Holy Smoke

[SPLINE]

Apparently only TEN doctors, all private, are responsible for prescribing more than half of the so-called medicinal cannabis in Britain. The NHS prescribes relatively little.

The madness of using cannabis to treat mental health

Some days I wonder if I’m going mad – and you don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that’s not a good sign. I work in a specialist NHS service for people experiencing first episode psychosis – young people at their most vulnerable, teetering on the edge of severe and enduring mental illness...

spectator.com

It is being prescribed for fun, not for medicinal use, and is simply cash for prescriptions. I want to know who the ten doctors are.

 

[Brigadier]

Apparently only TEN doctors, all private, are responsible for prescribing more than half of the so-called medicinal cannabis in Britain. The NHS prescribes relatively little.

The madness of using cannabis to treat mental health

Some days I wonder if I’m going mad – and you don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know that’s not a good sign. I work in a specialist NHS service for people experiencing first episode psychosis – young people at their most vulnerable, teetering on the edge of severe and enduring mental illness...

spectator.com

It is being prescribed for fun, not for medicinal use, and is simply cash for prescriptions. I want to know who the ten doctors are.

Just like the blokes HWM knows then, the ones who acquire PEDs for usage illegally

 

[Odds]

Recent Freedom of Information (FOI) data from the NHS Business Services Authority has prompted sensational headlines about a sharp rise in private prescriptions for medical cannabis in the UK. On the surface, the figures look dramatic. Between 2023 and 2024, prescriptions more than doubled, rising from around 283,000 to 659,000.

But these numbers need context. Without it, they risk being misunderstood.

This article explains what the data does and does not show, why prescribing has increased, and what this means for patients, clinicians and the NHS.

 

[Odds]

Medical cannabis is usually prescribed as an ongoing treatment. Patients are reviewed regularly and receive repeat prescriptions, often monthly or every six to eight weeks. One patient may therefore receive multiple prescriptions over a year.

If we use a cautious average of around eight prescriptions per patient per year, 659,000 prescriptions would equate to roughly 82,000 patients. That aligns with wider estimates suggesting there are around 80,000 to 90,000 medical cannabis patients across the UK. In population terms, this remains a very small group, especially when compared with prescribing volumes for many other specialist medicines.

Further information is available @ T21, the largest non-profit led medical cannabis patient registry that ran from 2020 to the end of 2024. (Data collection for this project has concluded. )

 

[Odds]

Just like the blokes HWM knows then, the ones who acquire PEDs for usage illegally

As usual, splineless is selecting data to suit his bias without providing context for the growth of medicinal cannabis in the UK since 2018.

 

[SPLINE]

It is being prescribed for fun, not for medicinal use, and is simply cash for prescriptions. Cannabis is not a medicine - it is the cause of many medical, and other, problems.

 

[Odds]

In 2021, the UNODC estimated that 219 million people, 4.3% of the global adult population, had used cannabis [1]. Its nonmedical use has been prohibited under international drug control treaties since 1961. Cannabis consumption remains the highest in North America, where 17.4% of the population aged between 15 and 64 used it in the past year [2]. Prevalence rates are lower in Oceania (12.2%), West and Central Africa (9.7%) and Europe (7.8%) [2] with considerable variations between countries within these regions.

The past 25 years have seen different policies towards cannabis use for medical or recreational purposes [3]. In the United States and Canada cannabis legalization has been accompanied by increases in the number of regular users who consume increasingly higher doses of tetrahydrocannabinol (the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis) [4, 5]. The higher potency of cannabis products [6], diverse cannabis formulations and modes of administration (e.g., edibles, beverages, vaping, and dabbing) have raised concerns about the adverse public health impacts of cannabis legalization particularly when there is little or no regulatory oversight [7].

The National Library of Medicine provides more data suggesting regulated sales of cannabis with the psychotropic ingredient (CBD) removed is an efficacious method of reducing illegal consumption. Further research is ongoing but the requisite conditions for wider acceptance in society remains a long way off so long as opponents constantly muddy the waters with misleading information.

 

[Highway Man]

I have some pain killing cream for when I did my back in. It had a high content of cannabis as it was advertised as a cannabis product. Cost me £80 and it was no better than deep heat.

 

[pete01]

I have some pain killing cream for when I did my back in. It had a high content of cannabis as it was advertised as a cannabis product. Cost me £80 and it was no better than deep heat.

Do you smoke it?

 

[Highway Man]

Do you smoke it?

It kept going out so I drank it instead

 

[pete01]

It kept going out so I drank it instead

Oh(TM)

 

[Highway Man]

Oh(TM)

Exactly [TM]

 

[JohnD]

It is being prescribed for fun, not for medicinal use

I wonder if Spline the Racist made that up himself, or if he read it on a toilet wall, or on some weirdo website.

 

[Londoner2]

Tooting Nuns n the Holy Smoke.