Written By Dave Barton

Dave Barton, co-founder and creative director of thermidor< – a cannabis-focused, content-led creative agency – unpicks the UK’s fractured relationship with all things Mary Jane in this first of a two-part series.

Much like Britain and its Royal Family, here and now in 2023 the UK and cannabis have a complicated relationship. But it wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time – some half a millennium ago – cannabis, in the form of hemp, was one plant we just couldn’t get enough of on this side of the Pond.

A little later on, cannabis continued to thrive; as both a material and a medicine. Even dear old Queen Victoria allegedly partook to quell her cramps. And then, just a few decades after… boom. The seeds of criminalisation were sown.

It’s only now, some 100 years on, that the balance is being redressed; and adult use/recreational cannabis is seemingly being openly embraced everywhere… except here in Blighty (I know, I know… but stay with me on this, k?).

So what’s holding Britain back? Why is one of the world’s largest producers of legal cannabis unwilling to embrace what nature so graciously provides on its own soil? Why is the UK’s medical cannabis programme taking so long to gain traction? Will we *ever* get to full legalisation?

Perhaps. But for starters, let’s take a closer look at how our ‘Sceptred Isle’ got in the state it is today.

Unchartered Territory 

Cannabis consumption might seem like a relatively recent activity – one championed by swathes of countercultural figures back in the Swinging Sixties – but enjoyment of the plant dates way back some millennia. But it really came to prominence here during the halcyon days of the Middle Ages, when hemp was everyone’s favourite plant; not for its psychoactive properties, but for its super-strong fibres. 

It’s not hard to see why. After all, at that time there was a whole New World to explore. This robust-yet-resourceful plant’s fibres were used as rope, cloth, and other sturdy seafaring supplies to power fleets of ships towards ‘undiscovered’ parts of the World. 

To encourage such exploratory efforts, it was decreed, by none other than wife swapper extraordinaire, King Henry VIII, that farmers must set aside a quarter of an acre for hemp for every 60 acres they owned – or face a fine. And yes, they could even pay these fines in hemp itself. Luckily, hemp grows really well – and fast – in the fertile soils of our green and pleasant land. 

As Britain’s ‘golden age’ of hemp took hold; tales of this cash crop’s versatility, strength, absorbency, and resistance to wear and tear, quickly spread to other nations. In fact, at the start of the 1800s, a hemp blockade from Russia led Britain to form a committee tasked with seeking out new sources of the plant and identifying new areas for cultivation. 

Imperial Measures

Inevitably, (unsatiated though we seemingly were with owning most of the world) our ‘valiant’ efforts led hemp enthusiasts to the furthest reaches of the British Empire; most notably to the Indian subcontinent, where cannabis – in the form of bhang – played a big role in daily life: but more as a medicine than as a material.

Initially, the concept of cannabis-as-medicine quickly became a persuasive one through the work of Victorian scientists – whose exploits, while unconventional (who’d have thought giving cannabis to fish and vultures would be a thing?), aimed to demonstrate the plant’s benign and therapeutic nature. However, by the late Victorian period, cannabis was increasingly deemed a cause for concern.

While not seen as problematic as that hotly-detested (and widely traded) scapegoat, opium, the idea that cannabis could be ‘abused’ stemmed largely from – let’s be honest – the orientalist notion that its consumption was a gateway to insanity – as allegedly evidenced by the proliferation of addicts and criminals residing in Indian ‘lunatic’ asylums (claims actually made in the British House of Commons to highlight the plant’s dangers); perhaps the first in a long line of conveniently-timed finger pointing opportunities.

But for all the hype, there were stabilising forces objectively exploring what cannabis could actually do. For example, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission – while rigorous in their approach – made some crucial findings that were far less demonising than many had imagined they’d be. In fact, they upheld earlier notions that cannabis use was anything but a crisis level concern.

So why, just half a century later, was cannabis treated with the same level of consternation as much stronger substances?

Cultural Conventions

By the 1920s, Britain seemed to be actively kowtowing to international attitudes around substance abuse more broadly. Case in point: the 1925 Opium convention in Geneva… during which colonial chums Egypt and South Africa saw fit to voice concerns around ‘chronic hashishism’.

A few years later and the UK’s own Dangerous Drugs Act sealed cannabis’ fate as ‘bad drugs’, alongside what we would now consider hard narcotics (chiefly cocaine and opium). This sudden clampdown – which outwardly seemed born of concerns around morality – was as much a cultural phenomenon as a social one. 

Much like in the US, where cannabis consumption was deemed a vice of the ‘cultural other’, as Britain’s own imperial diaspora began to converge on our shores, they brought with them habits apparently unlike our own. Yes, we too saw fit to call out BIPOC people for corrupting youth with their non-western ways – a stigma that sadly persists today.

While we don’t need to dwell on the politics of the situation per se, in the intervening years, now-illegal, social-pariah-status-inducing cannabis remained popular – among Britain’s middle class as much as anyone else: hush hush though it was. Perhaps that’s largely why the legalisation of medical cannabis in 2018 went by relatively unnoticed.

Britain’s Best Kept Secret

Five years on from that watershed ruling, and the number of cannabis patients stands (at last count, which seems to fluctuate) at around the 90,000 mark… which, while a lot more than previously thought, is frankly pretty poor in a nation of 67 million people. 

It could obviously be more. A LOT more. But you see here in Britain, we’re not used to paying for healthcare. While private healthcare does exist, our publicly-funded National Health Service continues to do a sterling job of providing care for everyone and their mum. 

So when it comes to medical cannabis, other than a handful of scenarios (to address forms of epilepsy, nausea from chemotherapy, and spasticity from multiple sclerosis) the vast majority of patients are prescribed cannabis via one of the private clinics here. And at £50 ($60ish) per consultation and (on average) £120 ($150) per 10g of flower, it remains out of reach for a lot of people.

In addition to this, the criteria needed to qualify for a private medical cannabis prescription is much more stringent than, say, in the US. While medical cannabis – by all accounts – can seemingly be prescribed for mild pain relief in many states, in Britain that’s not the case at all (yet). 

Instead, patients need to prove they have a qualifying condition – which can be related to everything from pain management and mental health, to neurological and gastrointestinal issues (among others): a pretty broad set of criteria, to be fair. But they also need to prove that they’ve tried at least two other forms of treatment and have their medical records verified – before a consultation (as in a video call) can take place. 

No discussion of the ECS, CB receptors, or terpenes – simply “We have this with x amount of THC/CBD for your needs... Flower or Oil?”. And there are no dispensaries per se: at least not in the North American sense of the term – no armed guards by the front desk, i.d. Checks, or cash-only businesses,  You don’t even have to visit the pharmacy – you simply pay for what’s available online and it rocks up by post a few days later.

Barriers To Break

Medical cannabis aside, there’s also a very buoyant legacy* market here in Britain. While the old ways of procurement (from often questionable sources) remain critical to servicing that need, online services like Dispensaroo are making a play for the UK recreational market – and doing very well by all accounts. 

But it’s not just THC products in ample supply here. CBD is EVERYWHERE. Oils, tinctures, cosmetics, bath bombs, vapes, drinks, and more can be found in stores as diverse as pharmacies, supermarkets, and cocktail bars – not just health food/supplement outlets. 

While the uninitiated may begin to feel more comfortable with this coming Green Wave (predominantly via the soft contours of CBD), when it comes to understanding what they’re consuming, few folks have an actual Scooby-Doo**.

That’s why the question that inevitably raises its head time and again is one of quality. Because there’s so little consumer awareness of cannabinoids et al, the true benefits get lost in translation. 

But like attitudes, times are changing.

Fret not! The story doesn’t end here. Tune in for Part 2, when we’ll take a closer look at cannabis’ changing role in modern Britain, and speculate on the all-important ‘when legalisation?’ timeline in Fat Nugs Magazine’s Vol. 14. TTFN!

*illicit 

**clue