It’s makes for good clickbait but also raises the same questions as in Australia.
- How is this so?
- How much are the doctors earning?
- What training have these doctors had in medicinal cannabis?
It does open a Pandora’s box and illustrates the structural issues in the sector and that time and time again “medical” cannabis companies exploit loopholes then cry wolf leave everybody to pick up the pieces as they find new “markets” to do the same.
It hasn’t worked out well in Australia
Who sees the ramifications of all of this, yes you guessed it, the patients.
The Daily Mail (UK)
Just ten doctors have prescribed more than half of all medical cannabis drugs since they were legalised in the UK.
Figures obtained by The Times also showed a single consultant has been responsible for one in every ten cannabis medicines prescribed in the country.
That doctor prescribed nearly 46,000 cannabis medicines in the first five months of last year, equivalent to one prescription every two working minutes.
The top ten consultants, who work in private clinics, prescribed more than 805,000 cannabis treatments since 2019, 52 per cent of the total.
After a slow start, cannabis prescriptions reached 10,000 per month in mid-2022 before rocketing to 50,000 a month in early 2024.
Medicinal cannabis prescriptions reached a peak of around 100,000 a month in early 2025 before declining, the figures showed.
Most patients using private clinics to obtain cannabis prescriptions are being treated for psychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety.
But many cannabis medicines contain higher levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) – the main psychoactive compound in the drug – than street ‘skunk’, a high potency strain.
