickly and quietly; with scientists and doctors ushering in a new era of hi-tech flower power. As of today, over 60 countries have legalised some form of medicinal cannabis: since November 2018 that’s also been the case in Britain. Some 30,000 of us have already been prescribed cannabis for conditions ranging from arthritis to epilepsy, anxiety to multiple sclerosis. Experts predict the list will soon grow longer and specialist surgeries are springing up nationwide to cater for ever-growing demand.

 

At the Curaleaf Clinic on London’s Harley Street, I meet Chris Cowan, 47. He was 13 when he first smoked cannabis: one joint with friends, illicit and casual, in early 90s rural Warwickshire. It would be nine years before a doctor would diagnose him with clinical depression and many more until his PTSD would be identified. Medicinal cannabis was decades from legalisation and yet, as far back as then, he knew intuitively its effect on him was more than the hit of a recreational high. “While friends would be giggling or rolling around intoxicated,” he says, “I found a calm I’d never felt before – that’s the only way I can describe it. The older I got, the more I noticed. Cannabis was medicinal, alleviating the traumas in both my body and mind.” Only 30 years later would the British medical and legal system catch up.

 

In the meantime, Cowan illegally self-medicated, like 1.8 million others across the UK. “There were the practical issues,” he says. “The efficacy of what I could buy from street dealers was hit and miss. The product was totally inconsistent and unregulated.” The illegal market is a wild west, rife with contamination; authorised cannabis medicines, however, are tightly regulated. Worse for Cowan was the stigma. “Into my 30s and 40s, none of my contemporaries still used it. I felt ashamed of my reliance on what I was told was a harmful, illegal substance. My wife hated me breaking the law, it was a constant source of tension.” Twice, he tried antidepressants – neither time able to cope with the side-effects of sertraline.

 

In the UK, there has been no relaxing of rules for recreational cannabis, the change is purely medical. Cowan receives his prescription much like any other: appointments with specialist doctors, regular checkups, medical-grade heavily regulated products with strict guidelines for consumption. Medicinal cannabis comes in many forms: oils, creams, cartridges and capsules. Some people, like Cowan, are prescribed the dried flower, which he vaporises. The prescription process is stringent. Those referred need to have an existing diagnosis and to have already tried other conventional medical interventions. “Before this,” Cowan says, “as an adult, I’d have to sit in a yard waiting for some kid to turn up on a bike, then drive home paranoid that the police would pull me over, just for accessing medication. When I found this clinic, I went from being criminalised to a normal member of society.”

 

There are more than 200 CCTV cameras across Celadon’s 100,000sqft, state-of-the-art, cannabis-growing facility: sky-high fencing, airlock doors and number-plate recognition. To visit, an NDA must be signed to ensure no details emerge of its top-secret location. Its vast grey buildings have no exterior signage or branding, ensuring anonymity. The only slight giveaway, the company’s co-founder Paul Allen accepts, is the stench of cannabis wafting out across an otherwise unassuming grey industrial estate. A hi-tech filtration system is due to be installed imminently.

 

Celadon was set up in 2018 by Allen and two business partners after they read about medical cannabis legalisation. Theirs was one of the first firms in the UK to be granted a cannabis-growing licence. So far, £20m has been invested on top of the £30m value of their site. They’re betting on big returns – market experts estimate the global medical cannabis industry generated US$6.82bn in 2020, a number expected to reach $53.88bn by 2030. At full capacity, this facility will provide medicine for 50,000 patients – that’s roughly 9 tonnes of cannabis produced a year. “We took down our first commercial harvest late last year,” Allen says. “Everything we are currently growing is contracted to a private clinic. Longer term, we’re looking to develop and produce new medicines.”

‘Longer term, we’re looking to develop new medicines’: a scientist at Celadon’s medicinal cannabis factory. Photograph: Dan Burn-Forti/The Observer

Beyond the secure doors is the growing space, cavernous rooms connected by a maze of concrete corridors. Plants and cuttings are moved from room to room through their lifecycle, each stage monitored to maximise quality and efficiency: nutrients, oxygen levels, humidity, light exposure. Celadon hopes to produce up to six harvests a year through nine-week cycles of flower growth. Donning full-body scrubs, I’m shown the current crop – mammoth cannabis plants growing under fluorescent lights in futuristic surroundings. “All our plants are QR coded through their lifetime,” Allen says. “Everything is logged. There’s a full audit trail.” This helps ensure the occasional bud can’t go missing. “But it’s also for research purposes. As insights into medical cannabis develops, this data will help us identify which individual plants and compounds are most suited to treating different health conditions. The possibilities seem endless.”

Still in its early infancy, access to medicine derived from cannabis remains highly restricted on the NHS. It is limited to people with specific rare and severe forms of epilepsy; adults with vomiting or nausea caused by chemotherapy, and those with certain multiple sclerosis symptoms. Private practices, however, have a far wider scope for prescriptions, including for chronic pain, certain psychiatric disorders and various neurological conditions.

 

Quite what long-term role cannabis might play in medicine is a topic at the forefront of drug development. That’s not to say it’s a novel idea. “In fact,” says Professor David Nutt, a world-renowned neuropsychopharmacologist and former government adviser on drugs policy, “cannabis is probably the planet’s oldest medicine. The evidence comes from China: the world’s first-known pharmaceutical encyclopedia describes cannabis use for more than 100 conditions, including gout and rheumatic pain.” In his book Cannabis: Seeing Through the Smoke, Nutt retraces this rich remedial history through ancient India, into Persian and Arabic medicine, across Africa and South America via Britain. In the 1800s, cannabis became a staple of British medicine, after Irish doctor Brooke O’Shaughnessy, an army surgeon, witnessed its use while serving in colonial India. “It remained in medicinal use here until 1971,” says Nutt, “coming to an end, we think, due to American pressure.” After alcohol prohibition in the US ended in 1933,” he says, “American law enforcement needed a new bogeyman. They invented the cannabis scare.”

 

Nutt confronts concerns about negative health impacts of using cannabis. In his book, the question of whether there’s a link with schizophrenia gets a dedicated chapter. (“The short answer is no,” he writes.) Certainly, evidence is inconclusive. And while strong strains in high doses can cause temporary psychosis – some tripping out – that’s also true of alcohol, and plenty of other drugs used regularly in medicine. “Of 4,000 UK cannabis patients we are monitoring,” Nutt says, “we’ve had zero psychosis or paranoia cases.” Only when smoked has it proved carcinogenic. Regardless, these fronts are more relevant to debates about unrestricted recreational use, not targeted medical treatment. Of course, as with any drug or medication, there are risks associated with consumption: those with heart conditions, for example, are advised to take caution. You’d need to take 1,000 times the recommended amount to fatally overdose on cannabis; that figure is only two to four times with opiates and alcohol. Under US pressure, Nutt says, most of the world restricted its use as medicine. The UK followed suit in 1971, with the Misuse of Drugs Act. Scientific research into cannabis declined rapidly. The collateral damage, Nutt argues, remains far-reaching: “To this day, our knowledge and understanding of how to treat patients with the plant remains stunted.”

‘That children with various forms of epilepsy respond brilliantly to whole-plant cannabis extracts is crystal clear’: Professor David ~Nutt. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

Still, we know the basics. The cannabis plant contains two main ingredients: THC and CBD. In recreational use, the former gets you stoned; the latter acting as a relaxant. Together, they balance. The levels of both are carefully controlled in medication. Many medicines contain no THC – that ‘high’-producing compound, and those drugs which do use some THC have it in limited doses. Curaleaf monitors all adverse-effects from patient prescriptions: euphoria, as it’s referred to medically, doesn’t feature in the top 10 most common side effects.

 

Cannabis plants also contain more than 700 other molecules. At least 120 are similar to THC and CBD, others are called terpenes and flavonoids, many with their own effects on the human body. We know a plant’s strain, growing conditions and processing method results in different molecular makeups. This shapes what happens during human consumption. It’s all down, science suggests, to the unique interaction of cannabis with our endocannabinoid receptors – a little-understood cornerstone of human anatomy, which regulates and controls many of our brain and body’s most critical functions.

 

Cannabis medicines put these ingredients to work in a variety of applications. Think of cannabis not as a single, catch-all drug, but as the basis of a whole extended family of medicines. Some isolate specific molecules, others – known as “whole-plant” drugs – are made up of ingredients found across the plant’s entire chemical spectrum. That’s the case in Alfie Dingley’s medication.

 

Hannah Deacon’s son, Alfie, was just eight months old when he had his first seizure. It was May 2012 and Deacon still getting to grips with being a first-time mum. “I was woken around midnight by the sound of his screams,” she says. “He was having a seizure: eyes in the back of head, not breathing, his limbs…” she shakes her arms violently. “I’d never seen anything like it. I was petrified.” Hospital medics suggested Alfie was experiencing febrile convulsions, which is common in babies. “But within the hour, the seizures were back to back. He was dying, basically,” Deacon says, exhaling. “I had a panic attack. It was horrendous. With me for the rest of my life.”

 

Over coffee, Deacon recounts the traumatic years that followed. The first mention of epilepsy while Alfie was at Great Ormond Street Hospital; regular readmissions; countless cycles of seizures only eased by a cocktail of drugs, including morphine and intravenous steroids.

‘These were incredible results’: Hannah Deacon with her son Alfie, whose epileptic seizures were treated with medicinal cannabis. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Observer

At four, the seizures were coming every three weeks. By five, it was weekly. “We worked out what drugs helped,” Deacon says, “but the long-term side-effects sounded horrendous: psychosis, kidney and heart failure. One doctor told me the drugs would eventually kill my son.” Alfie was diagnosed with PCDH19 – a rare, non-inherited genetic condition. In 2016, he was in hospital 48 times. With little more than blind hope, Deacon set about looking for alternatives. While searching online for natural epilepsy treatments, cannabis popped up. “I found Facebook support groups and started talking to other parents who’d used cannabis for similar conditions in their children. Anecdotally, there were incredible results.”

 

The first paediatric neurologist Deacon raised cannabis with threatened to call social services. Undeterred, she took matters into her own hands. In September 2017, the family headed to Holland where medical cannabis was already legal. Alfie was prescribed Bedrolite – a whole-plant cannabis oil – to be taken alongside his other meds. For six weeks, there was little improvement. “Then,” says Deacon, “he came out of hospital and was seizure-free for 17 days, the first time in 18 months he’d gone for more than three or four days without one. He started to engage with his younger sister, read books and watch telly. It was as if he was suddenly with us again.” When Alfie did have a seizure, the dose of steroids required to treat him was far lower. Soon, he was seizure free for weeks at a time.

 

Alfie’s treatment was proving effective, but no UK doctor would replicate it.“We had to get back to England to campaign,” Deacon says, “but bringing Alfie’s drugs with us would have been illegal.” Three days after returning, Alfie was back in hospital. She was determined to change the law – there were meetings in Parliament; breakfast TV appearances; open letters; a petition signed by hundreds of thousands. These long-term efforts were amplified when another mother, Charlotte Caldwell, travelled to Canada to source her son Billy’s medication. They were seized at the UK border. Billy’s health deteriorated. He was admitted to hospital with life-threatening seizures, forcing the government to act.

 

These two cases directly led to the 2018 law change. And for Alfie, now 12, the result has been life-changing. He has not had a seizure for over three years. The vast majority of cannabis medicines are only available privately. To date, only three have been licensed by the NHS. Just one of those is used to treat epileptic children and only when they have distinct types of epilepsy. When the law changed, three children, Alfie included, received special NHS funding. Then funding guidelines shifted. Today, neither Alfie nor his type of meds would qualify. In 2021, Deacon and other parents of children with epilepsy set up the Medcan Family Foundation. “It’s the stories of children like Alfie who helped change the law,” Deacon says, “and now these kids are the ones unable to benefit. Those who can afford to have gone private, paying up to £2,000 a month. Others have turned to the illegal market. Now the only two doctors who were prescribing privately have shut their books. Adults can access cannabis. A private industry is booming. In Britain there are 37,000 children with treatment-resistant epilepsy. These kids, who need the medication most, have been abandoned.”

 

Professor Nutt agrees. “That children with various forms of severe, untreatable epilepsy respond brilliantly to whole-plant cannabis extracts is crystal clear,” he says, “but a perfect storm of complex legislation, funding failures and doctors unable or unwilling to prescribe to children. Wholesale reform is needed. In the meantime, medical cannabis is being denied to these children. It’s a huge scandal and as a result, they’re dying.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care told the Observer: “Licensed cannabis-based medicines are routinely funded by the NHS where there is clear evidence of their quality, safety and effectiveness. We are taking an evidence-based approach to unlicensed cannabis-based treatments to ensure they are proved safe and effective before they can be considered for roll out on the NHS more widely.”

‘My oil costs me £130 a month’: Georgie Budd, photographed at her practice in Mountain Ash, Wales. Photograph: Francesca Jones/The Observer

If for patients the march of medical cannabis means major change, for healthcare professionals it could spell full-on upheaval. Back at Curaleaf, between 30 and 40 doctors are employed part-time, working alongside a team of pharmacists. For many, medical cannabis was until recently an unknown entity. That was true for Dr Wendy Holden, a consultant rheumatologist and pain management specialist, who has worked part-time at Curaleaf since 2021. “I qualified in the early 1990s,” says Holden, “and knew nothing about cannabis medicine through most of my years practising.” A specialist in chronic pain and inflammatory arthritis, she was sceptical when first approached by a now Curaleaf colleague. “It’s a whole new language, prescribing cannabis,” she says, “and I’ve been amazed at the difference in the types of patients I’ve been seeing for years. Sometimes literally the very same people. We can only prescribe to people who’ve not had luck with first line therapies, so already these are challenging cases. The results are miraculous.” Of Curaleaf’s 15,000 patients, almost half are chronic pain sufferers. Research shows that when treated with cannabis, one in four will report a 30% or greater improvement in pain severity.

 

Another cannabis selling point is the resulting reduction in patients taking other medication. That was the case for Georgie Budd, a trainee GP in the Welsh valleys. Following a car accident in 2018, she was paralysed from the waist down. She was prescribed opioids for pain management. “When I was taking them,” she says, “I couldn’t think clearly. My mum used them after hip surgery and as a doctor I’d seen firsthand how easily people got addicted.” In the decade to 2019, the UK was the largest prescriber of opioids globally per capita. Since starting to take medical cannabis, Budd is opioid-free. One study of 1,000 UK cannabis-taking pain patients found over half had stopped taking opioids entirely. Another, in America, saw their use decrease by 64%.

 

“Many people who would benefit from medical cannabis are disabled,” Budd says, “which means they’re more likely to have limited financial security. Yet we’re forced to go private. My oil costs me £130 a month, which I’m able to afford by cutting back in other areas, but I’m struggling.”

 

When Holden tells old colleagues about her current world of work, she still gets mixed responses. “Some refuse to listen, she says, “calling it a gateway drug. More and more, however, are reading the research showing impressive results, and are far more open-minded. Making judgments based on evidence not prejudice and preconceptions. It’s just so obviously working.” At least, for those who can access it. “What we do,” Holden is clear, “is incomparable with the illegal market. We monitor to ensure no harm, get people off painkillers and opioids, and improve quality of life with medical-quality, tightly controlled and scientifically backed-up medication. Plus drug dealers? Well, they work in imperial measurements; we do metric.”

 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/11/wonder-drug-is-the-uk-ready-for-the-green-rush-of-medicinal-cannabis

 

[Slippy One]

“is the UK ready for the green rush of medicinal cannabis“

 

no. 
 

[Boojum]

1 hour ago, Joolz said:

You might not quite have noticed, but Britain is in the midst of a cannabis revolution.

 

 

No it isn't. It's in the midst of a cunts getting rich off 'medical cannabis' while the people in genuine need can't afford a private prescription revolution, you tit.

 

Take your massive advert for curaleaf and fuck off Michael

[Slippy One]

We must keep the plebs from our profits, otherwise they'll rise up at this little cartel we've created with our pharma chums.

[MySoulIsMine]

This medical cannabis thing is a massive scam. it's ok for the middle class folk but useless to the regular person. I was going to get a script recently, one place wanted 30 quid every month just to be able to buy their overpriced shite and the other wanted 200 quid upfront to have access to the overpriced shite, and that was a benefits discount as well. It is cheaper to buy off a dealer and better quality in most cases, was going to end up being 300+ per month  

Edited April 2 by MySoulIsMine

[GreenVision]

The people growing, smoking and using it for whatever reason have been ready for decades, but ready to bel left alone to smoke / use it for their own reasons, not be ripped off by some cunt for it.

 

Medicinal or not, I just want to be able sow seeds and smoke my bud without the lingering thought of being labeled a criminal for it, maybe then I can hope for a day I wont be frowned at for lighting a pipe in my garden.

 

As far as mass growing and commercial be it legal or not they can stick up their harris. That has greedy government itchy fingers written all over it.

[iShouldCoCo]

3 year medical cannabis patient here - it's really not cheaper to buy on the black market in my experience, even if you didn't give a shit about getting a criminal record alongside your diagnosis.

 

Sure, you can pay £10+ per gram for medical weed if you choose but you can get decent flower for £5 - £8.50 per gram (plus £200 up front for 'lifetime' repeats and consultations from Mamedica - clinic fees can vary). Last time I checked, things were a pricier than that out there on the streets and dark markets, even without chasing 'Cali fire'.

 

Got a plug who will sort you out an oz of fire for £150? Yeah stick with that but maybe don't mock people who don't have your plug?

 

No medical weed will compete with well grown home produce in terms of effects, terps and price but lots of people who need it are not able to do that for a host of good reasons. There won't be many on here, we're self-selected for bias against legal medical cannabis

 

We all knew that medical/recreational cannabis legalisation would bring in money vultures when it finally happened. I am totally not surprised by this, there were plenty about in the canna scene before the world started to loosen the laws. The only thing I AM surprised about is that the money grabbing Tories haven't already legalised for recreational if all they care about is money. I do think they care a lot about the opinion of the Daily Mail readers mainly. No votes, no power.

 

I think what we really need to do is lobby for a home grow provision for when the legislation is changed here in the UK - like most other countries have. It would be a travesty if we weren't legal to grow a few at home after all this waiting and hoping...

[Mr mcgregor]

15 year medicinal cannabis patient here, I grow my own and have a pretty limitless supply for about £25 per week

Thanks to uk420! ,who'd have thought you could grow it in a fridge,wardrobe,tent or cupboard indoors in not so sunny england. Grow your own ,be the change you want to see!

[j.o.i.n.t]

21 minutes ago, iShouldCoCo said:

Sure, you can pay £10+ per gram for medical weed if you choose but you can get decent flower for £5 - £8.50 per gram (plus £200 up front for 'lifetime' repeats and consultations from Mamedica - clinic fees can vary). Last time I checked, things were a pricier than that out there on the streets and dark markets, even without chasing 'Cali fire'.

 

Got a plug who will sort you out an oz of fire for £150? Yeah stick with that but maybe don't mock people who don't have your plug?

 

I'm one of the vitriolic haters of this and companies like them due to a few reasons, but you do make a good point here - on the individual level. Makes sense.

 

Doesn't across populations though. Widescale engagement with private provision and not kicking off about the enshitification/withholding of free-at-point-of-delivery-healthcare plays into games not in any of our interests.

 

 

[iShouldCoCo]

I agree @j.o.i.n.t overall it's not the best it could be, even on the individual level. It should be an option on NHS prescriptions for those that have a condition that definitely benefits from it (I include quality of life improvements in this fwiw, I doubt N.I.C.E would). Optionally grow your own, if you're able or join a club. That would be much better. Oh and pardons for weed related sentences and POCA refunds

Edited April 2 by iShouldCoCo

[redbeard]

1 hour ago, iShouldCoCo said:

3 year medical cannabis patient here - it's really not cheaper to buy on the black market in my experience, even if you didn't give a shit about getting a criminal record alongside your diagnosis.

 

Sure, you can pay £10+ per gram for medical weed if you choose but you can get decent flower for £5 - £8.50 per gram (plus £200 up front for 'lifetime' repeats and consultations from Mamedica - clinic fees can vary). Last time I checked, things were a pricier than that out there on the streets and dark markets, even without chasing 'Cali fire'.

 

Got a plug who will sort you out an oz of fire for £150? Yeah stick with that but maybe don't mock people who don't have your plug?

 

No medical weed will compete with well grown home produce in terms of effects, terps and price but lots of people who need it are not able to do that for a host of good reasons. There won't be many on here, we're self-selected for bias against legal medical cannabis

 

We all knew that medical/recreational cannabis legalisation would bring in money vultures when it finally happened. I am totally not surprised by this, there were plenty about in the canna scene before the world started to loosen the laws. The only thing I AM surprised about is that the money grabbing Tories haven't already legalised for recreational if all they care about is money. I do think they care a lot about the opinion of the Daily Mail readers mainly. No votes, no power.

 

I think what we really need to do is lobby for a home grow provision for when the legislation is changed here in the UK - like most other countries have. It would be a travesty if we weren't legal to grow a few at home after all this waiting and hoping...

 

Is there even one clinic that sells hashish , that's always worked best for me.

It annoys me that you're forced to have weed no choice, now if it was like Canada, then it would be worth it.

[iShouldCoCo]

@redbeard Not that I know of but there's been talk of hash and extracts (other than sublingual oil) for a while. I think it's available in other countries.

[splifi]

I have been self medicating for the last 40 years but an unfortunate side to this was I started smoking as when I first discover the joys off weed it was a joint or a bong.

I have tried all sorts of meds from the doctors and councillors but cannabis is the only thing that has worked for me and allowed me to live a normal life.

 Unfortunately the government brought in zero tolerance for driving and employers followed suit setting drug test levels at ridiculously low.

 I need to drive as my wife is disabled and I am the only one in the family who can drive and needed to earn a living.So I stopped taking weed for 10 months and my mental health went down hill and I finished work.

 I was then diagnosed with autism anxiety as well as being dyslexic so there for qualified for medical cannabis.

I can grow my own no problem but was still under the threat of losing my driving licence if stopped by the police(I do not drive stonned always leave 12hrs) so I got a legal prescription.

 I have stopped smoking tobacco so uses the saved money to pay for my prescriptions.

 I do feel like I am being taxed by stealth to vape weed or lose my freedom to drive or work due to the government drug driving laws.

The weed I got legal has been ok a quiet tasty pink Kush was the best one but it has been zapped by radiation which I do not like.

[j.o.i.n.t]

@splifi ...they really prescribe pot for dyslexia?

 

ETA

Oh the irony. I mix small words up and had to edit. Again.

Edited April 2 by j.o.i.n.t

[splifi]

1 minute ago, j.o.i.n.t said:

@splifi ...they really prescribe pot of dyslexia?

It is all linked to the autism/anxiety/adha and dyslexia are closely related neurological conditions for which I qualify or so I was told by the shrink