In the summer of 2012, Britain was in a celebratory mood. It was the year of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the London Olympics, and the country was full of festivities. But for former hairdresser Hannah Deacon and her young family in Warwickshire, that summer was a blur of ambulances, hospital wards, and doctors rushing in and out of emergency rooms.
Eight months earlier, Deacon had given birth to a healthy baby boy named Alfie. The early months were tough for her and her partner, Drew, as they are for any first-time parents. But by summer, Alfie was sleeping and feeding well, and it felt like the family was settling into a new routine. Then, one night, the couple woke up to find their baby’s small body gripped by a paralyzing seizure.
The family lived in the market town of Kenilworth. They rushed Alfie to their local hospital in Warwick, but it didn’t have an intensive care unit, and the staff had no experience with this type of seizure. Alfie’s condition got worse by the hour. At first, doctors followed the protocol for an infant heart attack. When that didn’t work, they switched to treatment for febrile seizures—convulsions a child can have from a very high fever. Alfie’s seizures affected his whole body. Each time they hit, his tiny frame would stiffen and shake, and he would stop breathing. Deacon watched in horror as her baby started turning blue. The doctors called several pediatric specialists but couldn’t get Alfie into Birmingham Children’s Hospital—the nearest major specialist unit—because it was already overcrowded. He was finally given a bed at Stoke Hospital, which had a children’s intensive care unit.
At Stoke, Alfie was put on life support. “The doctors said they had to do this just to give his brain a chance to calm down,” Deacon said. “They would periodically take him off life support to see if the seizures would stop, but they didn’t, so they’d put him back on.”
This went on for two weeks. Doctors told the family he had a virus, but they couldn’t say what it was. Eventually, Deacon reached her breaking point. “I just thought, forget this. He’s going to die if I don’t do something. So I found my voice, maybe for the first time in my life. I stood up for myself and my family.”
She demanded that Alfie be moved to the best children’s hospital in the country—Great Ormond Street in London. The doctors there gave him steroids, and after three and a half weeks of seizures, Alfie’s body finally calmed down.
But this month-long ordeal was just the beginning. Alfie continued to have seizures every few months until, at age five, he was diagnosed with a condition called PCDH19, a very rare form of epilepsy. Deacon could no longer carry Alfie because he was big for his age, and the seizures no longer knocked him unconscious. That meant she and the doctors had to hold him down to give him steroid injections. “I remember one night when we were holding him down,” she recalled. “I think the doctor tried 10 times to get a needle into his hand, and he was screaming and crying, ‘Mummy!’ It was really traumatic.”
All the options offered to the family looked grim. Alfie’s physical and mental development had been seriously affected by his condition. The medication he was on was ruining his quality of life and still wasn’t stopping his seizures. Deacon decided once again to take matters into her own hands. One night, she opened her laptop and typed “natural remedies for epilepsy” into a search engine. To her surprise, the page was full of links to articles about the medicinal benefits of cannabis.
When Deacon started her research in 2017, the UK was one of the few places in the West where medicinal cannabis was still illegal. Cannabis had been legal for medical use in California since 1996. Since then, patients with a range of conditions, including multiple sclerosis, had been using it.Sclerosis, chronic pain, glaucoma, and certain forms of complex epilepsy are conditions that have been legally treated with medicinal cannabis, available by prescription, in more and more US states and other countries each year. But in Britain, it remained classified as a Schedule 1 substance—the strictest level of control for drugs considered to have no accepted medical value. There were tighter restrictions on medicinal research and use of cannabis than even on heroin or cocaine.
Today, things have changed. There are now over 30 private clinics in the UK prescribing medical cannabis. You can find them in Sunderland, Leicester, and London. Adverts on the London Underground or on billboards encourage you to contact clinics to see how you might treat chronic pain, sleep problems, or anxiety with vaguely described “exciting new herbal treatments.” Claudia Winkleman and world champion boxer Anthony Joshua have partnered with cannabidiol (CBD) companies to promote products that offer the health benefits of cannabis without tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the part of the cannabis plant that gets you high.
This shift is partly thanks to campaigners like Deacon—but the reality is that, at least when it comes to accessing treatment through the NHS, far less has changed than it might seem.
William O’Shaughnessy is remembered as one of the great medical innovators of the Victorian era, celebrated for his work on treating cholera by developing an early form of intravenous rehydration. He also conducted trials showing that cannabis could treat a range of human diseases. O’Shaughnessy graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 1829, just before a devastating cholera outbreak hit Britain in 1831, and his new IV treatment saved countless lives. But his unconventional, experimental approach made him a controversial figure among his peers, and he was passed over for the position of professor of medical jurisprudence at the University of London. With limited opportunities in London, O’Shaughnessy joined the East India Company as a surgeon in the Bengal service in 1833.
At that time, and for more than a century afterward, the vast territories of the Indian subcontinent were the British Empire’s main source of revenue. Along with the territory came control over the world’s largest supply of the cannabis sativa plant, also known as Indian hemp. At first, the British valued the plant for the strength of its fibers. Hemp was used to make the navy’s ropes and rigging, among other goods. The British also took an interest in how people in India used the plant for medicinal treatments and for getting high.
The East India Company’s shareholders saw an exciting new source of income. They set up a monopoly system where growers could only sell to licensed suppliers, while the East India Company controlled the trade and collected taxes at multiple points in the supply chain. And when Britain transported indentured laborers en masse from India to the Caribbean, they brought cannabis with them so that, during long days on tropical plantations, the workers could at least comfort themselves with a traditional smoke. The movement of people between the West and East Indies led to a cross-cultural exchange that is reflected in the shared language, imagery, and philosophy surrounding the use of ganja in places as far apart as Jamaica and India.
When O’Shaughnessy arrived in India at just 24 years old, he became fascinated with how locals used cannabis for medicine. In 1839, he wrote a monograph on Indian hemp that remains one of the most extensive scientific studies ever done on the properties of the cannabis plant. By conducting trials on fish, birds, and eventually—controversially—children, O’Shaughnessy revealed cannabis’s potential for managing pain. His research also found that cannabis was especially useful for treating “convulsion disorders”—what we now callEpilepsy. O’Shaughnessy started sending plant samples to contacts at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, sparking interest in the drug among Britain’s medical establishment.
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William O’Shaughnessy. Photograph: Alamy
Cannabis was never completely free from controversy in Victorian Britain. But once its medical uses were known, and with both the East India Company and British colonial authorities making huge profits from the world’s largest cannabis-growing regions, it didn’t carry the stigma and fear that would come in the 20th century. As the temperance movement grew, British politicians reviewed the supposed dangers of the plant as part of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1893, but declared cannabis a relatively mild intoxicant. However, when the US began pushing for global drug control laws, things started to shift. A moral campaign against drugs became one of America’s first foreign policy moves at the start of the 20th century – a campaign later taken up by the League of Nations, which in 1925, at the Second Opium Convention, added cannabis to its list of banned drugs.
These new international drug laws led to domestic rules that reinforced bans on non-medical use of certain drugs. The 1928 Dangerous Drugs Act prohibited cannabis in the UK for the first time (the first Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920 had criminalized opium and cocaine). Cannabis products slowly disappeared from pharmacy shelves. But it wasn’t until after World War II that cannabis was strictly policed in the UK, where smoking it was linked to degenerates, alternative lifestyles, and a Black immigrant population that many viewed with suspicion.
The creation of the National Health Service in 1948 gave people free access to highly skilled doctors for the first time. But the NHS also centralized and standardized medical knowledge, pushing alternative health approaches to the sidelines. Respectable British society was gripped by a moral panic about drug-taking subcultures, and any potential medical benefits of cannabis were buried under a flood of scare stories.
The NHS was approaching its 70th anniversary when Hannah Deacon began researching medical cannabis for her son. The NHS is the closest thing Britain has to a unifying national symbol. Nearly 90% of British people support the idea of a health service that’s free at the point of use. But decades of underfunding by successive governments have weakened the NHS’s ability to keep up with new understandings of healthcare, and some argue this has created a culture that’s wary of innovation.
Deacon’s experience with the NHS after Alfie’s diagnosis was a daily round of frustrating conversations with doctors who dismissed any suggestion that cannabis might help her son’s epilepsy. She began connecting online with families in other countries who had used cannabis effectively alongside anti-epileptic drugs for children, and joined Facebook groups where parents shared advice about different plant strains and THC/CBD balances.
Eventually, she gathered the courage to ask Alfie’s doctors about trying cannabis for him. Medical cannabis was illegal in the UK at the time, and Alfie’s doctors stuck to traditional anti-epileptic treatments: drugs, a ketogenic diet, even surgery. Every time Deacon asked about cannabis, she was shut down. One day, after Deacon asked a particular doctor again about cannabis as an alternative, he put down his pen, looked over at her, and muttered: “If you speak to me again about cannabis, I am going to report you to social services.”
Faced with the impossibility of getting Alfie cannabis treatment in the UK, Deacon began looking abroad. Most of the families she had connected with online were in North America, but she couldn’t afford to take Alfie to the US or Canada. In the Netherlands, medicalCannabis was once a mainstream treatment for conditions like neurological disorders, chronic pain, musculoskeletal issues, and cancer. But the family had to act fast. Brexit was approaching, and once it was finalized, they would lose their EU health insurance, closing another door.
In September 2017, the family left the UK for the Netherlands. They packed their Renault Megane with toys, clothes, and medication, squeezed in alongside their two children—Alfie, then six, and his three-year-old sister. Then they drove onto a ferry. “It was fucking terrifying, the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done,” Deacon recalled when we met for breakfast in London years later. “We would have no support, no social worker, and we were leaving our families behind. But it was either that or watch Alfie die.”
In Rotterdam, Alfie started a new treatment program centered on medical cannabis. At first, it seemed like all their efforts were pointless, as the treatment didn’t appear to affect Alfie’s condition. But the doctors gradually increased the percentage of CBD—a non-psychoactive compound in cannabis that may have therapeutic benefits—and when they reached 150ml of CBD, he went 17 days without a single seizure.
“It felt like he just opened his eyes to the world,” Deacon said. For the first time, her six-year-old son suddenly showed interest in playing with his little sister.
By the time the family returned to the UK, less than a year later, Alfie had gone 40 days without a seizure. Medical cannabis had proven essential in stabilizing his condition. Now Deacon would campaign to change the law in the UK, so he could access this treatment at home.
Returning to Britain meant taking Alfie off his medication. The family knew he would get sick again as a result. With support from medical cannabis advocates, Deacon began a media tour, making it clear that her family was racing against time to change the law on medical cannabis before the seizures shortened her son’s life. Their story captured the attention of TV producers and newspaper editors. Deacon appeared on morning shows and news panels, talking about the importance of changing drug laws. In March 2018, she was invited to meet then-Prime Minister Theresa May.
Over tea at Downing Street, May promised to instruct the NHS to work with the Home Office to secure a license for Alfie to use medical cannabis, and then the government would review cannabis laws more broadly. However, shortly after this meeting, Alfie’s application for cannabis was rejected again. Deacon stepped up her media appearances, saying she felt the government had lied to her and was risking her son’s life.
That same year, Charlotte Caldwell from Northern Ireland, mother to Billy—another young child with epilepsy—was told her doctor could no longer prescribe the cannabis oil her son needed to control his seizures. Caldwell decided to take action: she flew back from Canada with cannabis oil for his treatment. UK customs officials confiscated it. Billy had a seizure just hours later. National media reported how the Home Office was denying a sick child his life-saving medication. These two stories sparked a wave of public sympathy. Here were two mothers, from different parts of the UK, each with a story about how the government’s outdated drug laws made it impossible to care for their children. How many others might be out there?
Finally, on June 19, 2018, Deacon received a phone call from government minister Nick Hurd. “He told me: ‘Sorry it’s taken so long, but today you and I have changed history.’”
The law on medical cannabis across the entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland would be updated, Hurd told her. Deacon breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps.Hundreds of thousands of people across the UK were expected to be able to get medical cannabis on the NHS for a range of chronic conditions. But as Deacon put it, “it became clear that changing the law wasn’t actually going to help people.”
When Alfie finally got his prescription for medical cannabis in 2018—a drug called Bedrolite—it was free on the NHS. Since then, though, other patients have found it hard to access. Over the past few decades, consultancy firms have been brought in to reshape the NHS like a market, making cuts in the name of efficiency. As a result, private healthcare has grown a lot in Britain. In 2024, 32% of Britons surveyed said they had used private healthcare before. The UK’s private healthcare market was worth £12.4 billion in 2024, showing a shift toward a two-tier medical system. And few things highlight this divide as clearly as how medical cannabis has been rolled out since 2018.
In the years since Deacon helped push the government to legalise medical cannabis in the UK, only a handful of people have had the same access as Alfie. According to the NHS Business Service Authority, 89,239 prescriptions for unlicensed cannabis medicines were issued between November 2018 and July 2022, but fewer than five of those came from the NHS. The rest had to go private.
In November 2018, the UK moved cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 2, allowing doctors to prescribe it to patients. However, no resources were put into helping doctors understand the medication or setting up systems to give patients regular access. Making a medication legal isn’t enough to get doctors to prescribe it. It needs a licence, usually gained through verified clinical trials. Then, once it’s licensed, NICE—the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which advises on medication and cost-effectiveness—should include it as a recommended option for NHS doctors.
The government has kept tight controls on research into cannabis-based medicines, making it very expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build the evidence needed for widespread NHS use. Most cannabis-based medicinal products are no longer illegal, but they are unlicensed. Doctors have to apply for special funding to prescribe them for individual patients, or ask their trust to pay directly. NHS doctors are cautious about medical cannabis, and most avoid it altogether. (In 2019, the NHS reviewed the barriers patients faced in accessing cannabis and admitted that many clinicians “do not have the specialist professional education” to feel confident prescribing it, even when it might be the right medication.)
At the same time, the private medical cannabis industry in the UK has been quietly growing. In August 2024, ITV News reported that the UK’s medical cannabis market was expanding rapidly—about 10% a month—with companies running aggressive digital ad campaigns on Instagram and TikTok.
These campaigns push back against decades of stigma around the drug and do important work in educating the public about its potential medical benefits. But they also promote the private clinics now competing to be the big winners in this area.
When medical cannabis was legalised in the UK, it was done in a hurry, under pressure, because the government feared bad press about sick children being denied medicine they could get in neighbouring countries. Then the government stepped back.The real issue is this. Hannah Deacon was disappointed that the change in the law made so little difference at the clinical level. “They changed the law just to shut me up,” she told me.
Today, medical cannabis in the UK is ultimately driven by profit. This means potential patients get targeted ads on their smartphones. And NHS professionals don’t always feel comfortable sharing full medical information about their patients with private cannabis clinics.
The rise of a booming private medical cannabis industry across Britain has occasionally made the news. Recently, medical cannabis returned to national headlines after the death of Oliver Robinson – a 34-year-old man with a history of depression and cannabis dependency who took his own life in November 2023 after being prescribed medical cannabis by a private clinic.
The renewed concern about cannabis has focused on its long-standing links to mental health problems, including psychosis. But it’s through better regulation of private providers that the risks of medical cannabis can be reduced, while the relief it offers to patients with conditions like MS and epilepsy can be made available to many at affordable prices.
A year ago, in May 2025, Hannah Deacon passed away from cancer. She is survived by her partner, Drew, and their children. “I want Alfie to be safe and well when he’s an adult and I’m not here,” Deacon had told me. “I don’t want him to lose access to what helps him stay well.”
Throughout our conversations, Deacon always stressed that it was important to her that the medicine would be available not just to her son, but to everyone who needed it. Her mother is continuing her campaign. If Deacon were facing Alfie’s illness today, while she would be legally entitled to access medical cannabis in the UK, she would probably be forced to pay a lot (potentially as much as £1,000 a month) to get it through the private market. For the future wellbeing of our society, we need to seriously think about how we design a post-prohibition framework for regulating drugs. With some effort, our society could reduce the harms of drugs while also sharing their life-changing potential benefits as widely as possible.
This is an edited extract from The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs, published by John Murray on 4 June (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs addressing the gap between the legalisation of medical cannabis in the UK and the difficulty patients face in accessing it
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 I thought medical cannabis was legal in the UK Why cant I just ask my GP for it
Answer It is legal but only as a last resort Your GP cannot prescribe it You must be seen by a specialist doctor on the General Medical Councils specialist register Most GPs arent trained or authorised to prescribe it so they usually say no
2 Who actually can get a prescription for medical cannabis
Answer It is only available for a very short list of conditions and only when all other standard treatments have failed The main conditions are severe epilepsy multiple sclerosis related muscle spasms and chemotherapyinduced nausea For other conditions like chronic pain it is extremely rare to get a prescription on the NHS
3 If its so hard to get on the NHS can I just buy it privately
Answer Yes you can see a private specialist However it is expensive You will pay for the initial consultation followup appointments and the medication itself Most private health insurance doesnt cover it
4 Is the cannabis I get from a pharmacy the same as what people smoke on the street
Answer No Medical cannabis is a pharmaceutical product It is usually a dried flower for vaporising oils or capsules It is grown in a lab tested for purity and has a specific known dose of THC and CBD
5 Why did the government make it legal if they are making it so hard to get
Answer The law change in 2018 was a response to highprofile cases of children with severe epilepsy The government wanted to create a safety valve for extreme rare cases They never intended to create a wideopen market for general pain or anxiety which is why the prescribing rules are so strict
Advanced Questions
6 What is the NICE guidelines problem and why does it block prescriptions
