Can you get medical cannabis on the NHS?

The honest answer is that NHS prescribing exists, is real, and is very narrow. Knowing exactly how narrow saves people months of being passed between a GP, a specialist and a waiting list for something that was never going to be available to them.

So is it available on the NHS or not?

Both things are true at once: the law has permitted NHS prescribing since November 2018, and the number of NHS prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis-based products has stayed in the low hundreds nationally. For most conditions people ask about, the practical answer is no.

The 2018 change was widely reported as legalisation, and that reporting created an expectation the system never met. What changed was the schedule cannabis sits in, which made prescribing lawful. It did not create funding, it did not put cannabis into NHS treatment pathways, and it did not oblige any NHS trust to pay for it.

That gap between what is lawful and what is funded is the single thing most worth understanding before you spend time on this.

What can actually be prescribed on the NHS

Three cannabis-based medicines hold a UK marketing authorisation, and NICE recommends each of them for specific, narrow uses. These are ordinary licensed medicines: they have been through clinical trials and regulatory assessment.

If your condition is not on that list, no licensed cannabis-based medicine applies to you, and an NHS prescription would have to be for an unlicensed product. That is where it stops for almost everyone.

What "unlicensed" means, and why nearly all cannabis prescribing falls into that category, is explained in Why is medical cannabis an unlicensed medicine in the UK?

Why the NHS says no to almost everything else

Not obstruction, and not a legal bar. It is that NICE examined the evidence in 2019 and did not find it strong enough to recommend cannabis-based medicines for chronic pain, and NHS funding follows NICE.

NICE guideline NG144 is the document that governs this. It recommends the licensed uses above, and for chronic pain it recommends against offering cannabis-based medicines outside a clinical trial. Chronic pain is the reason most people ask, which is why most people are told no.

For conditions where NG144 says nothing at all, an NHS clinician prescribing an unlicensed cannabis product takes on personal responsibility for that decision, usually needs their trust to agree to fund it, and has no guideline to point to if the decision is questioned. Most decline, and that is a defensible position rather than an unreasonable one. It is worth separating the two obstacles in your own mind: the evidence question, which NICE answers for the whole population, and the funding question, which each trust answers locally. Even where a specialist is willing in principle, the money still has to be agreed, and for unlicensed cannabis products it very rarely is.

Can your GP prescribe it?

No. Only a doctor on the GMC Specialist Register may start a prescription for an unlicensed cannabis-based medicine. That rule applies identically on the NHS and privately, and no amount of asking changes it.

A GP can be involved afterwards. Under a shared-care arrangement a GP may agree to continue prescribing a medicine a specialist started, but shared care is voluntary, uncommon for cannabis-based medicines, and cannot be the route in.

Your GP is still worth telling, for reasons that have nothing to do with permission: see Should you tell your GP about a medical cannabis prescription?

Who may prescribe, and how to confirm that a particular clinician qualifies, is covered in How do you check your specialist is on the GMC register?

Is there free medical cannabis in the UK?

Not as a scheme, a grant or an entitlement. Where a cannabis-based medicine is prescribed on the NHS it is dispensed on the normal NHS basis, with the usual prescription charge and the usual exemptions. Everything else is paid for privately.

Searches for free supply usually lead to one of three things: overseas programmes that do not apply in the UK, CBD wellness products sold as food supplements, which are not medicines and are covered in Prescribed CBD versus shop-bought CBD, or illegal supply.

Anyone offering prescription cannabis without a consultation, without records, or without a named prescriber is not running a clinic. The warning signs are set out in Can I get medical cannabis for myself in the UK?

If the private route applies, what treatment involves

Where the NHS route does not fit, an assessment with a private specialist follows the same clinical logic, and it helps to know the shape of it before deciding whether to pursue it. It begins with an assessment rather than a purchase: the specialist reviews your diagnosis, the treatments you have already tried and how each one went, and your other medicines and risk factors, before deciding whether a prescription is appropriate at all. It can end with a specialist advising that treatment is not suitable for you.

If treatment does go ahead, it normally starts at a low dose and is increased slowly under supervision, so that any benefit and any side effects can be judged as you go. Cannabis-based products are usually supplied either as oils or capsules taken by mouth, or as dried flower for vaporising rather than smoking. Follow-up reviews then check how you are responding, watch for side effects, and adjust the plan — including stopping treatment if it is not helping enough to justify continuing. None of this is a promise of benefit; it is a monitored trial with a review point built in.

How the dose is arrived at is covered in How is a medical cannabis dose decided and adjusted?, and the different formats are compared in How are cannabis-based medicines taken?

Questions worth asking before you start

Whether you are exploring the NHS or the private route, a short list of questions makes any consultation more useful and helps you tell a careful service from a casual one.

• Is my condition one for which a licensed medicine exists on the NHS, or would any prescription be for an unlicensed product?
• Is the prescriber on the GMC Specialist Register, and in which specialty?
• What symptom are we actually trying to change, and how will we measure whether it is working?
• How long is the trial before we review it, and what would make you stop treatment?
• What side effects are likely, and what would they mean for my driving and my job?
• What will this cost over time, and what happens at each repeat prescription?

What to do with this

Nothing on this page decides anything about your own case. What decides it is an assessment by a specialist who has seen your records, and the useful preparation is your diagnosis, the treatments you have already tried, and what happened with each.

If the NHS route does not apply to you, the private route is an assessment, not a purchase, and it can end with a specialist saying no. The consultation itself, and what happens after it, is set out in What is the process to get a medical cannabis prescription?

Patient guide · Written by the Flora House editorial team · Last reviewed: 7 October 2026