As some the world’s largest and fastest-growing medical cannabis markets wrestle with the fallout of their runaway success, the UK’s market has shown consistent, sustainable growth over the last two years.
Though less explosive than markets like Germany or Australia, it has continued to evolve in a more controlled manner, enabling it to largely avoid the scrutiny and intervention that have accompanied rapid expansion elsewhere.
Numerous UK operators we’ve spoken to over the last month have told us that demand is higher than ever, and that the market appears to be in the best health they’ve seen for years.
In a recent interview with Grow Group’s Co-Founder and CEO, Ben Langley, he said that the current ‘underlying strength of the market’ was a key part of the company’s recent decision to acquire Avida Medical and forge its own path.
Elsewhere, Wellford’s Chief Business Officer, Joshua Roberts, suggested that his recently revamped business (which we’ll be covering in more detail in the coming days), was experiencing consistent double-digit month-on-month growth, and is hiring to keep up with demand.
Now, new figures from both the NHS and the CQC (CQC) have provided official data to support this anecdotal evidence.
Despite NHS England telling Business of Cannabis earlier this month that new information regarding its long-anticipated patient registry will be released by the end of the year, official data on the actual size of the UK market remains elusive, with Freedom of Information requests providing intermittent snapshots.
The last such FOI response was published in February this year, showing that over 300,000 items were prescribed between April 2023-24, more than double that of the previous 12 months.
In response to a fresh data request made public over the last few days, we now have a much clearer picture of private prescription numbers for the first half of 2024.
January 2024 saw the biggest single monthly increase in prescription numbers so far this year, jumping nearly 20% on December 2023.
However, growth from January until May remained consistently in the low single digits, other than in April when prescription numbers jumped by 13.8% to 46,107.
While the figures between May and August show that these numbers then fell sharply, this is highly likely to be more down to the aforementioned delay rather than any form of market turmoil.
Based on previous analysis of NHSBSA figures, these numbers can change well over a year after initially being published.
Another key source of UK data is the CQC, which clinicians must be registered with (or affiliated with a CQC-registered clinic) in order to prescribe medical cannabis legally.
Source: Quality Care Commission – ‘The safer management of controlled drugs: Annual update 2024’
In its ‘Annual Update 2024’, published on July 15, the CQC offers further insight into the size and state of the market.
According to the report, 35 providers of unlicensed CBPMs (cannabis based prescription medicines) are currently registered with the CQC, with ‘almost all’ of them operating in the private sector.
While it did not provide a breakdown of numbers, in an unlabelled graph published in the report it is clear that prescription figures in ‘July 2024’ topped 52,355 supporting assumptions that the drop off reported by the NHSBSA is due to reporting delays rather than actual market trends.
It also raised a number of concerns about prescribing practices at private medical cannabis clinics in England, warning of gaps in oversight, clinical justification, and compliance with advertising rules.
So far, UK regulators have not felt it necessary to impose new restrictions on the industry, as seen in Germany, Australia and Poland, in large part thanks to the majority of clinics adhering to the strict regulations in the UK’s framework.
With regulatory reviews now incoming, it is a critical time for the sector to show its willingness to operate within these strict limitations in order to avoid incurring the wrath of politicians and medical professionals who still view the industry with caution.
As Prohibition Partners Lead Analyst, Lawrence Purkiss, explained to the conference hall at this year’s Cannabis Europa: “This is really an argument for more controlled growth. In other countries, especially Australia, some of the negativity around medical cannabis has stemmed from aggressive business practices: consultations that are too short, a small number of doctors prescribing to large volumes of patients, and marketing activity that sits in a grey area legally and ethically.
“It’s a warning against expanding too fast without the proper infrastructure to support it in a legitimate way. So, in that context, the UK’s current stable, controlled rate of growth isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Of course, we all want the sector to grow as much as possible, we want wider patient access and to see medical cannabis fully integrated into mainstream healthcare. But if we rush that growth, we risk undermining the legitimacy of medical use and potentially losing the trust of the medical community.
“A steady pace, grounded in clinical integrity, might serve us better in the long run than unchecked evangelism.”
The post Why the UK’s Steady Medical Cannabis Market Growth Is Its Biggest Advantage appeared first on Business of Cannabis.
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Though less explosive than markets like Germany or Australia, it has continued to evolve in a more controlled manner, enabling it to largely avoid the scrutiny and intervention that have accompanied rapid expansion elsewhere.
Numerous UK operators we’ve spoken to over the last month have told us that demand is higher than ever, and that the market appears to be in the best health they’ve seen for years.
In a recent interview with Grow Group’s Co-Founder and CEO, Ben Langley, he said that the current ‘underlying strength of the market’ was a key part of the company’s recent decision to acquire Avida Medical and forge its own path.
Elsewhere, Wellford’s Chief Business Officer, Joshua Roberts, suggested that his recently revamped business (which we’ll be covering in more detail in the coming days), was experiencing consistent double-digit month-on-month growth, and is hiring to keep up with demand.
Now, new figures from both the NHS and the CQC (CQC) have provided official data to support this anecdotal evidence.
What does the data say?
Despite NHS England telling Business of Cannabis earlier this month that new information regarding its long-anticipated patient registry will be released by the end of the year, official data on the actual size of the UK market remains elusive, with Freedom of Information requests providing intermittent snapshots.
The last such FOI response was published in February this year, showing that over 300,000 items were prescribed between April 2023-24, more than double that of the previous 12 months.
In response to a fresh data request made public over the last few days, we now have a much clearer picture of private prescription numbers for the first half of 2024.
January 2024 saw the biggest single monthly increase in prescription numbers so far this year, jumping nearly 20% on December 2023.
However, growth from January until May remained consistently in the low single digits, other than in April when prescription numbers jumped by 13.8% to 46,107.
While the figures between May and August show that these numbers then fell sharply, this is highly likely to be more down to the aforementioned delay rather than any form of market turmoil.
Based on previous analysis of NHSBSA figures, these numbers can change well over a year after initially being published.
CQC data
Another key source of UK data is the CQC, which clinicians must be registered with (or affiliated with a CQC-registered clinic) in order to prescribe medical cannabis legally.
Source: Quality Care Commission – ‘The safer management of controlled drugs: Annual update 2024’
In its ‘Annual Update 2024’, published on July 15, the CQC offers further insight into the size and state of the market.
According to the report, 35 providers of unlicensed CBPMs (cannabis based prescription medicines) are currently registered with the CQC, with ‘almost all’ of them operating in the private sector.
While it did not provide a breakdown of numbers, in an unlabelled graph published in the report it is clear that prescription figures in ‘July 2024’ topped 52,355 supporting assumptions that the drop off reported by the NHSBSA is due to reporting delays rather than actual market trends.
Concerns raised
It also raised a number of concerns about prescribing practices at private medical cannabis clinics in England, warning of gaps in oversight, clinical justification, and compliance with advertising rules.
So far, UK regulators have not felt it necessary to impose new restrictions on the industry, as seen in Germany, Australia and Poland, in large part thanks to the majority of clinics adhering to the strict regulations in the UK’s framework.
With regulatory reviews now incoming, it is a critical time for the sector to show its willingness to operate within these strict limitations in order to avoid incurring the wrath of politicians and medical professionals who still view the industry with caution.
As Prohibition Partners Lead Analyst, Lawrence Purkiss, explained to the conference hall at this year’s Cannabis Europa: “This is really an argument for more controlled growth. In other countries, especially Australia, some of the negativity around medical cannabis has stemmed from aggressive business practices: consultations that are too short, a small number of doctors prescribing to large volumes of patients, and marketing activity that sits in a grey area legally and ethically.
“It’s a warning against expanding too fast without the proper infrastructure to support it in a legitimate way. So, in that context, the UK’s current stable, controlled rate of growth isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Of course, we all want the sector to grow as much as possible, we want wider patient access and to see medical cannabis fully integrated into mainstream healthcare. But if we rush that growth, we risk undermining the legitimacy of medical use and potentially losing the trust of the medical community.
“A steady pace, grounded in clinical integrity, might serve us better in the long run than unchecked evangelism.”
The post Why the UK’s Steady Medical Cannabis Market Growth Is Its Biggest Advantage appeared first on Business of Cannabis.
Continue reading...
