Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs’ review of cannabis-based products for medicinal use will specifically consider prescribing to patients with serious mental illness, advertising by private clinics, prescribing volume oversight and cross-regulatory accountability.

The Department of Health and Social Care has worked closely with the Home Office and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the development and implementation of the law change in 2018 to permit the prescribing of unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use and their use in clinical research. These unlicensed medicines may be supplied under regulation 167 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 when there is a special clinical need that cannot be met by available licensed medicines. The special need is determined by the prescriber.

My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for the Home Department, has commissioned the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to review the legislation governing cannabis-based products for medicinal use. The Department, NHS England, and the MHRA are observers on the ACMD Cannabis-based Products for Medicinal Use Working Group to ensure close collaboration on impacts on the health system.

The review will consider the matters raised and assess whether the legislation has had the desired impact. The commission also asks the ACMD to identify any unintended consequences that were not anticipated at the time of implementation and offer recommendations on how to mitigate these, including any inhibiting effect that the availability of cannabis-based products for medicinal use through private prescriptions has had on the incentive to conduct clinical trials to develop safe, effective, and cost-effective products for use via the National Health Service. The ACMD report is expected by summer 2026, and the Government will carefully consider the report and its recommendations before taking any action.