Regulatory information

01Why this page exists

Most clinics bury this material, or leave it out and hope nobody asks. We would rather set it out plainly, because the rules explain a great deal about how this service works and why parts of this website are deliberately quiet.

If you want to understand what you are agreeing to before you speak to a doctor, this is the page to read.

02What unlicensed medicine means

A licensed medicine holds a marketing authorisation from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, which means its quality, safety and effectiveness have been assessed for specific uses, and it comes with an approved patient information leaflet.

Most cannabis based products for medicinal use do not hold such an authorisation in the United Kingdom. They are supplied as specials: unlicensed medicines manufactured or imported to meet the special clinical needs of an individual patient, under regulations 167 and 167A of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012.

Unlicensed does not mean untested or unregulated. The product must be made to pharmaceutical standards, the importer or manufacturer must hold the relevant MHRA licence, and every batch is subject to controls. What it does mean is that the responsibility for the decision sits with the prescriber rather than with a licence. That is why a specialist must see you, why they must record their reasoning, and why they must have your informed consent.

03The law: 1 November 2018

On 1 November 2018 cannabis based products for medicinal use were rescheduled from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001. From that date they could lawfully be prescribed in the United Kingdom by specialist doctors on the General Medical Council's Specialist Register.

That change is the reason this clinic can exist. It is also personal to us: our founder's daughter received her prescription in the weeks that followed, and the story of how that happened is set out elsewhere on this site.

Being Schedule 2 means these are controlled drugs. There are strict requirements on prescribing, dispensing, record keeping and storage, and they are the reason we ask you about safe storage and give you a travel letter rather than a shrug.

04Who may prescribe, and why a team reviews your case

Only a doctor on the GMC Specialist Register may initiate a prescription for a cannabis based product for medicinal use. A GP cannot start one, which is the single most common misunderstanding we hear.

Prescribing follows guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, the relevant royal colleges and the GMC's guidance on prescribing unlicensed medicines. In practice a specialist will expect to see that conventional licensed treatments have been tried and have not given you enough benefit, or that you could not tolerate them.

Cases are reviewed by a multidisciplinary team: specialist doctors, a pharmacist and, where relevant, other clinicians. That is not a formality. It provides a second and third opinion on an unlicensed prescribing decision, it catches interactions and contraindications that one clinician might miss, and it keeps decisions consistent between patients rather than dependent on who happened to see you.

05Why we do not name products or publish medication prices

Regulations 279 and 284 of the Human Medicines Regulations 2012 prohibit the advertising of unlicensed medicines, and of prescription only medicines, to the public. The prohibition is broad: it covers naming a product, describing it, showing cannabinoid percentages, listing formats with prices, and any claim that a medicine will produce a particular result.

So we advertise the consultation and the service, and we say nothing about the medicine. On this website you will not find product names, brands, cultivars, strains, THC or CBD percentages, medication prices, efficacy claims, before and after stories or approval rate statistics. You will not find a price comparison against another clinic either: the Advertising Standards Authority ruled against a clinic on that point in January 2026.

This is not evasiveness, and it is not us withholding information from you. Once you are a patient, in a consultation, your clinician will discuss the options that are clinically appropriate for you in full, and the pharmacy will give you exact costs before you commit to anything. If a clinic is publishing medication prices and product menus to the public, it is not being more transparent than us. It is breaking the rules.

Naming conditions is permitted, which is why our conditions pages exist. Naming medicines is not.

06Reporting a side effect: the Yellow Card scheme

Tell your clinician about any side effect, and report it to the MHRA as well. Because these are unlicensed medicines with a shorter safety record than long established licensed products, reporting matters more than usual: the evidence base is built out of reports like yours.

Report online at https://yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk, through the Yellow Card app, or by telephone on 0800 731 6789. You do not need to be certain the medicine caused it, and you do not need a clinician to do it for you. Patients, carers and healthcare professionals can all report.

We report suspected adverse drug reactions ourselves as part of our pharmacovigilance obligations, and we record them in your clinical notes. Reporting a side effect does not put your treatment at risk: it informs the clinical decision about it.

07Registrations and regulators

Our regulatory details are set out below. Anything not yet confirmed is shown as a placeholder rather than guessed at, and this page is updated as each is finalised.

08What we will never do

• Promise you a prescription, or imply that paying for membership secures one.
• Publish medication prices, product names or cannabinoid percentages to the public.
• Claim an approval rate, a success rate or a guaranteed outcome.
• Compare ourselves on price against a named clinic.
• Prescribe without records, without a specialist assessment and without multidisciplinary review.
• Present ourselves as an alternative to urgent or emergency NHS care.
• Invent a rating, a registration number or an award. Where we do not have it yet, this website says so.

09Where to read the rules yourself

• Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, and the 2018 amendment that created Schedule 2 for cannabis based products for medicinal use.
• Human Medicines Regulations 2012, in particular regulations 167 and 167A on specials, and regulations 279 and 284 on advertising.
• GMC guidance on good practice in prescribing and managing medicines and devices.
• NICE guideline NG144, cannabis based medicinal products.
• MHRA guidance on the supply of unlicensed medicinal products.
• Care Quality Commission standards for independent healthcare providers.

All treatment is subject to clinical assessment and eligibility.