Medical cannabis by location

The law on medical cannabis is national and does not vary by address. These pages exist for the two things that genuinely do differ -- who commissions NHS care where you live, and which police force would be involved in a roadside stop -- and they say so plainly rather than implying a local advantage that does not exist.

Choose where you live

Each place links to a hub covering the NHS body and police force there, and from it to a page for each of 27 conditions.

Greater London

• London — five London integrated care boards

South East

• Brighton — NHS Sussex ICB
• Southampton — NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB
• Portsmouth — NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB
• Oxford — NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB
• Reading — NHS Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West ICB
• Milton Keynes — NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB

South West

• Bristol — NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire ICB
• Plymouth — NHS Devon ICB
• Exeter — NHS Devon ICB
• Gloucester — NHS Gloucestershire ICB
• Bournemouth — NHS Dorset ICB
• Swindon — NHS Bath and North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB

East Of England

• Luton — NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB
• Norwich — NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB
• Ipswich — NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB
• Cambridge — NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB
• Peterborough — NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB

West Midlands

• Birmingham — NHS Birmingham and Solihull ICB
• Coventry — NHS Coventry and Warwickshire ICB
• Wolverhampton — NHS Black Country ICB
• Stoke-on-Trent — NHS Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent ICB

East Midlands

• Nottingham — NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB
• Leicester — NHS Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland ICB
• Derby — NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB
• Lincoln — NHS Lincolnshire ICB
• Northampton — NHS Northamptonshire ICB

Yorkshire

• Leeds — NHS West Yorkshire ICB
• Sheffield — NHS South Yorkshire ICB
• Bradford — NHS West Yorkshire ICB
• Huddersfield — NHS West Yorkshire ICB
• York — NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB
• Hull — NHS Humber and North Yorkshire ICB

North West

• Manchester — NHS Greater Manchester ICB
• Liverpool — NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB
• Bolton — NHS Greater Manchester ICB
• Stockport — NHS Greater Manchester ICB
• Preston — NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB
• Blackpool — NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB
• Warrington — NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB
• Chester — NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB

North East

• Newcastle upon Tyne — NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB
• Sunderland — NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB
• Middlesbrough — NHS North East and North Cumbria ICB

South Wales

• Cardiff — Cardiff and Vale University Health Board
• Swansea — Swansea Bay University Health Board

Lothians

• Edinburgh — NHS Lothian

West Of Scotland

• Glasgow — NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde

Northern Ireland

• Belfast — the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust

What differs between the four nations

The law is identical across the UK. Health commissioning is devolved, so who would fund an NHS prescription, and which body advises on medicines, genuinely differ.

Cannabis was rescheduled by regulations made at Westminster, and drugs policy is not devolved. That means eligibility, the specialist-register requirement and the drug-driving defence are the same in Cardiff, Glasgow, Belfast and Birmingham. Anyone telling you the rules are looser somewhere in the UK is wrong.

• England — NHS care is commissioned by 42 integrated care boards, and NICE advises on medicines
• Wales — commissioned by local health boards, with the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group advising rather than NICE directly
• Scotland — commissioned by NHS boards, with the Scottish Medicines Consortium advising and Scottish waiting time standards applying
• Northern Ireland — health and social care run as one integrated system through HSC trusts, with policy set by the Department of Health

Those differences change the route and the wait rather than the answer. NHS prescribing of unlicensed cannabis-based products has stayed in the low hundreds across the whole UK since 2018, and no nation is an outlier in that.

Cross-border referrals are the one place this bites. A referral from a Welsh health board or a Northern Ireland trust to a centre in England needs commissioning agreement first, which adds a step that someone in England does not face.

How to use these pages

Start from your condition, not your city. The condition page tells you whether the evidence supports treatment at all, which is the question that decides the outcome.

Each place hub carries the NHS body and police force for that area, and links to a page for each of the 27 conditions covered. The condition pages repeat the local detail so that a reader arriving from a search does not have to hunt for it.

1. Read the UK-wide page for your condition first, and note which evidence tier it falls into
2. Request your summary care record from your GP practice
3. Check any prospective prescriber on the GMC specialist register
4. Treat a service that never refuses anyone as a warning sign, not a convenience

These pages are generated from a common template over a table of places and conditions. That is worth stating plainly: the local facts in them are real and checked, and the surrounding explanation is shared between them because the law it describes is shared.

What these pages can and cannot tell you

They can tell you who funds and who polices. They cannot tell you that living somewhere makes a prescription more likely, because it does not.

Eligibility for a cannabis-based medicine turns on your diagnosis, what you have already tried, and your medical history. None of those are geographic.

What is genuinely local is the commissioning body behind any NHS route and the territorial police force. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland also differ in which national body advises on medicines and how a specialist referral is routed.

If a clinic's location page implies it has premises near you, check. Most UK medical cannabis care, including this service, is delivered remotely.

Patient guide · Written by the Flora House editorial team · Last reviewed: 23 September 2026