Private cannabis prescribing in England after SI 2018/1055 (NHSBSA FOI-03941 aggregates), with NHS primary-care comparator series and UK 2018 / US 2026 regulatory event tables
Abstract
Version 1.0. Companion dataset for the manuscript "Rescheduling Is Not Access: The Payer Split after the United Kingdom's 2018 Cannabis Reform" (Tamba, 2026). Verified monthly and annual series for cannabis-based prescribing in England after the 1 November 2018 rescheduling (SI 2018/1055), on both sides of the payer split. Private side (NHSBSA Freedom of Information response FOI-03941, released 30 July 2026): unlicensed cannabis-based products dispensed in English community pharmacies, monthly 2019-01 to 2026-02 and annual (278 items in 2019; 4,469 in 2020; 43,932 in 2021; 124,247 in 2022; 282,979 in 2023; 668,511 in 2024; 1,701,064 in 2025), and licensed cannabis medicines, annual 2018-2026 (never more than 44 items in any year). Public side (NHS primary care in England, via the OpenPrescribing API, which republishes the NHSBSA English Prescribing Dataset): licensed cannabis medicines (nabiximols/Sativex, cannabidiol/Epidyolex, nabilone), monthly 2021-07 to 2026-06 and annual (5,835 items in 2025 combined), while the unlicensed cannabis chemical code (BNF 0407030AB) returns no items in the same window. Hospital-dispensed NHS supply is not covered, so the NHS series is a floor. Also included: dated Stage 1 to Stage 3 regulatory event tables for the UK 2018 and US 2026 (91 FR 22714) cases, an optional Australian psilocybin Authorised Prescriber comparator table, Figure 1 with its plotted data, and a reproduction script for the FOI aggregates. The 2026 months in the private series are incomplete (January 80,331 items; February 162, recording lag). Raw NHSBSA CSV files are not redistributed and remain available at the NHSBSA Open Data Portal. Source data are public sector information under the Open Government Licence v3.0; this derived dataset is released under CC BY 4.0 and attributes NHS Business Services Authority and OpenPrescribing (Bennett Institute, University of Oxford). See README.md for provenance and CODEBOOK.md for column definitions.
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