The Economics of a Captive Market
Behind the marketing sits a fast-growing consumer business, increasingly built on subscription and referral mechanics borrowed from retail. ISC-CARE/Chelsea Medical Clinic (not separately approached for comment on this specific claim) and Releaf integrate a “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) service called Klarna at checkout. It's ubiquitous in retail (fashion, electronics, home goods) and works by Klarna paying the merchant immediately and then collecting from the customer over time, sometimes with a soft credit check. Market reviews have found little evidence that BNPL drive significant increases in debt at the population level. But StepChange's client polling shows that half of BNPL users are already struggling to keep up with bills. The Financial Conduct Authority's Distress Deferred paper and related studies have linked BNPL use to mental health problems, which one review warned could produce a debt spiral.
The effect of cannabis on spending and decision-making, in particular among those with mental health conditions, is unknown, though young recreational users in a small study were found to be impaired in financial assessments. Curaleaf, Alternaleaf, and Verkind run subscriptions from around £5–£9 a month, and Releaf's “Releaf+” bundles follow-ups and delivery into a £39.99-a-month plan.¹ Releaf reportedly pays existing patients a £50 gift card for referring a friend into a paid consultation, while Lyphe offers £25 of clinic credit per referral.
NHS data obtained under FOI for this article show the number of cannabis-based medicinal products (CBPMs) dispensed nationally rose from roughly 668,500 in 2024 to about 1.77 million in 2025 – growth of some two-and-a-half times in a single year. If average patient spend were around £2,000–£2,300 a year across an estimated 60,000–90,000 active patients, this would put the current market size at roughly £240–300 million, with industry forecasts projecting growth toward £1 billion.² That commercial architecture sits inside a lobbying ecosystem through All Party Parliamentary Groups for parliamentarians and business interests. Full commercial legalisation would likely cannibalise the consultation-fee margins private cannabis medicine currently protects, meaning some of its biggest players have a narrower commercial interest in the medical gate staying exactly as it is.³
UK medicines law prohibits public advertising of prescription-only medicines. They separately bar advertisements involving celebrities capable of encouraging use. Yet Big Narstie Medical, a marketing brand fronted by the rapper of the same name, has collaborated with clinics in routing patients, and was reported by The Times to have promoted cash-commission-style referrals. This approach was deemed “irresponsible” (Big Narstie Medical was not separately sent right-of-reply questions, as its role is a marketing referrer rather than a prescribing clinic).⁴ Mamedica ran a national campaign featuring the comedian Dom Joly. Alternaleaf partnered with Jordan Stephens of Rizzle Kicks on the agenda of men’s mental health. Releaf has also used actor Linda Robson as a brand ambassador.
In Australia, the medicines regulator has separately brought still-unresolved Federal Court proceedings against Montu Group, its UK-linked Alternaleaf brand and a director, alleging unlawful advertising that specifically named the term “plant medicine” – the same phrase Alternaleaf uses in its UK marketing. Asked whether it wished to comment on using that term amid the litigation, Alternaleaf's retained PR agency, after initially engaging over several weeks, said it was "unable to comment."⁵ No other clinic using “plant medicine” language was separately approached on that specific term.
Prescribing also appears to be concentrated in a few dominant clinics. The Times reported in March 2026 that ten consultants had authorised more than half of all UK cannabis prescriptions since 2019, the busiest issuing nearly 46,000 items in the first five months of 2025 – roughly one every two working minutes. The Times quoted a former head of R&D at the Wellcome Foundation describing a market that has “doubled, then doubled again, then doubled again.”
A separate re-analysis found nine of those ten “prescriber identifiers” were pharmacist independent prescribers, not doctors. This is consistent with a shared-care model in which a specialist doctor initiates the prescriptions and a pharmacist manages repeat dispensing. This publication's own analysis of the underlying FOI dataset, extending to March 2026, goes further. The same top identifier issued about 188,000 items across 2025 alone – roughly a tenth of the year's national total on its own, up from 81,000 in 2024 and 28,000 in 2023 – and its most recently reported months show monthly volumes of 34,000–35,500 items. In one illustrative estimate, assuming a 21-day, 8-hour working month, this is equivalent to roughly one item every 17 seconds of clinic time. The NHS has confirmed some identifiers may represent a clinic or group practice rather than one individual, so this looks more like large telehealth operators dominating the market than ten reckless doctors – though the trajectory, if it holds up, suggests concentration is deepening, not easing.⁶
The General Pharmaceutical Council told this publication directly that “the fact that a small number of prescribers are generating a high volume of prescriptions is not necessarily a concern in itself,” while confirming it is working with NHS England to obtain regular prescribing data “to understand the situation further”. Different regulators manage marketing, advertising, care standards and pharmaceutical procedures, without an inquiry overseeing the entire sector.
Overselling Beyond Psychiatry
There are issues beyond over-marketing. LeafEase describes itself as “fully CQC-registered for safety and compliance”. But its registration belongs to an NHS GP surgery, whose latest inspection, which ended in a Good rating, made no mention of cannabis prescription. The surgery’s sole partner, Dr Jalil Ahmed, also controls LeafEase and has faced allegations of mismanagement, unpaid bills, and putting patients at risk. The cannabis platform does not appear to have a standalone registration and reports being a private service operated through the GP surgery. It separately claims to have dispensed “legal private prescriptions since 2018,” although Companies House confirms its operating company was incorporated only in April 2024. (LeafEase did not respond to right-of-reply questions.)⁷
In January 2026, the ASA upheld complaints against Mamedica for advertising its second-year fees as “£0 – lower than any other clinic in the UK,” which applies only to a restricted plan (Mamedica's PR agency said it was “actively working on” a response to this and other questions for this article; none had arrived by publication). A broader complaint about sector-wide marketing patterns remains under consideration.⁸ Auravia offered “free cannabis clinic for life” for its first 500 patients (Auravia did not respond to right-of-reply questions).⁹
Curaleaf, the company described as expediting the death of Oliver Robinson, has other governance issues. In June 2026, independent shareholders voted to entrench chairman and CEO Boris Jordan's control, giving him roughly 70% of voting power. Jordan, a Russian-American billionaire with links to Vladimir Putin, has since used that control to pursue a rejected takeover bid for rival Aurora Cannabis. This could make for a marketplace more rooted in the CEO’s authority.¹⁰
Alternaleaf’s Winnersh service was rated “Requires improvement” after a 2025 CQC assessment found patients confused about its relationship to the in-house Montu Pharmacy. It was found to breach several safety standards. It received mixed feedback from patients and no re-inspection by the time of writing (see Alternaleaf’s response above). The CQC has separately confirmed formal enforcement action against Montu Group UK, its nature withheld under FOI exemptions.¹¹ General Medical Council guidance requires doctors not to let financial interests affect their prescribing, and to declare any conflict that may influence what they prescribe. Wellford Clinic prescribes through Newgrove Pharmacy, and both are owned by the same importer/wholesaler, Therismos. The group markets its own white-label flower lines (Aqua, Peak, Luma) with trial-pack discounts. Asked what proportion of prescriptions go to in-group products, Wellford called the figure “commercially sensitive” and declined to disclose it.
Unlike most private cannabis clinics, CB1 Medical was founded by, and is still run by, the same senior doctors who lead Willows Health, the largest NHS GP provider in Leicestershire. The group serves around 65,000 patients. This means the doctors who hold patients’ NHS records are the same people who can wave you through to a paid cannabis prescription, using those records to skip the usual wait. CB1 did not respond to requests to clarify the nature of the partnership. They also neglected to answer questions about a 2025 breach that exposed the personal and prescription data of over 4,000 of its patients.
Verkind's own regulated entity, The GP Service (UK) Ltd, likewise carries a “Requires improvement” rating. Verkind said addressing the findings was “a priority.”¹²Verkind, a telehealth brand marketing itself as the clinic “where kindness comes naturally,” changed hands in December 2025 when Green UK Wholesale acquired it from Kanabo. It did not clarify who ultimately controls the company that bought it.¹³
The GPhC's own thematic review, published in October 2025, found that most cannabis-dispensing pharmacies met required standards, without evidence of sector-wide failure – a finding that sits alongside documented local problems, such as Lyphe's dispensary failing a storage standard in December 2024 before passing reinspection in August 2025.¹⁴ Wellford asked precisely who authorises a repeat prescription, ultimately confirmed that unchanged repeats are issued by independent pharmacists, with only changes or variations handled by a consultant – a specific clarification most clinics approached for this article declined to give, even as Wellford said it would not answer further questions on decline rates, adverse-event tallies or average prescribed THC strength.¹⁵
Research, Safety and Accountability
Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are expensive to run. If one or a few companies possess the capital to bring an RCT to completion, it can strengthen market dominance and pricing power. Trials are also somewhat artificial and may fail to capture aspects of cannabis use among real patients.
One alternative is real-world evidence, which can be used to convince regulators to back cannabis. Real-world registries, produced by companies from surveying their patients, can identify adverse events and capture outcomes trials miss. The question is how much weight they bear as a standard of evidence. Indeed, Curaleaf's UK Medical Cannabis Registry is peer-reviewed and has produced substantial observational work. But Oliver Robinson was enrolled on the same Registry, and it is owned and managed within the clinical group, with publications authored by Curaleaf-affiliated staff, sometimes evaluating the group's own products. That is a structural conflict of interest. Curaleaf's 2024 CQC assessment, prompted by concerns about rapid patient growth, nonetheless rated the service “Good” overall and “Outstanding” for its leadership rating.¹⁶
Oliver's Law, the campaign launched by Oliver Robinson's family, does not seek to reverse cannabis legalisation and explicitly accepts the evidence base for MS, epilepsy, and chronic pain. Its demands are specific. The campaign asks for statutory contraindications barring prescribing to patients with serious mental illness, mandatory consultation with NHS mental-health teams before prescribing, face-to-face assessment for complex cases rather than video calls, a central registry recording all cannabis prescriptions, and routine official inspections.¹⁷
The market exists because patients' needs did not disappear while the NHS waited for evidence strong enough to fund cannabis routinely. That unmet need cannot justify claims that research cannot support.
Endnotes
1. Pricing details drawn from clinic websites captured in August–September 2026. ISC-CARE/Chelsea Medical Clinic was not approached for comment on this claim. Wellford's response appears in Part One, note 11; Verkind's appears at note 3.
2. Market-size and per-patient spend figures are this publication's own calculations from clinic pricing pages; The Times separately reported typical initial consultations at around £100 and ongoing monthly spend of £80–£300. Total national CBPM dispensing volume (2024: ~668,500 items; 2025: ~1,774,700 items) is this publication's own analysis of NHSBSA prescribing data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (reference FOI_03965), covering January 2019 to March 2026.
3. Lobbying details drawn from public registers, filings and trade-body materials; none of the bodies named was separately approached for comment.
4. Big Narstie Medical's referral and marketing practices, and its removal of links to an NHS-consultant-led clinic following criticism, were reported by The Times (Andrew Ellson, Consumer Affairs Correspondent, April 2026). Big Narstie Medical was not separately sent right-of-reply questions by this publication, as its role is a marketing referrer rather than a prescribing clinic. Releaf's absence of a published CQC rating, and Releaf and Lyphe's referral-scheme terms, are drawn from CQC provider records and clinic pages respectively; both were sent right-of-reply questions about their referral schemes and neither appears to have substantively responded.
5.Therapeutic Goods Administration,“Court proceedings initiated against Montu Group Pty Ltd, Alternaleaf Pty Ltd, and an individual for alleged unlawful advertising of medicinal cannabis” (April 2024); proceedings were reported as ongoing as of mid-2026. The allegations are contested and have not been determined by the Federal Court of Australia. Alternaleaf, represented by PB Consulting, engaged with this publication's right-of-reply questions over several weeks before its colleague Hannah Parker stated by email on 13 August 2026: “Unfortunately on this occasion, we are unable to comment.”
6. Andrew Ellson, “Ten doctors have prescribed half of all cannabis drugs,” The Times, 29 March 2026 (archived: web.archive.org, 29 March 2026), reporting on NHSBSA data obtained via Freedom of Information request; the “nearly 46,000 items in five months” figure refers to January–May 2025, which this publication's own analysis of the same identifier corroborates (47,655 items over that period). The subsequent re-analysis breaking prescriber identifiers down by profession was published independently by Business of Cannabis/Cannabis Health News (June 2026). This publication's own figures on 2023–2026 trends are drawn from its own statistical analysis of the pseudonymised prescriber-identifier dataset released under the same FOI reference, summing monthly item counts by identifier; the most recent one to two months of any FOI-released NHSBSA dataset are typically incomplete pending later submissions, so the December 2025–February 2026 figures cited here may understate the true position and should be treated as provisional. The “one item every 17 seconds” figure is this publication's own illustrative calculation (34,263 items in February 2026 divided by an assumed 21-day, 8-hour working month, or 604,800 seconds); a different assumption about operating hours would produce a different figure, and this publication does not know what assumption underlies the Times' 2025 "one every two working minutes” figure, so the two should be read as separately illustrative of scale rather than a precisely comparable trend line.
7. LeafEase's CQC registration and “since 2018” claims are drawn from CQC provider records; Guardia Therapeutics Ltd (trading as LeafEase, company number 15695083) was incorporated on 30 April 2024, per Companies House. LeafEase was sent right-of-reply questions and does not appear to have responded.
8.Advertising Standards Authority, Mamedica Ltd, ruling A25-1312203, 28 January 2026. Mamedica's retained PR agency (Group42) acknowledged this publication's right-of-reply letter, asked for a deadline extension to 21 August 2026, and stated it was “actively working on” a response; no substantive answer to the underlying questions had arrived by the time of publication. This publication separately complained to the ASA in August 2026 about sector-wide marketing patterns, including practices at Curaleaf Clinic, Mamedica, CB1 Medical, Can° Clinic, Lyphe, Wellford and Medicann; the ASA's enquiries team replied that it does not accept complaints via its general email address and that submissions must be made through its online form, and the resulting complaint's outcome was not known at the time of writing.
9. Auravia was sent right-of-reply questions for this article; no response appears to have been received. CB1 Medical does not appear to have substantively responded to right-of-reply questions (see Part One, note 5).
10. On the removal of the sunset clause on chairman and CEO Boris Jordan's multiple voting shares, see Curaleaf Holdings, Inc. management information circular and supplement, filed with the SEC, May–June 2026, and its 8-K filed August 2026 confirming Jordan “controls, directly or indirectly, approximately 70% of the total voting power.” Curaleaf's approach to Aurora Cannabis regarding a possible takeover, and Aurora's board's rejection of it, were reported in trade press in September 2026. None of this touches Curaleaf Clinic's UK clinical practice directly, and none of it was separately put to Curaleaf Clinic, whose right-of-reply response concerned UK clinical governance.
11. Care Quality Commission, Winnersh, Montu Group UK Ltd, assessment report (see Part One, note 4), and separate CQC response to Freedom of Information request, 2026, confirming that formal regulatory enforcement action was taken against Montu Group UK Ltd; the specific nature of that action was withheld under FOI Act exemptions relating to prejudice to the CQC's regulatory functions. Alternaleaf's right-of-reply correspondence appears at note 5.
12. Care Quality Commission, The GP Service (UK) Ltd (trading as Verkind), overall rating “Requires improvement.” Verkind's right-of-reply statement, including the quoted commitment to addressing the findings, appears at note 13.
13.Verkind (trading name of The GP Service (UK) Ltd) responded on the record on 21 August 2026 through General Manager Simon Buttrum, confirming Green UK Wholesale “assumed operational control of Treat It Clinic, now Verkind, in January 2026, following completion of the acquisition in December 2025” from the previous Kanabo-linked ownership, and stating it has “no affiliation, interest or involvement in Kanabo Group's other assets or businesses.” Follow-up questions sent 28 August 2026 about the ultimate beneficial ownership of Green UK Wholesale, and continuing links to former Kanabo directors were not answered by the requested deadline of 11 September 2026.
14. GPhC thematic review of cannabis-dispensing pharmacies, published October 2025. The GPhC's press office responded on the record to this publication's questions on 11 August 2026, providing the quotation used here and confirming the Lyphe dispensary's initial failure in December 2024 and its pass on reinspection in August 2025. Lyphe does not appear to have substantively responded to this publication's separate right-of-reply questions (see Part One, note 4, and note 9).
15. Wellford, represented by M&F Health Communications, confirmed by email on 3 September 2026 that unchanged repeat prescriptions are “managed by independent pharmacists” while “prescription changes or variations are managed and issued by consultant clinicians,” but stated it would not provide further responses on decline rates, adverse-event figures or mean prescribed THC potency.
16. Care Quality Commission, Sapphire Clinics (London) Limited assessment, July–August 2024, published 10 February 2025.
17. Oliver's Law campaign demands as stated by the campaign (oliverslaw.com, launched 31 March 2026) and reported in subsequent coverage; the coroner's finding is drawn from the Regulation 28 report cited at Part One, note 14. This publication did not independently verify the campaign's proposed statutory drafting and presents its demands as the campaign's own account of what it is seeking.