The NHS can prescribe medical cannabis. So why are desperate patients being forced to go private?

‘The government has essentially washed its hands of the issue after changing the law, doing nothing to improve the understanding of the medication among doctors.’ Photograph: Richard Lautens/Toronto Star/Getty Images

In the midst of a healthcare crisis, the health secretary, Steve Barclay, has declared that “innovation is crucial to solving the challenges facing the NHS”. Yet the UK remains late to the party with regard to one of the most popular innovations in medical treatment over the past few decades – the use of medicinal cannabis.

First legalised in California in 1996, the medical use of cannabis is now part of the mainstream everywhere from Australia and Argentina to Peru and Poland as a treatment for conditions including epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, endometriosis and, most commonly, chronic pain. In November 2018, it seemed as though the UK had finally caught up when Theresa May’s government changed the law to allow the NHS and private providers to prescribe cannabis-based medical products. The change followed lengthy public campaigns by Hannah Deacon, whose son Alfie suffers from complex epilepsy that can be eased with cannabis, and Charlotte Caldwell, who flew to Canada to to get a new supply of cannabis oil to help with her son Billy’s epilepsy, which was then seized at customs on her return.