THE MOTHER of a once-severely epileptic boy who successfully campaigned for the UK to legalise medicinal cannabis has called on Jersey to regulate the sector to ensure only those who legitimately need the drug are prescribed it.
Charlotte Caldwell was in the Island this week with her son Billy, whose health has significantly improved since he started taking cannabis. She met Health Minister Tom Binet as well as medical professionals.
It was after Billy’s medication was confiscated at Heathrow in 2018 that Ms Caldwell began her campaign, which led the UK government to allow cannabis to be prescribed by the end of that year. Jersey followed suit two months later.
However, eight years on, Ms Caldwell says the sector has not developed as it should have, because, she argues, clinics are “picking the low hanging fruit” by prescribing to people who are not ill and/or using it recreationally.
They are also creating a secondary, illegal market by over-prescribing quantities to people who are then selling on their surplus to recreational users, she adds.
Her concerns reflect a story published in the JEP in December, which reported that market forces were creating ‘user-dealers’ who sell on surplus cannabis illegally.
Ms Caldwell said: “In 2018, Billy changed the law. It had been an extremely dark time for us as a family, and Billy had almost died. But what came of out of that was that Billy was given his medicine back and then-Home Secretary Sajid Javid announced the next day that he was going to change the law.
“If I’m honest, Billy and I were dancing because the law was changed for the most vulnerable, chronically ill of our society.
“Yet here we are, in 2026, and a University of Bath study shows that the profile of those being prescribed medicinal cannabis is 26-45 years old, they have a university or college degree, and they are earning £60,000 to £70,000 a year.
“These are not vulnerable, chronically ill people, which tells me – from an advocate’s point of view – that there is a mismatch of policy, which is as relevant to Jersey as it is in the UK.”
She added: “The law was changed for the vulnerable chronically ill, but they have been locked out because they can’t afford private prescriptions at £300-£1,000 a month, so the private market is servicing people who can afford it.
“We also know that within there is recreational prescribing in the prescription market, and we have to fix this.
“We already know that the illicit market in the UK is worth £2.6 billion – £3 billion, and the prescription cannabis private market is just fuelling this and adding more financial gain to the criminal market.
“At present, many adult cannabis users are entering the private prescription cannabis system because there is no regulated pathway for adult use access.”
Ms Caldwell said she had a strong understanding of the issues, having spent “eight years in the trenches with patients”.
She said: “Currently, throughout the UK and the British Crown dependencies, we have anything between 350 to 400 unlicensed products being prescribed: this is merchandising, not medicine.
“We know that approximately 60% of the prescriptions being handed out are for lifestyle or recreational reasons. It is easy money for the industry.”
Ms Caldwell continued: “The solution for Jersey is that we have to take the recreational prescribing out of medical, which will then flourish because the model will be fit for the purpose it was intended for. Those people getting drugs from the secondary market want to be legal, so we need to provide a pathway for them.
“This is what TRACD, which is the organisation I support, want to do. We are not asking the government to take a leap of faith; we are asking them to gather the evidence and learn, because I do not want to be having the same conversation in another eight years.
“Once there is fit-for-purpose data, then the politicians can decide what to do.”
Dr Kirstie Ross of Carpathia Clinic, which prescribes medicinal cannabis in Jersey said: “Carpathia Clinic wholeheartedly agrees that the regulation of the medicinal cannabis market is imperative to its success in the clinical world.
“We need to move away from the idea that knowledge about cannabis is the same as wisdom about prescribing for patients.
“We need to move to embedding cannabis in the medical world and, as Charlotte says, focusing on medical need and ensuring that we are not just furnishing ‘legacy patients’, or ‘low hanging fruit’ as she terms it.
“‘Legacy patients’ is a term used in the industry to refer to patients who have used cannabis for many years recreationally and are now receiving it through clinics.
“Of those patients, there are many who legitimately need treatment: for example, multiple sclerosis sufferers, who were previously forced to obtain treatment for muscle spasm illegally, can receive support from medical teams in the clinics.”
She added: “Cannabis is currently an expensive treatment option. Should we be encouraging the government to financially support this as they do with other controlled drugs? Yes!
“However, there is a long way to go in regulating the industry to ensure that the appropriate people are being prescribed medication at the right dose and in proportional amounts.”
