“There are more than 1000 scientific papers MINIMUM, that show that cannabis kills cancer, in the lab, in animals, in mammal cells, you name it. But if you sell cannabis meds and says it cures cancer, the FDA will bust your ass.”
Despite its one hundred percent safety record, cannabis has been a schedule 1 drug for as long as most people can remember. Even today, the British and American authorities continue to claim that cannabis is an addictive  and dangerous plant that has a high potential for abuse and without medical or therapeutic value, despite a mountain of conflicting scientific  evidence. This has significantly hampered cannabis research, including CBD-only research, and continues to do  so, because schedule 1 drugs are illegal and CANNOT be used for medicine. As such, anyone wanting to research cannabis has to obtain Home  Office permission, which until very recently, was almost impossible to obtain; that is, except for a firm called GW Pharmaceuticals.
However, before considering the role GW Pharmaceuticals played in establishing Britain’s medical cannabis industry, it is important to understand why the British government licensed the company in the first place.
In the latter decades of the 20th century, a team of scientists, funded by the US Government (1963-2010), unveiled  facts about cannabis that were astounding. Led my Professor Mechoulam (a.k.a. the Father of Medical Cannabis), the team, which was situated in Israel, began reporting the potential of cannabis as medicine. And then they discovered that not only is cannabis a healing plant, but an absolute botanical powerhouse due to its ability to treat, give relief, or even cure almost every pathological condition known. And the reason why it can do this, is because of the discovery of a previously unknown physiological system in all mammals, which was named the ‘endocannabinoid system’ (ECS).
Of course this news, announced in the scientific world in 1992/3, was not (and still hasn’t been) reported in mainstream media, so when reports speaking of the power of cannabis finally did hit the British media more than a decade later, most people disbelieved the reports because they couldn’t fathom how one plant (and cannabis at that!) could treat so many different health conditions. And then the CBD industry was launched, which is all well and good (in that it can’t hurt you), but it wasn’t CBD that was studied, it was ordinary ‘street’ cannabis with high levels of THC.
As of December 2021, some 40 countries, including Canada, Italy, Portugal, France, Germany, Australia, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, and 36 America States have relaxed their laws so people can access medical cannabis, and some places have legalised cannabis use entirely. Why? Because they have recognised that cannabis is medicine, which means that everyone has a fundamental human right to medical cannabis, and that right has been acknowledged and respected around the world; except for in the UK, that is.
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Unlike other countries, the 2018 cannabis reform in the UK was a farce. Despite promises to enable better access to cannabis medicine, the reforms did nothing for the 1.4 million people currently using cannabis illegally for medicinal reasons. Instead, the reform was made up with legislation that brought huge financial profits for private investors. As such, the laws, which were introduced during Theresa May’s government, favoured the medical cannabis industry, while simultaneously keeping the plant illegal for public use, and refusing patient access via the NHS.
In Britain, state control of the medical cannabis market started with the founding of GW Pharmaceuticals (GWP) in 1998 (1), and the U.S followed suite by obtaining a patent on cannabis plant compounds in 2004 (2). GWP, which is entirely focused on developing medicines from cannabis alone or alongside current treatments, obtained 41 patents in the decade or so after having been founded. All but two of these patents, which included five to study cannabis as a treatment for cancer, were granted by the Home Office during the years that Theresa May was Home Secretary (2010-2016).Â
These factors, as well as other compounding factors, strongly suggest that the sole objective of both governments was to create a market for licensed cannabis-derived products that would reap massive financial profits for private investors. And the best way of achieving that was by ensuring a commercial market in the private sector, while keeping cannabis illegal to everyone else
There is no doubt that global cannabis reform, which is now taking place at breath-taking speed, is closely associated with the plant’s healing properties. However, the promise of huge financial returns for investors is probably the main reason why cannabis ‘reform’ took place in the U.K. Prior to the launching of Epidiolex, which is the U.K’s second approved medicine derived from cannabis alone,[1] cannabis-based pharmaceuticals were considered a poor investment due to their low revenue. However, the approval of Epidiolex seems to have changed this.
Within twelve months of launching Epidiolex, GW Pharmaceuticals saw its revenue increasing by 758 percent, and this momentum continued, with Epidiolex ‘generating twice the amount of sales in the second quarter as it did in the first’ (3). As such, market experts are forecasting that the profits generated by Epidiolex ‘will continue apace now that the EMA has approved its use within the EU’ (4),[2] and profits from Sativex have significantly increased since having its status changed under Britain’s 2018 changes in cannabis legislation (5).
Although both the U.S. Federal and British governments are publicly opposed to cannabis reform, they are in favour of medical cannabis as long as it is regulated and licensed as medicine through the established (legal) channels. This is because it enables investors to reap massive profits. Both governments are also firmly opposed to the recreational use of cannabis – not because of any notions of safety or dangers – but because the illegal market poses a very significant threat to the medical cannabis industry (which includes the CBD market). While this may seem incredible when considering the size of the pharmaceutical industry, the fact is that legal cannabis and pharmaceutical cannabis-based medicines are far more expensive them those sold on any black market, including those in Britain (6), and growing one’s own medicine, of course, is even cheaper. So it is for this reason that more and more people in Britain are choosing illegal routes to obtain their medicine, and it is also the reason that home-grown cannabis is still favoured by patients over so-called ‘pharmaceutical grade’ cannabis in countries where cannabis reform has taken place.
The above video is a report by Russia Today (2018) showing GW Pharmaceutical’s cannabis farms, and speaking of the FACT that Theresa May’s and her husband own 22% shares in GW, and that Britain has been the world’s greatest exporter of cannabis since at least 2017 (and still is today). The film was removed from YouTube (UK only) in 2020.
References and Notes:
[1] Every article or report online states that Epidiolex is the first cannabis-derived medicine to have been licensed in the U.K, but this is simply not true. The British firm GW Pharmaceuticals (GWP) is also the manufacturer of Sativex, which was licensed in 2010 to treat the symptoms of MS. The medicine is entirely derived from cannabis plants and consists of a 1-1 CBD/THC ratio. It was deemed by NICE as not being cost effective, and, as such, was not unavailable through the NHS until recently (2019). As such, the drug was marketed and exported abroad, despite GWP not having the necessary license to do so (and therefore acting illegally). It is probably for this reason that Theresa May, the Home Secretary at that time, retrospectively granted GWP an export license (2003-2013), and perhaps why the British government claims that Sativex is not cannabis – a notion that reminds me of the children’s story, ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ the deception is so obvious. After all, chocolate is chocolate… no matter what form it takes. Â
[2] ‘In its preliminary, unaudited net product sales figures for 2020, GW Pharmaceutical reported that Epidiolex raked in approximately $510 million for the full year. Just as a comparison, it was around this time last year the company reported approximately $309 million in net product sales for the year ended December 31, 2019, with Epidiolex accounting for $296 million’ (LINK).
1. Newsweek (2015). Online article: ‘The Outsourcing of American Marijuana.’ Retrieved 01/12/2020 from: https://www.newsweek.com/2015/12/25/outsourcing-american-marijuana-research-406184.html
2. Ibid. Newsweek, 2015.
3. GW Pharmaceuticals (2020). Official website: ‘History and Approach.’ Retrieved 17/11/2020 from: https://www.gwpharm.co.uk/about/history
3. Wallace, A (2016). Online article: ‘Patent No. 6,630,507: Why the US government holds a patent on cannabis plant compounds.’ Retrieved 01/12/2020 from: https://www.denverpost.com/2016/08/28/what-is-marijuana-patent-6630507/
4. Prohibition Partners (2019). ‘The Global Cannabis Report.’ Retrieved29/01/2021 from: https://prohibitionpartners.com/report-uploads/The_Global_Cannabis_Report.pdf?utm_source=FORM%3A+Global+Cannabis+Report&utm_campaign=025115600a-AUTOMATION__global_cannabis_report&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b2006b8c2c-025115600a-79398742
5. Ibid. Prohibition Partners, 2019.
6. Ibid. Prohibition Partners, 2019.
