On 6 January 2026, the Nationwide Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) authorized the primary official steering on medical hashish for officers in England and Wales, information that UK sufferers have been ready since 2018 to obtain.
Sufferers, business and the police all celebrated this as an imperfect, however overwhelmingly optimistic step in the proper path for all involved, recognising the complexity of the problem and the central tenet that regulation enforcement ought to strategy interactions with a ‘sufferers first, suspects second’ mindset.
Its creator Richard Listing QPM, a retired veteran police officer who used to steer the UK’s medication squad, stated himself: “In a liberal democracy, should you’re a affected person and also you’ve had a managed drug that’s legitimately prescribed by a health care provider, you shouldn’t have to fret about any interference from the police.”
Regardless of this, it took simply days earlier than a number of mainstream media shops had both mischaracterised the steering, or ignored it completely in favour of sensationalist tales portray medical hashish sufferers as ‘advantages claimants’ utilizing ‘stunning loopholes’ to acquire ‘tremendous power hashish’.
Whereas hashish stigmatisation within the mainstream press is nothing new, numerous sufferers reached out to our sister publication Hashish Well being to share considerations about this protection, particularly within the wake of long-awaited recognition from regulation enforcement.
Rupa Shah, Chief Authorized and Compliance Officer at UK medical hashish clinic Releaf, instructed Enterprise of Hashish: “It’s irritating for us… that narrative wants to alter.
“We clearly wish to promote our companies, however when making an attempt to teach and take away stigma, that’s tough for us due to the distinctive restrictions on promoting. We’re a industrial firm, and by advantage of that, it makes it barely harder. Ideally, commerce our bodies ought to be working with authorities and coverage makers, but it surely’s one thing we’re nonetheless ready on.”
“We’re in a novel place the place I can have entry to the individuals who would possibly be capable of change the narrative. However we’re nonetheless working inside a system that may be very, very closely regulated.”
Why correct protection issues
Not too long ago revealed (November 2025) peer-reviewed analysis from Lindsey Metcalf McGrath and Helen Beckett Wilson, paints a transparent image of the influence each a scarcity of police schooling and the continued stigmatisation within the mainstream press have on sufferers.
The research, ‘Coaching the police on legalised medical hashish: classes in constructing public belief, lowering hurt, and avoiding reputational harm’, discovered that of the 94 police constable apprentices, throughout 18-months into operational duties, 9 in 10 (88%) stated they knew ‘little or nothing about prescribed hashish, with many having been misinformed throughout coaching.
The analysis, which used knowledge from clinics together with Releaf, documented circumstances the place untrained officers brought about critical hurt to sufferers: one was reported to social companies along with her health as a mother or father questioned, regardless of her authorized hashish prescription serving to management epileptic seizures to the purpose the place she not wanted household assist to look after her youngster.
Black sufferers expressed specific anxiousness about police encounters, given differential stop-and-search charges.
“Conditions the place police deal with issues incorrectly and insensitively are significantly dangerous given the excessive proportion of individuals being prescribed hashish for anxiousness issues,” the researchers famous.
The research additionally revealed the deeply entrenched prohibitionist attitudes officers deliver to hashish encounters. Earlier than coaching, when requested to write down the primary three phrases that got here to thoughts about ‘hashish customers,’ officers’ responses included ‘baghead’ (pejorative UK slang for a drug person), ‘addict,’ ‘younger,’ and ‘unlawful.’
The researchers discovered that officers held ‘prohibitionist beliefs that hashish possession is at all times synonymous with criminality’, beliefs they traced on to their coaching. One officer said bluntly: ‘Anybody is getting locked up. It’s unlawful to own.’
“Prohibitionist narratives and stereotypes are correlated with pejorative beliefs which end result within the stigmatisation of sufferers,” the research discovered.
As a first-rate instance of this dynamic, Shah factors to a current case which led to a proper criticism being introduced in opposition to a senior police officer over feedback linking the scent of hashish to criminality.
In response, advocacy group PatientsCann UK submitted a proper criticism in opposition to senior policing figures, arguing that such statements ignore the authorized standing of prescribed medical hashish and will affect frontline policing attitudes.
“If that’s what law enforcement officials are bringing to their interactions [with] sufferers, [that’s a] large drawback,” Shah stated.
The encouraging discovering was that evidence-based coaching dramatically shifted each information and attitudes. After a three-hour workshop masking the 2018 laws, affected person experiences, and correct verification procedures, 67% of officers stated they knew “so much” about prescribed hashish, whereas use of the time period ‘baghead’ dropped from 10 mentions to zero. References to ‘medical’ rose from three to 39.
The November 2025 analysis concluded that ‘the updating of police coaching and procedures are essential step within the implementation of authorized reforms’ and that this stays ‘overdue within the UK’, with its absence ‘inflicting hurt to sufferers and damaging the status of the police.’
Deceptive media protection provides one other layer of confusion to an already advanced implementation problem, one that can play out throughout 43 police forces over months and years.
