CBD Patients in Britain Turning to Private Clinics for Cannabis Medication

Medical cannabis users are turning to private clinics for the substance, according to the BBC news. Those using medical cannabis are paying around 800 pounds per month to private facilities. The government shared that it sympathizes with families “dealing so courageously with challenging conditions.”

According to the news report, in a recent report, NHS England identified that there was an absence of evidence on the long-term effectiveness of medical CBD. The report indicated that it was unable to make a recommendation on the use of CBD-based medicines to treat severe epilepsy “because there was a lack of clear evidence that these treatments provide any benefit.”

Professor Mike Barnes of the London branch of the Medical Cannabis Clinic, shared in the BBC report,

“Everyone can get an appointment to come here but not everyone leaves with a prescription for cannabis.” He continued,

“There are some conditions for which there is good evidence for cannabis to be useful, so you'd have to have one of those conditions – like pain, anxiety, or nausea and sickness in chemotherapy or epilepsy.”

The clinic has not yet opened and it has 162 patients on its waiting list for those with PTSD, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s, and epilepsy.

The Department of Health stated in a statement that it is working to develop clinical guidelines. It stated,

“To support doctors prescribing these products, we have asked the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to develop additional clinical guidelines and are working with Health Education England to provide additional training. The decision to prescribe unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use is a clinical decision for specialist hospital doctors, made with patients and their families, taking into account clinical guidance.”