The Guernsey Press article claiming cannabis misuse is a ‘major problem’ for medical services is not supported by the States’ own data.
A Freedom of Information response from Health & Social Care (July 2024) confirms that mental health admissions are not coded by substance and that the States does not capture data on ‘cannabis-induced’ mental health issues. As a result, there is no evidence base to attribute A&E or mental health pressures to cannabis, medical or otherwise.
Over the same period, alcohol accounted for 1,648 A&E attendances, more than three times the number of all drug-related poisonings combined. Meanwhile, more than 17,500 medical cannabis prescriptions were issued in 2023 alone, without corresponding evidence of harm or system overload.
Assertions that prescription cannabis represents a major burden on health services are therefore anecdotal, not data-driven, and risk misleading the public by ignoring both the limitations of the data and the far greater impact of alcohol-related harm.
The FOI data does not support any of that.
What the FOI definitively shows (and this matters), is that there is NO recorded data linking cannabis to mental health admissions. The FOI states:
‘HSC do not capture data on the harms due to the use of substances… Mental health admissions to the Emergency Department are not coded.’
This is crucial. It means there is no dataset that can show how many A&E admissions for mental health issues are:
cannabis induced
medically prescribed vs illicit
cannabis alone vs multiple substances
So, any claim that cannabis (prescription or otherwise) is driving mental health admissions is not evidence based, it is anecdotal opinion, not recorded data.
The ‘one patient per day’ claim is explicitly not data.
The FOI states:
‘By collective experience… staff are now seeing, on average, one patient per day… for cannabis-related symptoms.’
This is not coded, not audited, not verified, not broken down by substance source, not distinguished from alcohol or other drugs. It cannot be used to claim a system-level burden, and it cannot be used to blame prescription cannabis.
Actual A&E drug-related numbers (the reality) – total drug-related ED attendances (ALL drugs, ALL causes):
Year attendances
2021: 186
2022: 161
2023: 195
Total (three years): 542
That’s 181 per year, across all drugs.
There is no breakdown identifying cannabis, and the FOI explicitly states: ‘There is no way of knowing what drugs these are.’
So, claims singling out cannabis are unsupported by the data.
Alcohol dwarfs everything, and the article ignores it.
Alcohol-related A&E attendances:
2021: 619
2022: 514
2023: 515
Total: 1,648
Alcohol causes three times more A&E attendances than all drug poisonings combined.
Yet the article frames cannabis as a ‘major problem’, does not contextualize it against alcohol, and creates a distorted perception of risk and burden.
The FOI shows:
17,506 medical cannabis prescriptions in 2023
4,661 prescriptions Jan–Apr 2024
~22,000-plus prescriptions across ~16 months
Against that zero coded cannabis mental health admissions, no evidence linking prescriptions to ED burden, no arrest data provided for diversion (still pending).
If medical cannabis were causing a ‘major problem’, it would appear in coded admissions data. It doesn’t.
Bruce J Caruso
Cannabis consultant
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