Information patients can use
Packaging, route instructions, counselling and plans for device or route failure.
ExploreClinical decisions.
Real-world care.
Explore prescribing controls, usable patient information, routes of administration and continuity of treatment.
Report update · 26 October 2026
Honest conversations. Continuing care.
The 2018 advice explicitly invoked professional discipline as a smoking control. Current GMC guidance asks clinicians to encourage openness about departures from instructions and understand the reasons. Knowing that a patient has smoked is different from prescribing smoking or supplying for recreational use. The report asks Government and the professional system to protect that conversation while preserving individual clinical judgment.
In its 16 July 2026 FOI reply, the GMC said it had not specifically considered whether prescribers should communicate this rule’s legal consequences and held no situation-specific record identifying responsibility. That was an answer about communication, rather than a ruling on a clinician’s liability for learning about smoked use.
Explore the evidence and analysisThe professional and patient questions are different
Standards for prescribing and supply do not, by themselves, answer how a patient should be supported when treatment becomes difficult to use. JBD examines both the professional framework and the practical continuity of care.
This audience route gives particular attention to information, consent, product and route instructions, patient participation and the limits of available outcome data. It draws on health guidance and research as well as the legal and institutional record.
Selected starting sources
A different selection for this audience, drawn from the shared evidence base.
CMO and NHS England clinician letter 31 October 2018
Chief Medical Officer and NHS England prescribing guidance to clinicians.
Open record and contextACMD assessment covering letter 27 November 2020
Assessment covering letter, including the distinction between diversion and false medicinal labels.
Open record and contextErridge and colleagues, UK Medical Cannabis Registry clustering study, 2026
Registry study: treatment route is derived from active prescriptions.
Open record and contextTait and colleagues, UK Medical Cannabis Registry patient evaluation, 2023
Patient evaluation research, read with its methods and route questions.
Open record and context