Start of a limited UK study on cannabis and chronic pain

After all the delays, obfuscations and denials, the Brits are finally taking the next obvious step towards a better understanding of the medical effectiveness of cannabinoids. A very limited medical cannabis study called Canpain has just been announced, focusing on chronic pain. However, despite reports to the contrary in the media, including the London Times, medical regulators have not yet officially approved a widespread study into cannabis and pain management.

While a small try is a good first step, the question remains why it took so long to even get going, let alone why the project is so limited.

Canpain isn’t the first cannabis experiment in the country, and it’s far from the largest. This award goes to the TWENTY21 project organized by a non-profit research organization called Drug Science.

However, if started properly, Canpain would be the first government-sponsored study that could also lead to patients finally being prescribed medicinal cannabis through the National Health Service (or NHS).

However, its success remains in doubt, especially given what is currently happening elsewhere in Europe. This includes Germany, the largest market for reimbursable medical cannabis in the EU, where statutory health insurance companies are increasingly rejecting applications for medical cannabis “only” because of chronic pain.

What is actually going to happen

The initial ‘proof of concept’ study will be conducted by a private cannabis clinic, LVL Health, which will initially enroll 100 patients as the first step in the larger experiment (which hasn’t even been approved by the NHS yet). Canpain intends to enroll up to 5,000 adult patients who will receive cartridges of unprocessed cannabis flower daily for at least a year.

This will not be entirely free. Patients have to pay about $300 a month to get capsules embedded in vaping devices.

What’s new?

The big news here is that once the proof of concept study has been reviewed, approved and launched by NICE – the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – NICE will examine the data to determine if the clinical evidence justifies prescribing cannabis for chronic pain.

In the past, NICE has specifically denied that there is any evidence supporting the use of cannabis to treat chronic pain. According to the government, one in three Britons suffers from the condition – defined as an illness that causes severe discomfort for more than three months.

By definition, the new Canpain study on the horizon also admits that its initial limited medical effort will also exclude most chronic pain sufferers in the country.

In contrast, chronic pain is the main reason for the use of medicinal cannabis in the USA.

The slow, shameful pace of cannabis reform in the UK

As everywhere, cannabis reform, even of a medical nature, has been vigorously opposed by UK government agencies and agencies, even after medical cannabis was technically legalized here in 2018 and a major medical study, albeit limited, started in Germany in 2017. Even since then fewer people have actually received prescriptions through the NHS in the UK than in Germany. Worse, thanks to the NICE intervention, chronic pain patients were specifically excluded from reimbursable care after 2018, even if they had previously managed to obtain such allowance. Only 18 cannabis prescriptions were subsequently issued through the NHS (for whatever reason) and only 259 private prescriptions were issued in 2019.

ProjectTWENTY21 launched in August 2020 with the aim of providing registered patients with cheaper cannabis and investigating the same with the aim of providing a large-scale clinical study that also helped patients to obtain cannabis at a lower cost than through private ones medical care would be possible. Many cannabis breeders have signed up at a significant price to be able to offer lower cost cannabis as part of this study. About 20,000 patients later became part of this study, which has now been expanded to Australia.

It is not clear why this data has so far been ignored by government agencies.

Meanwhile, more medical and recreational reform debates continue to rage in the UK, as the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced that he will launch an attempt to decriminalize recreational cannabis in certain parts of London.

Aside from these efforts, no UK national authority has taken medical or recreational cannabis reform seriously.

As a result, Brits, like other European patients, are still largely left out in the cold, caught between outrageous monthly costs from private healthcare, the black market, or going untreated (which is obviously not a viable option for most patients).

The criminalization of legitimate patients continues

For all the drug crime police press releases, there is currently no effort to trace the fate of legitimate patients who are routinely arrested and prosecuted under federal narcotics laws, to which they are still subject when their requests for medical treatment are denied (eg whatever the reason). All of these patients have to go somewhere to find another source to obtain cannabis, and being denied by insurers almost always means these individuals have to turn to illegal sources because they cannot afford private care .

In Germany, insurers currently routinely reject 40% of patient claims – for a variety of flimsy reasons, including alleged lack of clinical evidence – even when presented with the most recent data, and refuse to process complicated forms that even doctors ” “doing it wrong” or even denying patients reimbursed care because their healthcare provider sent in forms later than the insurance company set deadlines. The only reliable way to get legal medical cannabis in Germany right now is to have enough money to get private healthcare or sue public insurance.

Despite all the protests and data, one thing is clear. There is still a long, hard fight ahead before the cannabis plant is normalized anywhere.

How many more people need to be prosecuted or even die before that happens?