If you work in the medical cannabis sector, or you are a patient, you may have noticed a worrying trend in recent weeks. Medical cannabis is in the headlines once again, and the commentary hasn’t been positive.
The coverage follows the tragic death of 34-year-old Oliver Robinson, a young man who lived with depression and anxiety and was prescribed medical cannabis. I offer my sincere condolences to his family and loved ones – no one should endure such a tragedy – but we must also be careful about how we infer conclusions and present them to the public.
Read the articles that bring Oliver’s story to light in isolation, and it’s easy to reach a singular conclusion: the clinic was at fault and medical cannabis is harmful. But consider the clinic’s response alongside the coroner’s full findings, and a more complex and accurate picture emerges, one that points not to a single point of failure, but to a fragmented, inconsistent, and unworkable system.
Medical cannabis – A law introduced without a support system
The legalisation of medical cannabis in the UK was a reactive policy decision. Well-intentioned but introduced without the planning, structure, and cross-sector guidance that accompany major healthcare reforms. It could have been written on the back of a cigarette packet in a pub.
Unlike other legislative changes, no comprehensive framework reached key stakeholders. No clear operational guidance reached healthcare providers. No consistent direction reached law enforcement. No unified direction reached legal, housing, or social care systems.
The result? A patchwork system in which different sectors have been left to interpret the law independently.
Clinics, in particular, have had to navigate this uncertainty while still delivering safe and effective care. They had to adapt their practices to fit into a system that was never fully designed to accommodate them. Only in early 2026, seven years after legalisation, were guidelines issued to police officers on handling patients prescribed medical cannabis. That delay alone speaks volumes about how unprepared the wider system was for cannabis law reform.
A fragmented healthcare landscape
At the centre of the issue sits a fundamental disconnect between private medical cannabis clinics and the NHS.
For the majority of conditions, medical cannabis prescriptions exist only through private providers. Meanwhile, the NHS remains the primary healthcare system for patients. This creates a dual-track model of care that lacks integration, communication, and, at times, mutual recognition.
In practice, this fragmentation manifests in several concerning ways. NHS practitioners may provide limited or no response to communications from private clinics. Patient records remain incomplete or outdated, failing to reflect the full picture of someone’s care. And crucially, co-ordinated care planning between the two systems rarely happens, leaving patients caught in the middle of a disconnect that neither side has fully addressed.
What the coroner’s report says, and what it doesn’t
Several key points in the coroner’s report and subsequent media coverage warrant scrutiny because, as with so much media reporting, the finer details reveal the truth:
Communication failures: The coroner suggested that the clinic did not adequately engage with other healthcare services. The clinic’s response, though, shows that multiple attempts were made to communicate. This aligns with what many professionals in the field report: outreach to NHS counterparts is met with silence. This is a failure of integration.
As one consultant said to me recently: “Medical cannabis clinics are a dirty little secret that the NHS does not want to share”.
Summary Care Records: Concerns emerged about the use of an outdated Summary Care Record. While clinicians should access the most current information, it is important to recognise the limitations of the system.
Summary Care Records are only accurate when the data entered into them reflects reality, and they vary from practice to practice. In many cases, they do not reflect that a patient is receiving private medical cannabis treatment. This is a systemic data issue, not solely a clinical one.
The report fails to highlight that the clinic registered with the Care Quality Commission, and the specialist consultant registered with the General Medical Council, as per protocol, would have taken extensive information from the patient prior to prescribing. Not only best practice, but the norm.
This remains an area where improvements can and should be made. Greater emphasis on real-time data access and shared record-keeping would benefit all parties involved.
Reported cannabis costs: Media reports have suggested that the patient’s cannabis use exceeded £1,000 per month. Based on my seven years of experience as a pharmacist working in this sector, this figure is highly unusual.
Typical monthly prescription costs range from approximately £40 to £550, with an average closer to £170. Was some of this expenditure related to the illicit cannabis use also highlighted in the coroner’s report?
If so, this introduces a separate and significant risk factor. Illicit cannabis is unregulated, potentially contaminated, and not subject to medical oversight. Its use can compromise both safety and treatment outcomes.
Consultant competence: Questions also arose about the consultant’s experience. It is important to clarify that consultants are highly trained specialists who operate within defined areas of expertise.
Medicine is not always siloed; overlaps exist across disciplines such as pain management, psychiatry, and neurology. Consultants are trained to manage this complexity and are professionally obligated to work within their competence. Suggesting otherwise without clear evidence risks undermining trust in the profession as a whole.
What media coverage gets wrong: Cannabis vs Medical Cannabis
A recurring issue in media coverage is the conflation of cannabis with medical cannabis. This is a critical, dangerous misunderstanding.
Cannabis obtained from the illicit market is unregulated, untested, and sold without any medical oversight. There are no guarantees regarding its composition, safety, or efficacy.
In contrast, medical cannabis undergoes stringent quality controls. Producers manufacture it to pharmaceutical standards. They test it for contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, antimicrobials and yeast content, including Ecoli, which can only be found in faecal matter. Specialist doctors prescribe it via a clinic regulated to the same standards as NHS hospitals and GP clinics. The supply chain faces regulation from the UK medicines regulator, the MHRA, to the same standards as “normal” medication. Licensed pharmacies dispense it under the supervision of qualified pharmacists from a General Pharmacy Council regulated pharmacy.
These are not comparable products. Treating them as such leads to misinformation and, ultimately, poor policy and clinical decisions. When headlines blur this distinction, they do harm, perpetuating the stigma that prevents proper integration of medical cannabis into mainstream healthcare.
What happens when the system works, and what reform looks like
In my seven years as a pharmacist working with medical cannabis, I have seen many patients experience meaningful improvements in their quality of life. For some, it has reduced chronic pain. For others, it has alleviated anxiety or enabled restorative sleep, something that is profoundly important and often underestimated
This does not mean medical cannabis suits everyone. It doesn’t. But for those who benefit, it can be life-changing. What we need now is not further polarisation, but balance.
National media reporting should reflect both the risks and the benefits. Regulatory bodies should focus on creating clear, unified guidance. And most importantly, the healthcare system must evolve to support integrated, patient-centred care, regardless of whether treatment is delivered through the NHS or private providers.
If one clear takeaway emerges from this tragedy, it is this: the system must improve. We need:
- Better integration between the NHS and private providers
- Mandatory updating and sharing of patient records
- Clear national guidelines across all sectors
- Improved education for healthcare professionals and the public
- Greater transparency in reporting, both positive and negative outcomes
Blame alone will not prevent future tragedies, but a reform of the systems just might.
A final lesson from history
A note of caution to those quick to dismiss or condemn emerging treatments, such as cannabis, based on early reports.
In the early 1990s, while working as the lead pharmacist at a forensic psychiatric establishment in Essex, I was involved in a near drug recall for an antidepressant. This followed the publication of an article in an American medical journal suggesting a link between the medication and suicide attempts.
Within a few months, researchers overturned that conclusion. It became clear that the patients involved had suicidal ideation prior to being prescribed the medication. The initial findings confused correlation with causation.
The drug returned to market and became one of the world’s best-known and most widely prescribed antidepressants: Prozac.
The lesson here is not to dismiss all concerns, but to examine them carefully, contextualise them, and understand them before drawing conclusions.
Medical progress depends on exactly that balance: caution, yes. But also perspective.
2 comments
What would also be interesting is if he received all the medication from the same clinic.
The wisdom contained in the article cuts both ways; communication is also dire between each medical cannabis clinic. I’ve heard of people being members of multiple clinics, therefore ordering from both.
This article doesn’t really address cannabis, it’s about failings in NHS administration. We know that already. The NHS is far, far too big and unwieldy ever to be managed successfully.
Address the same issue with SSRI prescribing. These are licensed medicines and there’s not one but hundreds of cases of suicide associated with patients prescribed them.