In contrast to the UK;
‘Every other jurisdiction in the world has set up special regulatory procedures around cannabis because it is completely different from pharmaceutical medicines’ (1).
Cannabis, in contrast to pharmaceutical drugs, is a botanical plant, and like all botanical plants, it consists of hundreds of compounds. This means that it cannot be studied or regulated like pharmaceutical drugs – and neither can any potential safety issues be evaluated like pharmaceutical drugs. As such, cannabis reform in other countries has included legislation that allows for these differences by effectively removing some of these barriers, thus making it easier for doctors to prescribe unlicensed cannabis medicines. Unfortunately, the British government’s determination to control the U.K’s medical cannabis market means that the opposite is happening in Britain.
Cannabis reform in the U.K focuses on the needs of business rather than patients. The laws in other countries have been changed so that patients can genuinely access medical cannabis. In contrast, cannabis reform in the U.K has only facilitated the marketing of GWP’s cannabis medicines – Sativex and Epidiolex – and it is only patients with the health conditions these medicines were licensed for who can (in theory) access these medicines. However, this is only when other (pharmaceutical) medicines have failed to work. In other words, GWP’s form of medical cannabis is the only real option available to patients; that is, if the NHS are willing to prescribe and cover the costs. Unfortunately, records show that few specialists are willing to prescribe medical cannabis, which leaves patients with two possible routes: to pay privately or obtain their medicine illegally.
Cannabis reform around the world has taken into account the fact that medicinal products made with cannabis alone defines them as herbal medicines. The official U.K government website states that in accordance with the Human Medicines Regulations:
‘… a product is a herbal medicinal product if the active ingredients are herbal substances and/or herbal preparations only.
A herbal substance is a plant, or part of a plant, algae, fungi, or lichen, or an unprocessed exudate of a plant, defined by the plant part used and the botanical name of the plant, either fresh or dried, but otherwise unprocessed.
A herbal preparation is when herbal substances [such as a plant] are put through specific processes, which include: extraction; distillation; expression; fractionation; purification; concentration, and fermentation.
The herbal substance being processed can be: reduced or powered; a tincture; an extract; an essential oil; an expressed juice; or a processed exudate (rich protein oozed out of its source).
Not all herbal products are medicines, some can be classified as food supplements or cosmetics’ (3).
Sativex and Epidiolex, unlike pharmaceutical drugs, are both made from (cannabis) plants that are made into herbal preparations, and as such are herbal medicines. This is why “the whole way Sativex is regulated is fundamentally dishonest’ (4), as is the regulation of Epidiolex. These drugs are regulated on the notion Sativex consists of only two molecules, THC and CBD, and Epidiolex one molecule CBD, when in fact, ‘Dr. Geoffrey Guy, the Chairman of GW is on record himself saying … that [Sativex] contains up to 400 molecules’ (23), and this, of course, is the same for Epidiolex because it is a whole plant medicine.
The problem is that the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ‘and conventional or pharmaceutical regulators are simply not capable of regulating whole plant medicine’ (5). In the meantime, the British authorities have launched yet another deceitful campaign, which is aimed at differentiating ‘pharmaceutical grade’ cannabis from what it terms as ‘street’ cannabis. Why? Because of the illegal market’s threat to Britain’s cannabis industry. And it does so by claiming that GW’s methods of standardisation and its rigorous quality control procedures achieves a better product, when in fact it just means a higher price tag and a less effective medicine (due to standardisation). The truth of the matter is that cannabis is not illegal because it is dangerous or has high risks of abuse, but because it is medicine and, as such, a cash machine for investors (e.g. Theresa & Philip May, Victoria Atkins, and other MPs).
‘’A year on from the rescheduling of medical cannabis, 18 NHS and 104 private prescriptions were made in the UK. In 2019, Germany made around 142,000 prescriptions, Israel permitted 35,000 and Canada registered over 343,000 patients using medical cannabis.”
An important aspect of global cannabis reform is that it is not just taking place in the West, but also in places where, not so long ago, legal penalties for cannabis possession, cultivation, or distribution, included the death sentence. According to marketing experts, once ‘once ‘Thailand moved to legalise cannabis, similar cannabis reform efforts in the Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Guam, Malaysia, and some provinces in India and China have gathered mainstream support’ (6), thus creating a domino effect that has been seen in other places (e.g. the U.S and Europe). Experts believe that ‘a continuation of this ‘domino effect’ will see Asia become the third largest global market for cannabis, with a total of value of US $12.5 billion, of which medicinal cannabis will account for US $10.7 billion’ by 2024 (7).
Cannabis is medicine. This fact is confirmed by a mountain of irrefutable scientific evidence that has led to global cannabis reform that continues to evolve around the world. The lawmakers in these countries and states have recognised and acknowledged the scientific evidence showing the healing properties of the cannabis plant, and there is also widespread recognition that cannabis use is not as dangerous or harmful as once believed. Reports from places where cannabis use has been fully legalised, such as Portugal and Canada, show that rate of young people using cannabis has declined (quite significantly in some places), rather than increasing, and so has drug-related crime (8).
More importantly, however, is that the number of people using cannabis as medicine globally is growing at a tremendous rate, especially amongst people with life-threatening diseases such as cancer. These medicines, however, all include a ratio of THC – the cannabinoid that the British government has forbidden. Furthermore, the determination of the British government to control the cannabis industry also extends to the CBD market because Epidiolex is, of course, a CBD-only product.
The current campaign to differentiate industry grown cannabis from that grow illegally includes attempts to undermine the public’s trust in the safety of that grown by private companies producing CBD products. Such products, it is suggested, have issues with impurity, contamination, and it is also claimed that many of them do not contain the level of CBD stated on the label. However, the truth is that the British CBD industry has ‘been a model of responsible self regulation. It includes two trade associations, the CTA and CannaPro, which represent virtually all the leading UK supplies and maintain high levels of quality control and trading standards, including regular reporting of non-compliant businesses to the MHRA’ (9).
Despite this, the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) published a sensational report in 2019 claiming that the majority of CBD products being sold on British highstreets and online was of very poor quality, even stating that many products contained illegal levels of THC and some contained no CBD at all. The report, which was presented as independent, academic research, thus suggesting it should be regarded as being authentically scientific, turned out to be a cheap marketing stunt. Just a short time after publishing the damming and falsified report, the CMC announced that it had made a mistake, for which it was truly sorry, and that there was no problem with the products and that were all good quality (10). But, of course, the damage had been done. [1]
Fortunately, the future of Britain’s CBD industry has been strengthened through the recent decisions and actions of the E.U. Court of Justice, who ruled that France’s ban on CBD products was illegal as it was an ‘unnecessary restriction of the free movement of goods because the substance doesn’t pose a threat to human health’ and therefore ‘not a narcotic (11), and the United Nations removed ‘cannabinoids from Schedule IV globally, a regulatory label designed for highly addictive, prescription drugs (like opiates)’ (12), thus identifying it as being less dangerous than previously thought.
Joy Smith – Ovarian cancer (stage 4) plus secondary cancers – given six weeks to live – took RSO (2017) and is still alive and well today (like me 🙂
“If they [the government] were in it for helping people, where were they 10 years ago when we were banging the drum? It’s extremely concerning seeing these hard-right figures trying to get involved with cannabis. They’re completely gentrifying it by attempting to persuade lawmakers that homegrown cannabis is unsafe.
I fear we’re going to end up with a commercial cannabis market before people get the right to grow. They care about profit, not the people.”
These rulings dealt a severe blow to the efforts of the British authorities to limit the sale of CBD products by trying to undermine public confidence through persistently claiming privately manufactured CBD products as being unsafe and risky alternatives to pharmaceutical cannabis-based medicines. Nevertheless, the British authority’s determination to harness cannabis as medicine, thus reaping millions for investors, continues, as seen by the licensing of pharmaceutical cannabis medicines and the fact that cannabis remains illegal for UK citizens.
Notes:
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.
[1] ‘In its preliminary, unaudited net product sales figures for 2020, GW Pharma notes 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).
References:
- The Independent (2017): ‘There is Legal Marijuana in the UK; So why is it is hard to get hold of?’ Retrieved 30/01/2021 from: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/legal-marijuana-medical-uk-availability-law-a7699056.html
- The Independent (2017).
- The Independent, (2017).
- The Independent, (2017).
- The Independent, (2017).
- The Independent, (2017).
- Prohibition Partners (2019).
- Prohibition Partners (2019).
- Online article: ‘Why Cannabis Retailers are Good Neighbours.’ Retrieved 31/01/2021 from: https://greenlightapproved.com/marijuana-legalization-studies-show-decreased-crime-rates/
- Reynolds, Peter (2019). Online article: ‘The CBD Market Has Been Built By Small British Businesses. Tt is About To Be Stolen By Government-Backed Big Business.’
- Reynolds, Peter (2019).
- Online article: ‘EU Top Court Rules that CBD is Not a Narcotic.’ (2021).
