Cannabis: Medical Treatments
(asked on 26th June 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of permitting GPs to prescribe cannabis-based medicinal products; and what plans he has to ensure NHS access to full-spectrum cannabinoid treatments for treatment-resistant epilepsy.
The conditions attached to a medicine’s marketing authorisation determine who it can be prescribed by. This may include restricting the initiation of treatments to specialist doctors, as is the case for the licensed cannabis-based medicines Sativex and Epidyolex. These are not first line treatments, and patients will be at a stage in their treatment pathway where they will be under the care of a specialist doctor before accessing these medicines.
General practitioners (GPs) cannot independently prescribe unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use. The law allows GPs to prescribe these products under the direction of a specialist as part of a shared care arrangement. A GP can accept ongoing shared care responsibilities once a specialist has initiated a prescription, and a patient’s clinical condition is stable. In doing so, they must accept the enhanced legal and professional responsibilities associated with prescribing an unlicensed product, and this includes accountability for the quality of the product prescribed.
This restriction forms part of the checks and balances that the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs recommended the Government put in place when rescheduling cannabis-based products for medicinal use, to minimise the risk of misuse and diversion.
Clinical guidelines from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) state that there is insufficient evidence to make population level recommendations for the use of unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use in the treatment of patients with refractory epilepsy. NICE recommends that further research is carried out to inform future commissioning decisions in the National Health Service.
Like any medicine, manufacturers of unlicensed cannabinoid treatments need to invest in research and clinical trials to prove that their products are safe and effective. In the absence of action from manufacturers, NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Research have agreed to over £8.5 million in funding for two world first clinical trials relating to the use of cannabis-based products for medicinal use for the treatment of drug-resistant epilepsies and neuropathic pain due to chemotherapy. Further information on the trial of medicinal cannabis for refractory epilepsies, and the trial of oral cannabinoids for the treatment of chemotherapy induced peripheral neuropathic pain is available, respectively, at the following two links: