Trial on Cannabis for Chronic Pain approved by NHS

Chronic pain is the most common infliction for which cannabis medicines are prescribed privately. However, regulators have continuously requested more robust data before cannabis can be routinely prescribed for pain through the NHS. 

The clinical trial, the first in the UK, aims to produce a data set to support the broader prescription of cannabis-based medicines. Patients will be recruited through charities and other UK organisations. GPs and specialist doctors can prescribe the product to anyone enrolled on the trial. 

Announcing the news in a press release, the trial was described as a ‘major advance in enabling much wider access for patients’. Chief executive officer of Celadon, James Short, stated: “We are delighted that our clinical trial has received its approvals, and we can now start the important work of getting our medicine to patients. Everything we do at Celadon starts with the patient, and the results from the first part of the study we have seen in terms of improvements in quality of life have been tremendous”.

The longstanding aim of the trial is to open up the UK market and give doctors the confidence to prescribe and create the most reliable data set to date for cannabis-based medicine in the UK. 

Over four years since the law changed, a large percentage of prescriptions for medicinal cannabis are still being issued through the private healthcare system. Data released in January showed that just over 89,000 prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis medicines were issued in England between November 2018 and July 2022. However, less than five of those prescriptions were prescribed on the NHS

The problem is that most cannabis-based medicinal products, while no longer strictly illegal, have still not received a licence for UK use. This means doctors must apply for specified funding whenever they want to prescribe them or request their NHS trust for direct support. Additionally, this can only be done after all existing conventional licensed medications have been prescribed, tried and proven to fail. Also, as these products are unlicensed, doctors are left open to legal challenges from patients who experience adverse side effects.

Part of the reason why the medical profession has ignored medicinal cannabis is that the government practically ignored the issue after the law change. This did little to improve the understanding of cannabis as medication among doctors, nor did it help build the foundations needed to facilitate regular patient access.

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