The UK economic growth faces a paradox of two seemingly opposing pressures, yet both may be resolved by moving in the same direction.
On the one hand, sickness absence and long-term ill health continue to weigh on productivity: 148.9 million working days were lost to sickness in 2024 (4.4 per worker), and economic inactivity remains elevated even as rates fluctuate quarter to quarter. On the other hand, the government has explicitly placed life sciences among the UK’s priority growth sectors, recognising its potential to drive regional jobs, investment and better health.
With growth still topping the political agenda, deliberate action is necessary to finally shift the economic dial. According projections from the Health Foundation, 2.5m more people in England will be living with a major illness by 2040, a shift set to pile further pressure on the country’s workforce, NHS and wider economy.
Against that backdrop, building a credible, UK-anchored medical cannabis industry is not a niche play; it’s part of a broader life-sciences asset the country can cultivate at home, creating skilled jobs, retaining IP, and generating clinically useful data while improving patient options and outcomes within a regulated framework.
This piece, developed by Dalgety, Celadon Pharmaceuticals and Glass Pharms, sets out why cultivation in the UK is the foundation for capturing that value, economically and clinically, and what a practical pathway forward looks like.
The economic engine starts with cultivation
Domestically produced medical cannabis flower has only been available in the UK for private prescription since 2024 and the market share is beginning to grow.
However, around 90% of the cannabis flower prescribed as a CBPM in the UK is still imported. That means that jobs in cultivation, research and development, breeding and post harvest operations largely remain offshore, which in turn inhibits the innovation and business development that could lead to better outcomes both for UK patients and the country as whole.
Cultivation is foundational for establishing a true UK medical cannabis industry. As a result of the early stage development of the industry, we are now seeing the commercial development of a UK laboratory testing sector designed specifically for medical cannabis.
Extraction facilities, and the development of new form factors for cannabis-based medicines will likely follow on from this. For a clinical trial programme in particular and certainly for any product that is likely to be acceptable for NHS prescription, domestic cultivation is highly desirable as it provides a stable base for the necessary supply chains with quick iteration and rapid prototyping then made much more possible.
Cultivation acts as a value multiplier at the base of the supply chain enabling a potentially vast number of UK-based start ups in the medical cannabis sector to develop products and ideas that would otherwise not exist in an import-only market.
Stable formularies based on UK-cultivated products give clinics a great way of collecting compelling real world evidence on the efficacy of CBPMs, whereas imports are often only available for a short window and then go out of stock.
This has a significant negative impact on patients which makes the argument for domestic cultivation and downstream facilities compelling. New cultivars are already being developed by UK cultivators with an emphasis on less well known cannabinoids such as CBD, CBN and CBG that have significant potential in a medical-only market.
The net result of the development of UK cultivation will be more reliable products for UK patients with better validation and a clearly signposted path forward to wider access and hopefully reimbursement by the NHS in the not-so-distant future.
Domestic cultivation is the anchor that turns a fragile, import-dependent market into a UK life-sciences asset. Today, the vast majority of CBPM flower dispensed privately is imported, and import volumes have surged.
UK officials reported that 2023 imports rose from 7 tonnes to 15 tonnes versus 2022. That reliance pushes jobs, know-how and margin offshore, and it weakens supply resilience for patients. By contrast, the first prescriptions of UK-grown, EU-GMP flower in 2024/25 showed what a local base can unlock; shorter lead times, tighter traceability and a platform for adjacent capabilities to form around it.
With UK cultivation, products are much more likely to be stable and repeatable, making the The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) challenge, namely the requirement of evidence consistent enough to assess, genuinely manageable. Clinics can maintain consistent formularies, run comparable studies, and collect reliable real-world data with clear product identity, dose, duration and outcomes.
In turn, that supports auditable trials and a credible cost-effectiveness case, rather than cycling through short-lived imports.
That standardisation (Ph. Eur. methods, batch traceability, defined specifications) is the precondition for any serious cost-effectiveness assessment and future commissioning case. That stability matters in a system where NICE guidance is narrow and evidence standards are high. Repeatable, documented supply is the precondition for credible studies and any future commissioning case.
There is also an important macro rationale. The UK faces sustained pressure from long-term illness and sickness absence (148.9 million working days lost in 2024). Placing cultivation, and the QA/QC, data and manufacturing that cluster around it, inside the UK keeps high-value jobs and IP onshore, aligns with the government’s life-sciences growth agenda, and gives patients and clinicians a faster, more accountable pathway.
The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology is seeking to increase the UK’s health resilience and create accelerate economic growth. Having a strong domestic cultivation sector achieves both of these.
In short, no cultivation, no industry and no realistic route to the productivity, skills and evidence gains a domestic sector can deliver.
Clinical & health economics signal a path forward
The UK has always been seen as a hub for scientific research, with many leading pharmaceutical companies based in the UK with research and development pipelines for new, novel treatments.
NICE published their guidance in 2019 on CBPMs, and this guidance called for further research to be undertaken, specifically in Fibromyalgia and chronic pain. At this time, no clinical studies in the UK were approved for CBPMs.
In 2022, Celadon Pharmaceuticals, a UK cultivator and cannabinoid research company, gained approval for the first clinical study for CBPMs in chronic non-cancer pain called CANPAIN under one of its group companies, LVL. The first part of this study was conducted in 2023/4 in nearly 100 patients to generate the first wave of data on a specific CBPM in a specific disease.
To help inform further development of CANPAIN, Celadon commissioned York Health Economic Consulting (YHEC), a leader in building cost-effectiveness models (CEM) used by NICE, to determine the benefits of a CBPM. YHEC took Celadon’s data from CANPAIN and, through the economic model, was tasked with seeing if it would benefit the NHS.
The results showed that Celadon’s CBPM was significantly more effective than the standard of care for reducing pain and improving sleep. It also demonstrated an opioid reduction and improvement in QALYs. Further extrapolation of results showed that per 100,000 patients, the NHS could save £68m a year. To date, this is the only approved chronic pain study in the UK.
A strong domestic cultivation industry would directly facilitate critical clinical studies, providing the evidence required to demonstrate the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of CBPMs and so pave the way for their consideration and approval by the NHS.
Regional growth & investment
UK Cultivation has the capacity to drive regional development into locations that are generally underserved with highly skilled jobs and innovative companies.
Glass Pharms has already brought more than 30 highly skilled jobs to rural Wiltshire, where it is able to leverage a sustainable energy generation cluster with an anaerobic digestion plant that turns food waste into power and a 3MW solar farm on site.
A practical UK blueprint for domestic cultivation isn’t complicated, but it does require discipline.
- First, it requires stable, science-led regulation that treats medical cannabis as part of the Life Sciences Vision, clear signals on licensing pathways and investment so capability can scale here, not elsewhere.
- Second, a skills pipeline across cultivation, QA/QC and clinical governance, and wider to highly specialised construction industry and technical growers, and all associated industries from testing laboratories to pharmacists and transport built through apprenticeships and partnerships, so know-how stays in Britain.
- Third, responsible disclosure and prescribing; align education with NICE and NHS England guidance, keep unlicensed use within specialist care, and use consistent consent and Controlled Drugs governance.
- Finally, data-driven care. Contribute outcomes to the NHS CBPM registry and design studies that generate real-world evidence acceptable to MHRA, so future marketing authorisations become realistically investable.
Policymakers, lock in predictable rules and enable evidence generation. Media, hold us to account, but help move the debate from stigma to standards. If we get this right, UK cultivation underpins a life-sciences asset that delivers cost savings to the NHS, jobs, data and ultimately better patient outcomes.
