Campaigners say being NICE just doesn’t cut it.

Another year, another step forward for plant-based medicine in the UK.

Following November 2018’s legalisation of medical cannabis, two new cannabinoid-based medicines have been approved for use on the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Whether this is one giant leap for canna-kind or a short trip to nowheresville depends very much on your perspective.

If you, or a loved one, has multiple sclerosis then Sativex, a THC/CBD-based oral spray to help ease muscle-stiffness, might just be the NHS prescription you have been waiting for. Good News. However, the guidelines stop short of allowing prescriptions for pain relief, a major symptom of the condition. Not so great news. If you are the parent of a child diagnosed with Dravet or Lennox-Gastaut syndromes (two rare forms of epilepsy), then Epidyolex being ‘greenlit’ should be welcome news indeed.

Indie-Rose is a five-year-old girl from Suffolk who suffers from epilepsy. For over a year her Mum, Tannine Montgomery has been giving her Bedrolite, a Dutch government-approved THC/CBD-based treatment and it has had a ‘significant’ positive effect on her symptoms. Talking to Anglia ITV News, she said, “After many months of good to very good results for our children, we are understandably not willing to change to a different medicine, which some have already used with poor results.” Understandable indeed. THC-based medicines are not included in the new guidelines, so families like the Montgomery’s will have to keep paying privately for expensive treatment from elsewhere. This cannot be right… can it?

It appears that NICE’s guidelines will restrict sufferers’ choices and potentially even ‘downgrade’ their treatment, and an opportunity to open up access to treatment has been lost. End Our Pain campaigner Millie Hinton told The Guardian that this was “a massive missed opportunity… It is particularly devastating that there is no positive recommendation that the NHS should allow prescribing of whole-plant medical cannabis.”

Reaction to the news from the medical profession has also been qualified. Medical Director of The Epilepsy Society, Professor Ley Sander believes “it will bring hope to many families” but also noted that these treatments are “not a magic bullet.” Professor David Nutt, a Neuropsychopharmacologist, from Twenty21, a project aiming to gather data on 20,000 people using cannabis medicines, told The Times that “the door is now opening to plant-based cannabis medicines and that is exciting.” But then added that local NHS commissioning groups might yet poo-poo it due to lack of resources.

Not quite the “momentous occasion for UK patients and families” that Chris Tovey, COO of GWP claimed it to be. The company enjoys a unique UK license to grow medical cannabis and have twenty-three football fields-worth of the stuff, according to Vice. They are the largest exporter of medicinal cannabis in the world and even enjoy close links to the Tory party. Their largest shareholder, Capital Group, employ a certain Phillip May. Yup, the very same bin-emptying, dull-as-ditchwater hubbie of ex-PM Theresa. No doubt some will see the decision as a champagne moment, but most will see it as a cloudy half of bitter.

So where are we right now? The Times claims that Epidyolex will help around 9,000 people across the country affected by the two named epilepsy syndromes. According to the MS Society, there are around 100,000 people affected with that condition and Sativex will help them, albeit sadly not in relieving their pain. A YouGov survey for the Centre for Medical Cannabis concluded that illegal cannabis is being used medically by 1.4 million Brits. That’s a lot of pain directly benefiting drug dealers. So, it appears that things are moving in the right direction, but clearly more needs to be done, and quickly.