Prescriptions issued for medicinal cannabis (FOI)

Request

As we are now in the eighth month of Health Minister Deputy Renouf's benighted, complicated, restrictive and uneducated cannabis reform policy (which frankly bares little to no resemblance to proposition P.113/2018 that forced it) would you be so kind as to provide the number of cannabis prescriptions written so far this year, whether the prescriptions were for Sativex, other licenced cannabis medications on or off licence and unlicenced medications, and could this be provided for as many years before as the Freedom of Information time / money restrictions allow.

Response

In relation to prescriptions issued by GPs, Article 23 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied as this information has been published within a recent Freedom of Information request. For ease of reference please find a link to this request below:

Medicinal cannabis prescriptions (FOI)

The hospital is not able to provide the number of prescriptions dispensed, however can provide the numbers of packs of medicines supplied – one prescription may be for more than one pack so this is not necessarily an indication of the numbers of prescriptions or patients, but it gives an idea of the quantity dispensed.

For Sativex, which has been legal to prescribe as a licensed medicine since launched, the number of packs supplied for each year are below (one pack contains 3 x 10mL canisters)

2017 – none

2018 – 295 packs

2019 January to July – 214 packs

There have been no prescriptions written by hospital based prescribers for any of the other cannabis based medicinal products which became legal on 1 January 2019 or for any other cannabis medications either on or off licence or unlicenced.

Article applied

Article 23 Information accessible to applicant by other means

(1) Information is absolutely exempt information if it is reasonably available to the applicant, otherwise than under this Law, whether or not free of charge.

(2) A scheduled public that refuses an application for information on this ground must make reasonable efforts to inform the applicant where the applicant may obtain the information.