The UK’s legal medical cannabis market is a booming sector, but one that is often misunderstood. Since it was legalised in 2018, some 80,000 patients have begun treating various conditions with prescribed medical cannabis or derived-medicines from private clinics.
The NHS has only prescribed on a two digit number of occasions, which has limited growth, but the market for private clinics is now worth some £250 million annually. So, how does it all work?
The patient journey is at the core of what the sector does, throughout the whole process. Those interested in medical cannabis must certify their eligibility through a licensed private clinic, before being given a clinically formulated treatment plan including follow up care.
A large percentage of the UK’s medical cannabis is imported by clinics, although domestic supply is ramping up. Research and development is always going on behind the scenes, creating new methods of cannabis-based treatment and assessing and refining efficacy of the existing options. This is what you need to know about
How Does the UK Medical Cannabis Market Work Through Private Clinics?
Private Clinics Are the Starting Point for Patients
The NHS medicines regulator NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) has only licensed two cannabis-based medicines for prescription through the national healthcare provider.
And those it has only prescribed a few dozen times since 2018. However, it remains completely legal through Care Quality Commission licensed private clinics. These private clinics make up the bulk of the £250 million yearly market worth. They employ thousands of people in London and across the UK, and pay millions in taxes.
Providers like Releaf cannabis clinic bring together patients with expert licensed consultant doctors. They handle the whole process from initial qualifying assessments and treatment plans to delivery of the medicine and follow up care.
The most common reasons for patients to be prescribed medical cannabis in the UK are for chronic pain from a long list of conditions but also sleep disorders and neurological problems.
Although NICE maintains there needs to be more clinical evidence, which is true in some cases, positive patient-reported data and clinical results are piling up for most of the conditions it is prescribed for.
UK Farms Are Beginning to Get Licensed to Supply Product Domestically
The UK has, for the past two decades nearly, been one of the largest growers and exporters of medical cannabis in the world. However, much of that was made for production of the licensed medicines Sativex and Epidyolex, which makes it unsuitable for direct patient flower.
Only in recent years, as the demand from patients at private clinics begins to grow in earnest, have British growers been licensed for domestic medical supply. Setting up a legal medical cannabis farm in the UK is not cheap.
By some estimates it could cost £8 million to £10 million. Costs such as Home Office licensing, medical quality control standards, security can quickly mount up. But new suppliers believe the demand is there. Interestingly the case for CBD is a bit different.
Although the non psychoactive cannabis plant compound is legal in the UK, as isolate in products or minimal THC oils, cannabis flower with CBD in is considered illegal without a prescription.
Having said that, the law is a bit of a grey area and has been challenged. This makes producing CBD cannabis in the UK difficult, so most commercial CBD is imported.
The open market for CBD also means there is a lot of competition. This creates room for online services like expert cbd ratings, which bring together patient and professional views on CBD products from both the prescribed medical and commercial sectors, to help people pick the best options.
Research and Development is Also Big Business
As one of the leading service economies in the world, there are plenty of world-class scientific minds in the UK who are currently studying the effects of medical cannabis. Universities, pharmaceutical companies, clinics themselves and biotech firms are all pouring investment into research in the space.
That includes developing new ways of treatment. Medical cannabis in Europe has been diverging away from prescribing flower in some cases, often to distance itself from illegal recreational cannabis.
This trend has not hit the UK massively yet, but British clinics are hedging their bets by developing healthcare tech that can standardise dosages for more carefully managed treatment plans. Devices like liquid based sprays and pre-loaded flower cartridges for medical vapes are increasingly of interest to the sector.
Both famous universities of Cambridge and Oxford have carried out medical cannabis research in recent years, and efforts are underway to expand national databases of patient reported experiences for further study and to inform clinical decision making.
Advertising and Marketing Are Carefully Regulated
Being only prescribed through private clinics, those in the medical cannabis sector must pay attention to balancing business considerations while keeping the patient population’s healthcare needs as central to the operation.
The market initially was slow to growth. Partly because of strict regulation and high upfront costs, but also simply because not many people across the country were aware of it. As recently as 2022 around 40% of people in some surveys still said they didn’t know medical cannabis was legal on prescription.
Marketing has been one way to solve this. UK medical cannabis surveys suggest clinics spend around 2% to 8% of their yearly revenue on omni-channel marketing.
This is a lot less than many other economic sectors, but still a significant sum. Clinics are required to stick by advertising standards for medicines and pharmaceuticals, including not making unevidenced claims about medical cannabis’ efficacy.
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