Request

As advised in our email to you on 17 October 2025, we have consolidated four of your Freedom of Information requests into one request.

You asked us:

‘Could you please provide the number of times that each named unlicensed cannabis based medicinal product (CBMP) was prescribed privately over the requested periods –

01/01/2022 to 01/01/2023
01/01/2023 to 01/01/2024
01/01/2024 to 01/01/2025
01/01/2025 to 15/10/2025

Please give the maximum possible information associated with each product – e.g. format, volume etc.’

On 21 October 2025 we asked you the following:

We do hold the information you're looking for, but before we proceed, we’d like to confirm you're happy to receive it in its current format. The product details have been manually entered over time without a consistent naming convention for product name, strength, or form. This means there may be multiple entries for the same product with slight variations in spelling or formatting.

Examples include:

Pedanios tangerine dream dried flower THC16%:CBD<1%
Pedanios Tangerine Dream Dried Flower THC 16% : CBD <1%
Bedrocan 22% flos THC22%/CBD<1%
Bedrocan Flos THC22%/CBD<1%

These variations are likely to appear throughout the dataset, which contains tens of thousands of entries. This could result in duplication or inconsistencies when reviewing the data.

Therefore, I would be grateful if you would confirm if you're happy to receive the data in this format.

On 23 October 2025 you responded with the following:

‘No problem, I'm happy to receive it in its current format. I can clean the data on my side before using it for any analysis.’

The NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) received your request on 15 October 2025.

We have handled your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Our response

I can confirm that the NHSBSA holds the information you have requested and a copy of the information and notes explaining it is attached.

Item count for unlicensed private cannabis prescribing, aggregated by product name, strength and volume.

NHS Prescription Services process prescriptions for pharmacy contractors, appliance contractors, dispensing doctors and personal administration with information then used to make payments to pharmacists and appliance contractors in England for prescriptions dispensed in primary care settings (other arrangements are in place for making payments to dispensing doctors and personal administration). This involves processing over one billion prescription items and payments totalling over £9 billion each year. The information gathered from this process is then used to provide information on costs and trends in prescribing in England and Wales to over 25,000 registered NHS and Department of Health and Social Care users.

Data Source

When prescriptions are processed by NHSBSA data capture, prescriptions sometimes contain prescribing of medicines that were not populated on the NHSBSA drug database at the time. This type of order will be captured as an ‘unspecified drug.’

Prescribing data for unlicensed cannabis-based medicines has been taken from data captured as unspecified prescribing. Unlicensed cannabis-based medicines are identified by an additional review process which occurs after the prescriptions have been processed. The items identified by this review are reported against the date that the prescription was written and not necessarily when they were submitted. Therefore, these figures may be subject to change if prescriptions are submitted to us in later months.

This dataset

This dataset shows a breakdown of private unlicensed prescribing of cannabis items, including the number of items prescribed for each product, aggregated by the recorded strength and volume of each product.

The unlicensed cannabis data held by us is manually recorded from often handwritten prescriptions. This means there is no standardised naming convention for the product names, strength, or volume listed within this dataset. This may lead to duplication of some product names, strength, or volume depending on variations within how the data was prescribed and/or then recorded.

In some cases, there is no strength or volume for the product prescribed within the data.

As this dataset is manually maintained, users are advised that there will be data quality issues and manual errors within the data.

Time Period

The time period is for January 2022 to February 2025.

You should note that February 2025 is currently the most recent month for which prescribing data is available.

Data is aggregated by calendar year.

Organisation Data

Data for private unlicensed prescriptions is limited to prescriptions dispensed in England.

Items

Items show the number of times a product appears on a prescription form and not the quantity prescribed.

Publishing this response

Please note that this information will be published on our Freedom of Information disclosure log at:

https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/foi-03276

Your personal details will be removed from the published response.

Data Queries

Please contact foirequests@nhsbsa.nhs.uk ensuring you quote the above reference if you have any specific questions regarding this response; or, if you feel you may be misunderstanding or misinterpreting the information; or, if you plan on publishing the data.

Reusing the data and copyright

If you plan on producing a press or broadcast story based upon the data please contact communicationsteam@nhsbsa.nhs.uk. This is important to ensure that the figures are not misunderstood or misrepresented.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and is subject to NHSBSA copyright. This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence detailed at:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Should you wish to re-use the information you must include the following statement:

“NHSBSA Copyright 2025” This information is licenced under the terms of the Open Government Licence:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/

Failure to do so is a breach of the terms of the licence.

Information you receive which is not subject to NHSBSA Copyright continues to be protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the information originated. Please obtain their permission before reproducing any third party (non NHSBSA Copyright) information.