Dr. Shanna Marrinan is Chair of the Cannabis Industry Council Research Committee, and Clinical Director at 4C Labs. She is also an Independent Consultant, formerly at LSHTM, Parliament, and UCL, and continues to lecture at IES. She was previously a research fellow at the Novel Psychoactive Substances Unit, UH, and has published internationally on issues of drugs policy, toxicology and pharmacology. She is also a member of the Drug Science Medical Psychedelics Working Group.

What's stopping NHS prescribing of medical cannabis? An economic evaluation of medical cannabis

Medical cannabis has been legal in the UK since 2018, but to date, only a handful of prescriptions have been issued by the NHS, while the number of private prescriptions is growing rapidly. A number of barriers to wider prescribing exist, which we'll look at in this talk. One of these barriers is the perceived costliness of medical cannabis – Governing bodies have expressed concern about the costs associated with prescribing cannabis, especially given the huge numbers of potentially eligible patients. Our early economic modelling responds to this concern by assessing the cost effectiveness of NHS prescribing for chronic pain.  Using data from T21 patients and other sources, we found that despite high consultation costs, and high fulfilment costs, overall medical cannabis emerged as more cost effective compared to other treatments for chronic pain. This was largely because it was more effective, and therefore less resource use was seen across other areas of the NHS. Medical cannabis was associated with lower pain scores, higher quality of life scores, less use of other prescription pain medications, and less time taken off work.