The legal medical cannabis market in the UK has been expanding at a fast pace for the past few years, after initially slow growth post 2018 legalisation. Today, some 80,000 patients across the country are treated with medical cannabis from private clinics and the market is worth some £300 million a year.

While high-profile discussions of patient access, regulation, and stigma are often discussed, some of the other pressures on what is a growing part of the UK economy are not as visible.

The complexities of international supply chains, high start-up costs, and currency fluctuations are things private clinics have to factor in to balance the mission of widening patient access while being a commercially viable business.

These are the considerations the UK’s medical cannabis clinics, suppliers, and patients have to keep in mind if the sector is to grow to the same level as mature markets like Germany, Canada, and the USA.

Growth and Demand Is Strong But There Are Potential Roadblocks

The total amount of medical cannabis prescribed in the UK has grown by some 250% in the past two years. The market is expected to hit £1 billion by 2030, according to some estimates.

In Canada and Germany, around 1.5% to 2% of people have been prescribed medical cannabis, compared to around 0.2% in the UK. The country has long been known to have a thriving black market for recreational street cannabis, with studies showing a significant percentage of people purchasing for illicit self-medication.

Although far from all of those people are certain to be approved for medical cannabis treatment, this proves the potential market is there.

For patient numbers to truly grow, prices need to come down. While not prohibitively expensive for most, prices can rack up for some patients.

In Germany, for example, costs for patients are just slightly lower, but around 50% of the 300,000 or so medical cannabis patients are reimbursed by the government under public healthcare rules.

This is unlikely to happen in the UK, as the NHS medicines regulator, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence – NICE – has yet to widely license medical cannabis for prescription via the national healthcare provider.

Prospective patients looking for the best medical cannabis clinics the UK has to offer would be wise to browse an expert comparison site before making their choice. Patient and professional reviews take into account the quality of patient care, the medicinal product standards and pricing to help people find the best option for their circumstances.

Other reasons for the UK’s slightly higher cannabis treatment costs than in Canada or Germany include:

• Strong regulation and clinical standards
• The majority of supply is imported
• Domestic startup costs are high, especially in growing product for the UK market
• Imported supply means global trade and currency fluctuations can hit

Patient-Focused Clinical Standards Means Margins are Tight

The dual-nature of being a healthcare provider and a business means private clinics focused on cannabis have tight margins and high operating costs.

Clinical staffing, import and storage of a controlled medicine, patient follow up care and advertising restrictions all play a role in creating tight margins for clinics to be sustainable businesses.

Where most businesses are generally expected to allocate around 10% of their yearly revenues to spend on marketing, medical and pharmaceutical companies often spend far less – around 2% to 5% –  which can limit growth.

Because of the mission of patient-access that is at the core of the sector, high mark up pricing is not really something that is considered.

Economically, a thriving black market is an indirect competitor and increasing prices on medication people have come to rely on is never looked upon kindly by patients or the public. Instead, profitability has to come from operational efficiency at scale.

The Import Market and Currency Fluctuations are a Challenge

However, at the core of the market right now is one big inefficiency. Although the UK is one of the largest growers of medical cannabis in the world, and has been for some years, most of the prescribed cannabis flower that ends up with patients is imported.

This is because the licensed UK farms are set up to supply pharmaceutical grade flower for producing the medicines Sativex and Epidyolex.

The time and financial cost of setting up a cannabis farm for direct supply to UK patients is large, although several large domestic suppliers did finally join the market in 2025.

Even the non-psychoactive cannabinoid compound CBD – which it totally legal in the UK when isolated from the flower – is caught up in this.

For people looking to try CBD oil treatment, whether supplementally or through a prescription, CBD oil reviews from third parties are an important resource. Not all CBD oils are equal, so expert and patient opinions are important to see through marketing and hype to find the highest quality products for the best health outcomes.

The UK farms significant amounts of industrial hemp (non THC cannabis plants used in textiles) but none of the CBD-dominant flowers that naturally grow on hemp plants are allowed to be given to the growing UK commercial CBD business. Instead firms import isolate from Europe at higher costs, which are then passed onto customers.

With much product for domestic supply imported, changes in the price of CAD or the Euro against GBP can have a big impact on clinics and suppliers. Especially for smaller, homegrown operators that don’t have the backing of big foreign capital investments.

If some of these challenges can be overcome, particularly the bottleneck in domestic supply, the future could see even stronger growth in the market.