Connection between medicinal cannabis and mental health admissions

WQ.11/2026

WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND SOCIAL SERVICES

BY DEPUTY D.J. WARR OF ST. HELIER SOUTH

QUESTION SUBMITTED ON MONDAY 26th JANUARY 2026

ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 2nd FEBRUARY 2026

Question

"Will the Minister state the total number of medicinal cannabis prescriptions issued in each of the last 5 years, and the number of hospital admissions for mental health conditions over the same period, and will he further advise what work, if any, is planned to investigate a potential correlation between prescriptions and admissions?"

Answer

The department holds validated data on the number of medicinal cannabis prescription items dispensed on- Island, rather than the total number of prescriptions issued.

Validated dispensing data is available for:

• 2022 (full year)

• 2023 (partial year, January – June)

• 2024 (full year)

• 2025 (partial year, January – June)

This data records the number of individual prescription items supplied in Jersey.

A complete figure for the total number of medicinal cannabis prescriptions issued in each of the last five years cannot be provided. Prescriptions for Jersey residents may be issued and dispensed off-Island, including by off-Island prescribers, and are not fully captured within Jersey's medicines data systems. In addition, not all prescriptions that are issued are subsequently dispensed.

Identifying, collating and validating all prescribing data would require manual data collection across multiple external providers, access to non-Jersey clinical systems, and detailed validation to ensure accuracy and avoid duplication. This would be resource-intensive and is not currently achievable within existing capacity and resource constraints.

Any attempt to estimate total prescriptions issued without this level of validation would therefore be incomplete and potentially misleading. For this reason, the department reports dispensed prescription item data which reflects actual medicine supply.

* There is a gap in centrally reported data for July to December 2023. This reflects the scope and timing of the audit carried out on data for 2022 and the first half of 2023. At that point, the Chief Pharmacist controlled drug returns were not digitised, and the audit relied on detailed manual review of monthly submissions. This involved collating returns from multiple pharmacies, reconciling prescriber details and estimating patient numbers without a unique identifier, followed by additional work to assure data quality before publication.

** There is a short lag before full-year 2025 data can be confirmed. This reflects the operation of the current digital returns process, which requires the Chief Pharmacist submissions to be completed, validated and reconciled before annual figures can be finalised. Final 2025 prescribing data are expected to be available in the coming weeks.

Work is underway within adult mental health services to actively monitor all admissions to the service where the use of cannabis – both prescribed and unprescribed – may be a contributory factor to the admission. In 2025, this was identified in 22% of admissions to the acute adult mental health admission ward. This is also an issue that is discussed and considered at the Mental Health Strategic Partnership Board.