Scrutiny of the UK’s medical cannabis industry has rarely, if ever, been so acute since it was legalised in 2018.
In March, the largest meta-analysis of cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders to date was published in The Lancet Psychiatry, thrusting medical cannabis into the global media’s spotlight like never before.
Questions surrounding medical cannabis and mental health treatment, and the prescribing practices of the industry at large, have barely left pages of the UK’s national media outlets since.
Some believe this scrutiny is long overdue for a sector which has, despite the best efforts of many clinics, flown largely under the radar of the majority of Britons. Others believe it is just the latest remnant of prohibitionist rhetoric from the British press.
Graham Woodward, a registered mental health nurse with decades of experience navigating NHS standards, CQC inspections, and MHRA regulations, sees it differently. Now Chief Medical Officer at Releaf, one of the UK’s largest private cannabis clinics, he views the current moment not as a threat, but as an opportunity – a chance to demonstrate that medical cannabis, prescribed responsibly with psychiatric expertise at its core, can and does meet the same evidence and governance standards as any other medication.
“I beg, literally beg, anyone to come and look at our data and our practice,” Woodward tells Business of Cannabis. “We’re an open book.”
Woodward’s path to medical cannabis was built on a foundation of dual expertise, understanding both the inner workings of UK healthcare regulation and the needs of patients with complex mental health conditions.
As a registered mental health nurse, he spent years working in psychiatric care, including in the specialist field of drug addiction. He remains a Specialist Advisor to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), giving him an insider’s view of how healthcare quality is assessed and enforced across both NHS and private sectors.
His path into medical cannabis was shaped by the clinical rigour and psychiatric complexity that critics accuse the industry of overlooking, including six years at Indivior, a company specialising in opioid addiction treatment.
When Woodward joined Releaf as Chief Operating Officer in January 2024, he built a team of 55 prescribers, none of whom had previous cannabis prescribing experience.
“We don’t have any of the legacy prescribers, the connoisseurs as they would see themselves,” Woodward explains. “We have people who came to us wanting to learn about cannabis, and have stuck with us because our governance levels are superior, really, to the NHS.”
Among those 55 are four consultant psychiatrists and three psychiatric nurses, ensuring that psychiatric expertise is placed at the foundations of the clinic’s operations.
Graham Woodward, Chief Medical Officer, Releaf
Any patient where psychiatry is identified as a concern, even where the primary presenting condition is pain or another physical complaint, is rerouted to a psychiatric specialist before any prescription is issued.
“We’ve never deviated from good practice and standards,” Woodward says. “Any changes that come through the CQC or around prescribing practice do not concern me.”
Several NHS consultants have left full-time NHS roles to work with Releaf, he suggests, drawn by its clinical governance structure, multiple multidisciplinary team meetings held daily, designated body status for medical revalidation (meaning doctors don’t need NHS employment to maintain registration), and direct integration with NHS Spine for accessing patient records.
The rigour extends to prescribing decisions. As Business of Cannabis reported recently, between 30% and 40% of patients who complete triage and reach a consultation still do not receive a prescription.
“The most important thing is that no one pushes,” he says. “If you look at all the other clinics that go to 30%, 33% THC, they have not grown because the audience going to those are people who are potentially in and out of the recreational illicit market. We don’t follow that.”
Releaf has invested in licenses for 15 validated outcome measurement tools, including GAD-7 for anxiety, EQ-5D for quality of life, BPI for pain, and PHQ-9 for depression, at a cost of approximately £25,000 annually.
“We invested in this because we want the data,” Woodward says.
The lack of clinical evidence argument, repeatedly cited by healthcare professionals in the NHS and its governing bodies as a barrier to integration, is something Woodward and his team at Releaf are actively working to mitigate.
“Professor Murray has never done a head-to-head,” Woodward says, referring to the prominent psychiatrist whose warnings about cannabis and psychosis have featured in recent coverage.
Regarding the ubiquitous coverage of the Lancet study, he argues that this is a flawed methodology for drawing definitive conclusions on cannabis efficacy.
“We all know in a meta-analysis you can ask whatever you want and it will give you that answer. It’s completely different to the real-world evidence we have right now using validated tools.”
“Why doesn’t someone want to come and ask for the data? We would happily share it with anyone who wants to see it.”
Beyond clinical delivery, Woodward has taken on an advocacy role to help prepare the ground for the sector to scale considerably.
The clinic has conducted education workshops with police forces, including a recent session at Glass Pharms’ facility for Warwickshire Police, and is now working with a range of organisations where patient discrimination commonly occurs.
These include the SIA (Security Industry Authority, responsible for door security at venues), social housing providers, Border Force, and ACAS, the workplace dispute resolution service.
“The two biggest issues coming up through our support line are workplace discrimination and drug testing,” Woodward explains. “You can turn up to work with whatever drugs are on the BNF, but if you turn up with prescribed cannabis, potentially you may be dismissed, suspended, or marginalised.”
“We spoke to the heads of all these organisations, and they’ve all said they’ve had no direct feedback that there’s been any concerns. But we’re only at the start, if you think there’s potentially two to three million patients, why not get ahead of the game?”
The response, he says, has been universally positive. “Every single one has been very keen to produce videos, posters, and PDFs they can send to their staff. It’s very positive.”
Talk among industry operators of a looming MHRA crackdown has, for many, been a sword of Damocles hanging over the sector for some time. For Woodward, it is a welcome intervention.
“The MHRA is tightening up on funky names, I hope that really helps clean up the industry,” he says.
He supports the regulator’s push towards active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) rather than finished products, restrictions on high-THC sublingual oils (100mg/ml or higher), and crackdowns on vapes containing 80-90% THC that risk ‘accidental misuse’.
“If partners we’re working with can’t adhere to MHRA rules and regulations, they shouldn’t be on our formulary in the first place,” Woodward says. Approximately 50% of Releaf’s formulary comes from Glass Pharms, the UK’s largest domestic cultivator, with the remainder carefully sourced internationally.
As such, Releaf restricts the THC ratio for all its products and patients at 25%. For younger patients, this THC ratio cap is even stricter, and patients under the age of 21 are limited to 30g per month, while those under 25 are limited to 60g per month.
While welcoming regulatory intervention, Woodward argues that cannabis is still held to higher standards than almost any other medical treatment.
Releaf is the only cannabis clinic participating in DICE (Digital Integrated Care Excellence), a monthly forum that includes the MHRA, CQC, Advertising Standards Authority and GPhC, alongside major pharmacy chains like Lloyds.
“At the moment it’s all focused on GLP-1s – Ozempic, Wegovy, all those weight loss medications,” Woodward explains. “I’m constantly saying to the group, why can you get a GLP-1 so easily when it could cause pancreatic issues, gallbladder issues, and yet if you try to get a cannabis prescription, you have to jump through hoops?”
This widespread scrutiny and potential regulatory reform will be largely informed by an incoming ACMD review.
“I submitted nearly 13,000 words to the ACMD,” he says, though he’s cautious about the outcome given the focus on psychiatric risk rather than patient benefit.
His offer to critics remains open. Come and examine the data, the governance, and the patient outcomes.
“We don’t need to be unscrupulous to bring in patients,” Woodward says. “We do very well for patient acquisition by doing things properly.”
The post Bring It On: Meet the Cannabis CMO Welcoming Scrutiny With Open Arms appeared first on Business of Cannabis.
Continue reading...
In March, the largest meta-analysis of cannabinoids as a primary treatment for mental disorders to date was published in The Lancet Psychiatry, thrusting medical cannabis into the global media’s spotlight like never before.
Questions surrounding medical cannabis and mental health treatment, and the prescribing practices of the industry at large, have barely left pages of the UK’s national media outlets since.
Some believe this scrutiny is long overdue for a sector which has, despite the best efforts of many clinics, flown largely under the radar of the majority of Britons. Others believe it is just the latest remnant of prohibitionist rhetoric from the British press.
Graham Woodward, a registered mental health nurse with decades of experience navigating NHS standards, CQC inspections, and MHRA regulations, sees it differently. Now Chief Medical Officer at Releaf, one of the UK’s largest private cannabis clinics, he views the current moment not as a threat, but as an opportunity – a chance to demonstrate that medical cannabis, prescribed responsibly with psychiatric expertise at its core, can and does meet the same evidence and governance standards as any other medication.
“I beg, literally beg, anyone to come and look at our data and our practice,” Woodward tells Business of Cannabis. “We’re an open book.”
From psychiatric nursing to cannabis leadership
Woodward’s path to medical cannabis was built on a foundation of dual expertise, understanding both the inner workings of UK healthcare regulation and the needs of patients with complex mental health conditions.
As a registered mental health nurse, he spent years working in psychiatric care, including in the specialist field of drug addiction. He remains a Specialist Advisor to the Care Quality Commission (CQC), giving him an insider’s view of how healthcare quality is assessed and enforced across both NHS and private sectors.
His path into medical cannabis was shaped by the clinical rigour and psychiatric complexity that critics accuse the industry of overlooking, including six years at Indivior, a company specialising in opioid addiction treatment.
When Woodward joined Releaf as Chief Operating Officer in January 2024, he built a team of 55 prescribers, none of whom had previous cannabis prescribing experience.
“We don’t have any of the legacy prescribers, the connoisseurs as they would see themselves,” Woodward explains. “We have people who came to us wanting to learn about cannabis, and have stuck with us because our governance levels are superior, really, to the NHS.”
Among those 55 are four consultant psychiatrists and three psychiatric nurses, ensuring that psychiatric expertise is placed at the foundations of the clinic’s operations.
Graham Woodward, Chief Medical Officer, Releaf
Any patient where psychiatry is identified as a concern, even where the primary presenting condition is pain or another physical complaint, is rerouted to a psychiatric specialist before any prescription is issued.
“We’ve never deviated from good practice and standards,” Woodward says. “Any changes that come through the CQC or around prescribing practice do not concern me.”
Several NHS consultants have left full-time NHS roles to work with Releaf, he suggests, drawn by its clinical governance structure, multiple multidisciplinary team meetings held daily, designated body status for medical revalidation (meaning doctors don’t need NHS employment to maintain registration), and direct integration with NHS Spine for accessing patient records.
The rigour extends to prescribing decisions. As Business of Cannabis reported recently, between 30% and 40% of patients who complete triage and reach a consultation still do not receive a prescription.
“The most important thing is that no one pushes,” he says. “If you look at all the other clinics that go to 30%, 33% THC, they have not grown because the audience going to those are people who are potentially in and out of the recreational illicit market. We don’t follow that.”
Outcome-led, data-driven
Releaf has invested in licenses for 15 validated outcome measurement tools, including GAD-7 for anxiety, EQ-5D for quality of life, BPI for pain, and PHQ-9 for depression, at a cost of approximately £25,000 annually.
“We invested in this because we want the data,” Woodward says.
The lack of clinical evidence argument, repeatedly cited by healthcare professionals in the NHS and its governing bodies as a barrier to integration, is something Woodward and his team at Releaf are actively working to mitigate.
“Professor Murray has never done a head-to-head,” Woodward says, referring to the prominent psychiatrist whose warnings about cannabis and psychosis have featured in recent coverage.
Regarding the ubiquitous coverage of the Lancet study, he argues that this is a flawed methodology for drawing definitive conclusions on cannabis efficacy.
“We all know in a meta-analysis you can ask whatever you want and it will give you that answer. It’s completely different to the real-world evidence we have right now using validated tools.”
“Why doesn’t someone want to come and ask for the data? We would happily share it with anyone who wants to see it.”
Building infrastructure for scale
Beyond clinical delivery, Woodward has taken on an advocacy role to help prepare the ground for the sector to scale considerably.
The clinic has conducted education workshops with police forces, including a recent session at Glass Pharms’ facility for Warwickshire Police, and is now working with a range of organisations where patient discrimination commonly occurs.
These include the SIA (Security Industry Authority, responsible for door security at venues), social housing providers, Border Force, and ACAS, the workplace dispute resolution service.
“The two biggest issues coming up through our support line are workplace discrimination and drug testing,” Woodward explains. “You can turn up to work with whatever drugs are on the BNF, but if you turn up with prescribed cannabis, potentially you may be dismissed, suspended, or marginalised.”
“We spoke to the heads of all these organisations, and they’ve all said they’ve had no direct feedback that there’s been any concerns. But we’re only at the start, if you think there’s potentially two to three million patients, why not get ahead of the game?”
The response, he says, has been universally positive. “Every single one has been very keen to produce videos, posters, and PDFs they can send to their staff. It’s very positive.”
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Welcoming regulation as a competitive advantage
Talk among industry operators of a looming MHRA crackdown has, for many, been a sword of Damocles hanging over the sector for some time. For Woodward, it is a welcome intervention.
“The MHRA is tightening up on funky names, I hope that really helps clean up the industry,” he says.
He supports the regulator’s push towards active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) rather than finished products, restrictions on high-THC sublingual oils (100mg/ml or higher), and crackdowns on vapes containing 80-90% THC that risk ‘accidental misuse’.
“If partners we’re working with can’t adhere to MHRA rules and regulations, they shouldn’t be on our formulary in the first place,” Woodward says. Approximately 50% of Releaf’s formulary comes from Glass Pharms, the UK’s largest domestic cultivator, with the remainder carefully sourced internationally.
As such, Releaf restricts the THC ratio for all its products and patients at 25%. For younger patients, this THC ratio cap is even stricter, and patients under the age of 21 are limited to 30g per month, while those under 25 are limited to 60g per month.
The regulatory double standard
While welcoming regulatory intervention, Woodward argues that cannabis is still held to higher standards than almost any other medical treatment.
Releaf is the only cannabis clinic participating in DICE (Digital Integrated Care Excellence), a monthly forum that includes the MHRA, CQC, Advertising Standards Authority and GPhC, alongside major pharmacy chains like Lloyds.
“At the moment it’s all focused on GLP-1s – Ozempic, Wegovy, all those weight loss medications,” Woodward explains. “I’m constantly saying to the group, why can you get a GLP-1 so easily when it could cause pancreatic issues, gallbladder issues, and yet if you try to get a cannabis prescription, you have to jump through hoops?”
This widespread scrutiny and potential regulatory reform will be largely informed by an incoming ACMD review.
“I submitted nearly 13,000 words to the ACMD,” he says, though he’s cautious about the outcome given the focus on psychiatric risk rather than patient benefit.
His offer to critics remains open. Come and examine the data, the governance, and the patient outcomes.
“We don’t need to be unscrupulous to bring in patients,” Woodward says. “We do very well for patient acquisition by doing things properly.”
The post Bring It On: Meet the Cannabis CMO Welcoming Scrutiny With Open Arms appeared first on Business of Cannabis.
Continue reading...
