Sign our letter to the Prime Minister | PatientsCann UK® Skip to content Medical Cannabis Awareness WeekOpen letter It’s been legal for 8 years. Stop the hate and fear. We are writing to the Prime Minister to ask him to stand with prescribed medical cannabis patients. Add your name and postcode, and we will hand your signature in to 10 Downing Street on Saturday 7 November. PatientsCann UK®Hand-in: Saturday 7 November 202610 Downing Street, London Add your name Read the letter Download PDF Who it is toThe Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, Prime Minister What we needYour name and postcode. That is all. When we hand it inSaturday 7 November, at 10 Downing Street The letter The Rt Hon Andy Burnham MPPrime Minister10 Downing StreetLondonSW1A 2AA It’s Been Legal for 8 Years: Stop the Hate and Fear Dear Prime Minister, This week is Medical Cannabis Awareness Week, and we are asking you to stand with prescribed medical cannabis patients across the United Kingdom. Medical cannabis became legal to prescribe on 1 November 2018. Eight years later, legality has still not delivered equality, understanding or meaningful access. Medical Cannabis Awareness Week exists because patients continue to have to explain, defend and fight for recognition of their medicine. Patients are still treated with criminality for taking medication prescribed by specialist clinicians. They are challenged at work, questioned in public, denied access to pubs, venues and community spaces, separated from their medication and repeatedly forced to prove that they are patients, not criminals. The discrimination reaches into every part of life. Patients face workplace drug-testing and zero-tolerance policies that may fail to distinguish prescribed treatment from illicit use. Some fear complaints, eviction or homelessness because landlords and housing providers misunderstand their medication. Others are refused entry to pubs, social clubs, entertainment venues, sporting events and the very community spaces that should protect people from loneliness and isolation. They face uncertainty while driving, travelling and interacting with the police. They encounter misunderstanding within hospitals, care homes and other health and social-care settings. Some are unable to administer their prescribed treatment or find that lawful medication is viewed as a behavioural, safeguarding or illicit-drug concern rather than part of their healthcare. For people who rely on adult social care, the consequences can be especially profound. They may depend on carers, supported accommodation, residential services or local authorities to respect and facilitate their prescribed treatment. Poor understanding can interfere not only with medication, but with a person’s autonomy, dignity, independence and ability to remain connected to their community. You have spoken powerfully about creating a social-care system founded on dignity, security and support. You have also emphasised the importance of listening to lived experience and bringing government departments together rather than allowing people to be passed around a fragmented system. Medical cannabis patients need those same principles applied to them. Too many people who might benefit from treatment remain unable to access it through the NHS. They must pay privately or go without. This creates a cruel divide between those who can afford lawful treatment and those who cannot, while patients already prescribed privately may find that other parts of the health and care system do not understand or properly recognise their prescriptions. Behind every failure is a person. A worker afraid to disclose their prescription. A tenant frightened that misunderstanding could cost them their home. A social-care user whose treatment is questioned or disrupted by those responsible for supporting them. A patient turned away from a pub, social club or community venue and cut off from ordinary social life. A driver anxious that lawful medication may be misunderstood at the roadside. A disabled football supporter uncertain whether they will be admitted with their medicine. A family paying privately because meaningful NHS access remains beyond reach. A patient who has followed the law but is still made to feel ashamed. You recently argued that it was unfair for football supporters to be singled out and prevented from consuming alcohol in sight of the pitch when supporters of other sports are treated differently. You called for outdated assumptions to be reconsidered and described the unequal treatment of football supporters as discriminatory. We urge you to apply that same principle of fairness to patients. Alcohol is a recreational product. Medical cannabis is prescribed medication. If football supporters’ ability to drink alcohol deserves national debate, disabled patients being denied entry, prevented from carrying medication or forced to choose between treatment and participation demands attention too. The same principle applies to pubs and community spaces. These are not merely commercial venues. They are places where friendships are maintained, loneliness is reduced and communities come together. A patient should not be excluded from them because staff or security do not understand a lawful prescription. Nor should a person’s medication contribute to housing insecurity or homelessness. Nobody should fear losing their accommodation because a landlord, housing officer or support provider mistakes prescribed treatment for illicit drug use. These are not separate problems. They are connected expressions of the same failure to recognise patients as patients. The person challenged at a football turnstile may already have faced discrimination from an employer, landlord, police officer, healthcare professional, social-care provider or pub door staff. Patients should not have to renegotiate the legitimacy of their medication in every workplace, home, hospital, care setting, stadium and community space they enter. The consequences are emotional as well as practical. People withdraw from employment, healthcare, and community life. Some alter or interrupt their treatment because they fear confrontation. Others experience financial hardship, housing insecurity, worsening health, damaged relationships and profound isolation. Enough is enough. It’s Been Legal for 8 Years: Stop the Hate and Fear. We are urging you to: Publicly recognise medical cannabis patients as patients, acknowledging the stigma, exclusion, financial pressure and institutional barriers they continue to face. Meet medical cannabis patient groups and people with direct lived experience, including patients affected by barriers in employment, housing, homelessness services, social care, healthcare, driving, policing, sport, pubs
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