We have lots of people visit the shop unsure about Uk Cannabis Laws.
Here is an uncomplicated guide explaining what laws govern Cannabis here in the UK.
In a nutshell there are two separate pieces of law govern cannabis in the UK, and the confusion comes from treating them as one.
The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is the criminal law.
It makes cannabis a Class B drug, and that has not changed since January 2009. The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 are the medical rules, and in 2018 they changed substantially: a category of cannabis medicine moved into a schedule that doctors can prescribe from.
So both of these are true at once. Cannabis is a controlled drug, and medical cannabis is lawfully prescribed and lawfully used every day. Neither statement contradicts the other, because the two instruments are answering different questions.
The short version
- Two separate pieces of law do two different jobs. The Act decides whether something is a crime. The Regulations decide whether a doctor can prescribe it.
- Cannabis went to Class C in January 2004 and back to Class B on 26 January 2009, where it remains.
- The Act defines cannabis by plant part, not by strength. Flower and leaf are controlled. Mature stalk, fibre from mature stalk, and seed are not.
- On 1 November 2018, cannabis-based products for medicinal use moved from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 of the Regulations.
- The two licensed medicines, Sativex and Epidyolex, sit in different schedules again, which is why they follow different prescribing rules.
- The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, the “legal highs” law, does not apply to cannabis at all.
Most confusion about UK cannabis law comes from mixing up two different pieces of legislation that do two different jobs. Once you separate them, the rest follows.
Two laws, two different jobs
The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 is the criminal law. It creates the offences of production, supply and possession, and it sorts drugs into Class A, B and C, which sets how severely a court can punish each offence.
The Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001 are the medical rules. They sit underneath the Act and sort the same drugs into five schedules, which decide whether a doctor can prescribe something, who can prescribe it and how it must be stored and recorded.
A drug can be serious under one and available under the other. Morphine is a Class A drug and is prescribed in hospitals every day. Class tells you the penalty. Schedule tells you the medical route. Getting these two mixed up is the single commonest error in cannabis explainers.
What Class B means, and the 2004 detour
Cannabis and cannabis resin are listed in Schedule 2, Part II of the 1971 Act, which is the Class B list. Section 2 is the provision that ties those lists to the class labels.
It has not always sat there. Cannabis was moved down to Class C by SI 2003/3201, in force from January 2004, then moved back up to Class B by SI 2008/3130, in force from 26 January 2009. That is where it has stayed ever since, and it is worth knowing because a lot of older material online still describes the Class C position.
How the law defines cannabis
This is the part that catches people out, because the definition says nothing at all about strength.
“cannabis” means “any plant of the genus Cannabis or any part of any such plant (by whatever name designated)”, except mature stalk, fibre produced from mature stalk, and seed.
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, section 37, paraphrased from the operative wording
Read what that does. It draws the line by part of the plant. Stalk, fibre and seed are outside. Flower and leaf are inside, and are therefore a Class B controlled drug.
Nothing in that definition mentions THC content. A plant bred to contain almost no THC is still cannabis in law, and its flower is still a controlled drug. This is the reason the widely repeated claim that “under 0.2% THC is legal” does not work, and we deal with that properly in the article on what a shop can legally sell.
The five schedules
The 2001 Regulations sort controlled drugs into five schedules, running from most restricted to least.
| Schedule | What it means |
|---|---|
| 1 | No recognised medical use. Cannot be prescribed. A Home Office licence is needed even to research it. |
| 2 | Prescribable, tightly controlled. Locked storage, a register, strict prescription rules. Morphine and diamorphine sit here. |
| 3 | Prescribable, some controls relaxed. |
| 4 | Lighter still. Split into two parts. |
| 5 | Lightest. Low-strength preparations, largely treated as ordinary medicines. |
Before November 2018, cannabis sat in Schedule 1. That is why no doctor could prescribe it, whatever they thought of the evidence.
What the 2018 change actually did
On 1 November 2018, SI 2018/1055 came into force. It did three things.
It inserted a new paragraph into Schedule 1 saying that the schedule does not include a cannabis-based product for medicinal use in humans. It added that same category to Schedule 2. And it made a matching change to a 2015 Order so the category was no longer formally designated as having no medical use, which would otherwise have contradicted the first two.
The net effect is narrow and worth stating precisely. A product that meets the definition moved to Schedule 2 and became prescribable. Cannabis that does not meet the definition stayed in Schedule 1, exactly where it was. Growing, buying and sharing without a prescription were not touched.
This is why “cannabis was legalised in 2018” is a half-truth rather than a clean fact. Something genuinely was made lawful: a specialist can prescribe, a pharmacy can dispense, and a patient can possess and use their medicine without committing any offence. That is real and it matters to the people relying on it. What was not legalised is cannabis generally. The offences in the 1971 Act survived unaltered, and they still apply to anyone without a prescription.
The three-part test for a medical product
The category created in 2018 is called a cannabis-based product for medicinal use in humans, shortened to CBPM. The definition sits in regulation 2, and a product has to satisfy all three limbs:
- It is, or contains, cannabis, cannabis resin, cannabinol or a cannabinol derivative. Dronabinol and its stereoisomers are excluded.
- It is produced for medicinal use in humans.
- It is a medicinal product, or a substance for use as an ingredient of one.
Two products are then carved back out of that definition, and this is where the schedules get genuinely confusing. A botanical extract oromucosal spray described in Schedule 4 Part 1, and a cannabidiol oral solution described in Schedule 5, are both excluded from the CBPM definition because they already sit in lighter schedules of their own. In practice those descriptions match Sativex and Epidyolex.
So the three cannabis medicines you may have heard of sit in three different places:
| Medicine | Schedule | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Epidyolex | 5 | Treated largely as an ordinary prescription medicine. |
| Sativex | 4, Part 1 | No locked-cabinet or special prescription rules. |
| Nabilone | 2 | Full controlled drug rules apply. |
| Unlicensed CBPMs | 2 | Full controlled drug rules, and specialist prescribing only. |
Who can actually write those prescriptions, and what NICE says about when they should, is covered in the article on getting a prescription.
Why the legal highs ban is irrelevant
The Psychoactive Substances Act 2016 is often dragged into cannabis discussions. It does not apply.
Paragraph 1 of Schedule 1 to that Act exempts “controlled drugs (within the meaning of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971)”. Cannabis is a controlled drug, so it falls outside the 2016 Act entirely, whichever schedule of the 2001 Regulations it happens to sit in. Anything involving cannabis is dealt with under the older law, always.
Scotland and Northern Ireland
Classification is reserved to Westminster and is identical across the UK. Neither Holyrood nor the Senedd can change cannabis from Class B.
The regulations are made separately, though. SI 2018/1055 is titled for England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland has its own mirror instrument, NISR 2018/173, which made the same Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 move.
Enforcement practice does differ. Police Scotland has operated a recorded police warning scheme for low-level personal possession since 2016 under guidance from the Lord Advocate. That changes what tends to happen in practice, not what the law says.
Sources
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, section 2 (classification) — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, section 37 (definition of cannabis) — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, Schedule 2 Part II (Class B) — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Modification) (No. 2) Order 2003, SI 2003/3201 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) Order 2008, SI 2008/3130 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, SI 2001/3998 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, regulation 2 (CBPM definition) — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, Schedule 4 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs Regulations 2001, Schedule 5 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs (Amendments) (Cannabis and Licence Fees) (England, Wales and Scotland) Regulations 2018, SI 2018/1055 — legislation.gov.uk
- Misuse of Drugs (Amendment No.2) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2018, NISR 2018/173 — legislation.gov.uk
- Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, Schedule 1 (exempted substances) — legislation.gov.uk
This article explains what the legislation says and links to it throughout. It is general information, not legal advice, and it does not cover every situation. If you need advice about your own circumstances, speak to a solicitor. Last reviewed 2 September 2026.
