Patients using medical cannabis in the West Midlands are calling on the new government to make the drug more widely available to those seeking treatment.
Since 2018, medicines derived from the drug have been legal, though most remain unlicensed and not routinely available on the NHS. (National Health Service)
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Ms Northall is one of an estimated 20,000 adults who are now prescribed medical cannabis privately in the UK, according to the UK Medical Cannabis registry, a database run by private clinic Curaleaf.
Its research director, Dr Simon Erridge, said of eligibility: “You need to have a diagnosed medical condition, and to have exhausted conventional first-line therapies.”
He said he believed legalisation had been an important step towards giving “regulated, medical care” to an estimated 1.8m people already self-treating their conditions with illicit cannabis.
Legalised in November 2018, most medical cannabis products remain unlicensed.
This means they have not undergone certain clinical trials, or been deemed cost-effective by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), the organisation which evaluates drugs.
“The evidence right now is just not robust enough to convince [Nice] that the NHS should be spending its money buying those drugs and treating patients,” said Dr Will Lawn, a lecturer at Kings College London who has studied the impact of cannabis on teenagers.
Read the full article at BBC.com.
