Oral answer (Lords) on Cannabis: Medicinal Use - Mar 4

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that patients in need of medicinal cannabis are able to access such treatment on prescription.

My Lords, government officials have been working with colleagues across healthcare and the wider system to ensure that patients can access medicinal cannabis where appropriate. Clinical guidance has been issued by the Royal College of Physicians, the British Paediatric Neurology Association and the Association of British Neurologists. Specialist doctors will consider this before prescribing, but we are clear that the decision to prescribe should be for individual clinicians to make in partnership with patients and their families.

I thank the Minister for her reply. She will be aware that only about four people have received a prescription for medical cannabis since it became legal on 1 November last year. Doctors have had no training in prescribing cannabis. They need to know the contents, dosages, side-effects and everything else about medical cannabis products. The pressure on doctors with desperate patients whose standard medications are not working or are causing unacceptable side-effects is intense. Doctors urgently need government help. Will the Minister ensure that the medical director of the NHS makes specialist doctors aware of the new guidelines to be launched later this month by the Medical Cannabis Clinicians’ Society, and of the 12-module online training course already available from the Academy of Medical Cannabis?

I thank the noble Baroness for her question. This is a challenging area, and the evidence base is still developing. However, the Government are working hard to ensure that awareness is increasing, which is why we have asked NICE to develop guidance to be released later this year and have asked HEE to develop a training package to increase knowledge and awareness among health professionals. It is also why officials are working closely with suppliers and importers to ensure that prescriptions are filled when they are given. We understand that there is work to do on this issue and will continue to do so.

Will the Minister comment on the issues illustrated in the predicament of a person who has been prescribed the cannabinoid dronabinol, branded as Bedrocan, which is the only medication that has proved effective for her following the failure of 35 different medications previously prescribed to relieve her chronic pain from cervical and lumbar spondylosis? Given that the Chief Medical Officer stated last summer that there is conclusive evidence that cannabis-based products are effective for certain medical conditions, why is this patient still forced to travel to Holland every three months to obtain the medication that her consultant considers essential for her, and why does confusion still reign over licensing procedures? Will the Minister meet me and the person I have mentioned to see if she can introduce some more sense into these arrangements?

I thank the noble Lord for his question. I am very sorry to hear about the situation he raises and will be very happy to meet him. As far as I can see, there should be no reason for the situation he has outlined. It is up to clinicians to prescribe as they see fit under the guidelines that have been issued.

My Lords, when the Chief Medical Officer recommended that cannabis medicines be rescheduled, she produced a report showing that the most rigorous regulatory authorities in the world—those in the US, Australia and Ireland, as well as the World Health Organization—had strong evidence of the benefits of cannabis-based medicines for people with epilepsy. In light of that, it is completely unacceptable that only four licences have been granted. Why are UK patients being deprived of these safe and effective medicines which have fewer side-effects than some licensed pharmaceuticals, such as sodium valproate?

I do not accept the characterisation that the noble Baroness has just given. UK patients are not being denied access to these medications; they are able to access medication via prescription from a doctor who is on the specialist medical register. The Government have acted fast on the review of the best clinical evidence and we are going further with forthcoming NICE guidelines and a Health Education England training package to raise even more awareness.

What troubles me about the Minister’s answer is that NHS England’s guidance says that medical cannabis can be provided only where all,

“other treatment options have been exhausted”,

and where there is, “published evidence of benefit”. We have heard lots of evidence of the benefit this afternoon but we are right to be worried about the research that is allowing that to happen. Why is it not happening quickly enough? Can the Minister describe what level of opiate addiction and which severe side-effects of other medication can be tolerated before medical cannabis is prescribed?

The evidence base for the quality and effectiveness of these products is limited; it is developing. This is why the Government have asked the MHRA to call for a proposal to enhance our knowledge of these medications. However, we have not waited for this; we have introduced a route via unlicensed medications which allows for doctors who are on the specialist register to prescribe for patients. This is the right route; these are the doctors who will understand the conditions mostly likely to benefit from prescription and who are able to make a judgment about the safety and efficacy of medicinal cannabis. It is the route usually used for unlicensed medications and already set up by the MHRA. We want to see more licensed products in this route, however; we call upon industry to invest in more trials and publish the results and full underpinning data to build our knowledge so that more patients are able to benefit.

The majority of those guilty of violent terrorist crimes in this country are found to be heavy users of cannabis. When one looks at violent crime outside of terrorism, it seems again—although I do not know the details—that very often the people involved are heavy users of skunk—not the kind of cannabis that we are talking about but the liquid stuff. Are the Government looking at the relationship between the use of these really strong types of cannabis and violent crime, to see whether anything should be done about it?

The medicines we are speaking about are not skunk. The noble Lord is right that all medicines carry risk, but they can also be beneficial. That is why we have introduced a route to allow medicinal cannabis to be used for those conditions where it will be beneficial. The change in the law allows strict access by specialist doctors who, in making the decisions to prescribe, can ensure that the benefit outweighs the harm to the patient and that the restrictions are line with advice from the ACMD. Any further concerns around the kinds of drugs that the noble Lord is talking about are still strictly controlled by the Home Office and by policing.