UK Approves First ‘Pure Cannabis’ Trial For Chronic Pain

When it comes to medical cannabis programs around the globe, the United Kingdom ranks near the bottom of any list. A medical program is only as good as the number of suffering patients that it helps provide safe access to, and as of last summer, the number of patients helped in the United Kingdom was dismal.

Per a report by Vice from last summer, “there have been just three NHS prescriptions of cannabis oil. A private market is growing – with roughly 6,000 prescriptions issued – but many struggle to pay the expensive fees each month.”

The fact of the matter is that the United Kingdom’s medical program is extremely restrictive and essentially set up to give a virtual monopoly to pharmaceutical cannabis. The current setup is not good for patients being that so few want to use pharmaceutical cannabis products, and it’s also not good for the makers of pharmaceutical cannabis products because their market base is extremely small. No one is ‘winning’ in the current medical cannabis model in the UK.

Lawmakers and regulators in the UK have made it clear that they want to conduct more research before expanding the medical cannabis program, and fortunately more research appears to be on the way, and involving raw cannabis no less. Per The Times:

Thousands of Britons will be given cannabis for pain relief under a proposed clinical trial that could pave the way for millions to get the drug on the NHS.

Medical regulators have approved the UK’s first trial of pure cannabis for people with chronic pain caused by conditions including arthritis, The Times can reveal.

Some 5,000 adults will take vaporised cannabis daily for at least a year through inhalers that dispense cartridges containing a measured dose of “whole flower” unprocessed marijuana.

This is a small, yet significant step that will hopefully yield meaningful movement for improving the UK’s medical cannabis program. Studies that involve ‘whole flower’ are often more insightful compared to studies that only use pharmaceutical cannabis products being that most patients consume raw flower as part of their medical cannabis regimens.

The study is expected to launch ‘later this year’ and as pointed out by The Times, the study itself will go for at least one year. That means that at the earliest some, but perhaps not all, of the study’s results will be released in late 2023. You then have to assume that lawmakers and regulators will ponder the results for some amount of time before taking action, and it’s anyone’s guess how long that process will take.

At some point, after the study is finished and after the results are released and after the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence offers up its recommendation, the results of this study could lead to as many as 15 million patients in the United Kingdom finally being able to vaporize cannabis flower. It’s going to be a long process, however, it’s better than nothing I suppose.