A few years back, the Institute of Medicine issued a document that examined the potential medical and therapeutic benefits of cannabis, research indicated that cannabis consumers could potentially benefit from smoking cannabis as THC could have medical benefits such as pain relief, help with nausea and vomiting, and stimulate appetite. However, smoking cannabis consists of inhaling smoke, which also delivers harmful substances.

THC and other cannabinoids can have several other medical benefits including improving mood and anxiety reduction among others but these effects also come with certain effects that may be undesirable for certain patients which can end up making it hard to prescript as everyone’s metabolism is different.

Despite these undesired effects, several studies have found that cannabis can relieve symptoms of AIDS/HIV, cancer, glaucoma, and Multiple Sclerosis so it could be of great benefit for those who suffer from these and other symptoms but the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reviews over 10.000 scientific researches in regards to cannabis and claim more research must be done.

Currently, out of 50 US states, more than 35 have legalized medical cannabis use. In these places where medical cannabis is legal, states usually have a patient registry of some sort which should provide a certain degree of protection against arrest up to a certain amount of cannabis for medicinal use but at the federal level, cannabis is still a Schedule 1 drug, classified as a substance that has a high potential for dependency and no medical use, making it extremely difficult for medical users to have access to their medicine

In other countries such as the United kingdom, authorities claim that there’s insufficient evidence or that it’s too dangerous despite the strong evidence from patients which, in some cases, the effects can be life-changing. Most doctors in the UK fail to recognize the evidence despite the thousands of reports of the therapeutic benefits in databases around the world.

In the UK it has been launched the European medical cannabis registry, which aims to create and classify the effectiveness and tolerability of medical cannabis. On top of that, they're currently working on establishing existing data on patients with epilepsy to show a reduction of seizures after cannabis use. However, there are over 50 medicines licensed by the Food and Drug Administration European Medicines Agency but generally, doctors will not prescribe them due to the lack of data. Back in 2018, the United Kingdom produced cannabis-based products for medicinal use which patients thought would be immediately available, but nothing happened as even 1 year after production no public prescriptions has been issued, and less than 100 private prescriptions have been made, due to the cost of at least £1000 per month.

For these reasons, children with severe symptoms such as epilepsy have been forced to go overseas to get access to cannabis medication which, in some cases, is the only treatment that is effective for their condition. Research found that over 1.3 million medical cannabis users recur to the black market despite its illegality and unknown quality. Because of this, the failure to deliver cannabis for medical purposes in the UK seems inexcusable to experts.