As new national guidance instructs officers to treat medical cannabis users as patients first, James Duckenfield, CEO of Glass Pharms, reflects on what training police forces has taught him about the gap between the law and the general understanding of the legal landscape, and how the industry as a whole can help close it.
While the ingrained stigma surrounding medical cannabis in the UK is slowly fading, and understanding around the laws and regulations grows month by month, I think that it is fair to say that there is room for further change. Even now, more than seven years after the laws changed, I hear about legally prescribed patients facing difficult conversations (or worse) with the police.
These patients are usually abiding by all the rules in place: they are carrying their legally prescribed medical cannabis in its original packaging, they may have a copy of their prescription to hand, and yet they still find themselves being treated more like a suspect than a patient.
Is it a huge surprise?
No, not when you consider how cannabis has been treated over the past 100 years or so, not just here in the UK, but across large swathes of the globe. But times have changed, and with those changes, there needs to be a shift in how prescribed patients are perceived and treated by the people they encounter when carrying their medicine.
A fresh milestone in UK policing
There has, at least, been some real movement at the national level.
The new guidance for officers on medical cannabis, prepared by the Association of Police Controlled Drug Liaison Officers and approved by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, sets out a sensible central principle: that someone found in possession of cannabis which is in clinical packaging should be assumed to be a patient until proven otherwise.
A great step forward, but a document approved by the National Police Chiefs’ Office doesn’t automatically change what actually happens to a legal patient if they get pulled over. A policy can be national while understanding of it remains patchy, and that is roughly where we are: the principle is agreed, but news of it has not yet reached every officer on every shift.
That gap is where the training I, along with some of my colleagues, have been providing to police forces comes in.
Policy
Medical Cannabis Police Guidance Published, But No Training Programme Planned
Medical cannabis once again found itself at the centre of the UK mainstream media’s attention this week, following a troubling coroner’s finding that a prescription ‘contributed to’ a patient’s death. […]
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Training the officers, and learning from them
It began when Nick Burnett of Devon and Cornwall invited us to run a session for their officers. Other forces soon followed. We held these sessions at Glass Pharms itself, so the officers in attendance could see a fully licensed and legal medical cannabis facility with their own eyes: how the cultivation process actually works, the security and safety measures in place, and the standards the whole operation is held to.
I went into the first of these sessions not knowing exactly what I should be expecting, other than a certain degree of scepticism on the side of the forces.
What I found was almost the opposite.
Building Glass Pharms has given the team and me a deep working knowledge of the regulations around controlled drugs, of the cultivation itself, and, in my own case, a chemist’s understanding of how these compounds behave. That combination turned out to be useful to officers who, for the most part, simply had not been given the information before.
The sessions were a chance to close that gap in a calm setting, without the pressure of a live incident.
One thing that struck me time and again was the attitude of the police during our training sessions. There was seemingly no hostility towards cannabis as a medicine, and no appetite for treating unwell people as criminals. They wanted to follow the law themselves, implement it correctly on the streets, and do right by patients. What they lacked was not goodwill, but information.
A few officers were surprised to learn that a prescription might include cannabis flower, rather than only oils or capsules, but in all honesty, most weren’t. What united them was a single, practical question, asked in one form or another at every session: “Out on the beat, how do we tell a legitimate medical product from illicit street cannabis, quickly and fairly?”
Policy
UK Police Finally Get Official Medical Cannabis Guidance More Than 7 Years After Legalisation
Over seven years after medical cannabis was legalised in the UK, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has approved the first official guidance for medical cannabis. The guidance, titled ‘Medicinal Cannabis
Read the Story →
Where the wider industry comes in
That question, how to tell medical from illicit at a glance, is where the rest of us have a part to play.
The officers I met responded warmly to distinctive, medical packaging, and to our own sealed aluminium tins in particular. A sealed tin with a clear dispensing label is difficult to mistake for a bag of street cannabis, and several said they would welcome something like it becoming standard across the sector. It is not often that a producer, a patient and a police officer all want the same thing, but on this they do.
The framework we need already exists. The task now is to make it work, and to help everyone operating inside it, prescriber, patient and police officer alike, do so with clarity rather than guesswork.
Legalisation was the first step. Making the system work, and that everyone concerned truly understands how it is meant to work, is the job at hand.
As new national guidance instructs officers to treat medical cannabis users as patients first, James Duckenfield, CEO of Glass Pharms, reflects on what training police forces has taught him about the gap between the law and the general understanding of the legal landscape, and how the industry as a whole can help close it.
While the ingrained stigma surrounding medical cannabis in the UK is slowly fading, and understanding around the laws and regulations grows month by month, I think that it is fair to say that there is room for further change. Even now, more than seven years after the laws changed, I hear about legally prescribed patients facing difficult conversations (or worse) with the police.
These patients are usually abiding by all the rules in place: they are carrying their legally prescribed medical cannabis in its original packaging, they may have a copy of their prescription to hand, and yet they still find themselves being treated more like a suspect than a patient.
Is it a huge surprise?
No, not when you consider how cannabis has been treated over the past 100 years or so, not just here in the UK, but across large swathes of the globe. But times have changed, and with those changes, there needs to be a shift in how prescribed patients are perceived and treated by the people they encounter when carrying their medicine.
A fresh milestone in UK policing
There has, at least, been some real movement at the national level.
The new guidance for officers on medical cannabis, prepared by the Association of Police Controlled Drug Liaison Officers and approved by the National Police Chiefs’ Council, sets out a sensible central principle: that someone found in possession of cannabis which is in clinical packaging should be assumed to be a patient until proven otherwise.
A great step forward, but a document approved by the National Police Chiefs’ Office doesn’t automatically change what actually happens to a legal patient if they get pulled over. A policy can be national while understanding of it remains patchy, and that is roughly where we are: the principle is agreed, but news of it has not yet reached every officer on every shift.
That gap is where the training I, along with some of my colleagues, have been providing to police forces comes in.
Policy
Medical Cannabis Police Guidance Published, But No Training Programme Planned
Medical cannabis once again found itself at the centre of the UK mainstream media’s attention this week, following a troubling coroner’s finding that a prescription ‘contributed to’ a patient’s death. […]
Read the Story →
Training the officers, and learning from them
It began when Nick Burnett of Devon and Cornwall invited us to run a session for their officers. Other forces soon followed. We held these sessions at Glass Pharms itself, so the officers in attendance could see a fully licensed and legal medical cannabis facility with their own eyes: how the cultivation process actually works, the security and safety measures in place, and the standards the whole operation is held to.
I went into the first of these sessions not knowing exactly what I should be expecting, other than a certain degree of scepticism on the side of the forces.
What I found was almost the opposite.
Building Glass Pharms has given the team and me a deep working knowledge of the regulations around controlled drugs, of the cultivation itself, and, in my own case, a chemist’s understanding of how these compounds behave. That combination turned out to be useful to officers who, for the most part, simply had not been given the information before.
The sessions were a chance to close that gap in a calm setting, without the pressure of a live incident.
One thing that struck me time and again was the attitude of the police during our training sessions. There was seemingly no hostility towards cannabis as a medicine, and no appetite for treating unwell people as criminals. They wanted to follow the law themselves, implement it correctly on the streets, and do right by patients. What they lacked was not goodwill, but information.
A few officers were surprised to learn that a prescription might include cannabis flower, rather than only oils or capsules, but in all honesty, most weren’t. What united them was a single, practical question, asked in one form or another at every session: “Out on the beat, how do we tell a legitimate medical product from illicit street cannabis, quickly and fairly?”
Policy
UK Police Finally Get Official Medical Cannabis Guidance More Than 7 Years After Legalisation
Over seven years after medical cannabis was legalised in the UK, the National Police Chiefs’ Council has approved the first official guidance for medical cannabis. The guidance, titled ‘Medicinal Cannabis
Read the Story →
Where the wider industry comes in
That question, how to tell medical from illicit at a glance, is where the rest of us have a part to play.
The officers I met responded warmly to distinctive, medical packaging, and to our own sealed aluminium tins in particular. A sealed tin with a clear dispensing label is difficult to mistake for a bag of street cannabis, and several said they would welcome something like it becoming standard across the sector. It is not often that a producer, a patient and a police officer all want the same thing, but on this they do.
The framework we need already exists. The task now is to make it work, and to help everyone operating inside it, prescriber, patient and police officer alike, do so with clarity rather than guesswork.
Legalisation was the first step. Making the system work, and that everyone concerned truly understands how it is meant to work, is the job at hand.
Cannabis Law Resources in Poland
Explore essential legal pages about cannabis cultivation, sales, and medical product regulations in Poland. These resources will guide you through permissions, certifications, and compliance requirements.
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Polish News Registration and Interests of Cannabis Businesses
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Permissions for Cannabis Sales in Poland
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Authorization for Importing or Manufacturing Medical Products
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Permission for Manufacturing or Importing Medical Products
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Certificate of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP)
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Registration of Medical Products in Poland