Patient Access.

Due to medicinal cannabis being both a controlled drug and an unlicensed medication, prescriptions are currently only available privately.

As an unlicensed medicine, medicinal cannabis is also subject to GST.

The costs to the patient are consequently significant, averaging several hundred pounds per month to over a thousand pounds in some cases - for required medication.

While we hope that medicinal cannabis products will in future be included on the Prescribed List and funded from the Health Insurance Fund (as with other medicines), this is ultimately a clinical decision and not a political one. Such medications may well also require the approval of NICE and the MHRA before consideration by the Pharmaceutical Benefit Advisory Committee.

With approximately 3,000 private medicinal cannabis patients, Jersey likely has one of the greatest number of patients per capita in Europe, if not the World.

A recent Freedom of Information request has revealed that 543kg of cannabis flower and 103 litres of cannabis oil were imported into Jersey in 2021. This equates to a value of approximately £6 million, plus around £300,000 in GST charges.

Despite this significant demand, Government, Scrutiny and the Assembly as a whole have kept the issue of medicinal cannabis use in Jersey at arm's length during the current term.

While it is not currently feasible to accommodate all medicinal cannabis patients by way of a publicly funded mechanism, such a pathway should be made available to patients where a consultant considers it clinically appropriate to do so.

A possible short-term solution to the current impasse may lie with the Individual Funding Request process "for access to treatments [recommended by hospital consultants] which are not routinely funded at public expense."