UK Health System Withholding Medical Cannabis, Report Finds
Physicians Call Withholding Medical Cannabis “Utterly Deceitful” – LPC
Researchers in the UK have called out the health system for what it calls withholding medical cannabis. Professor David Nutt was lead author of research published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Open. One year medical cannabis was legalized in the UK 18 months previously, researchers found that less than 100 patients had been given a prescription. Those were mostly through private providers. The National Health Service (NHS) wrote “almost no prescriptions”. That combined with the roughly $1,800 CAD per month price tag are driving people to the illegal market.
“The failure of the medical and pharmacy professions to embrace (medical cannabis prescriptions) despite their being made legal over 18 months ago is a great worry to patients and will already likely have led to preventable deaths from conditions such as epilepsy,” the researchers wrote.
They found that many doctors cite lack of solid research prevented them from writing prescriptions. That is true in Canada as well: medical doctors questioned the risks and benefits of cannabis.
(The Guardian published an article in August 2020 about British medical cannabis needing a boost to help those in need.)
However, Nutt said, stigma around cannabis is a big part of doctors’ reluctance as well. Further, most UK doctors are uninformed or misinformed because there are not many sources of credible cannabis information. That is also true in Canada, where some doctors simply state they don’t believe medical cannabis works.
But misinformation and waiting for random controlled trials are no longer good arguments for withholding medical cannabis. “It is utterly deceitful for people who need it not to be offered medical cannabis,” Nutt said.
Witholding Medical Cannabis Not an Issue Unique to the UK
Clearly, more research is the answer. But how much is enough? It’s difficult for doctors to write a prescription without having all the facts about a drug. Perhaps what is needed is more leadership within the medical community to ensure doctors have the information they need to be confident prescribing medical cannabis.
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