Bermuda allows three cannabinoid medicines on prescription

Bermuda permitted three named cannabinoid medicines through changes to its pharmaceutical and drug laws on 22 December 2014. Marinol, Cesamet and Sativex were included in the medical schedules. The change gave patients a defined prescription route while a wider debate continued over access to cannabis products.

The law named medicines and changed the controls

The amendment added dronabinol, sold as Marinol, and nabiximols, sold as Sativex, to the prescription schedule in the pharmacy law. It also named those medicines and nabilone, sold as Cesamet, in the drug regulations’ medical schedule.

These changes connected named treatments with the existing system for prescribing and supplying controlled medicines. They also changed how ministers could adjust the schedules in future, on advice from the Chief Medical Officer or the relevant professional council.

Supporters and critics wanted different routes forward

During the Senate debate, government senator Michael Fahy described a phased approach and pointed to testing of the named products. Opposition senator Diallo Rabain argued that the bill left out a wider range of cannabis products, including oils.

Rabain criticised the limited selection and the process for approving further products. The disagreement concerned how far Bermuda should go in opening medical access, and how much control should sit with the medical authorities and ministers.

The enacted law allowed future scheduling changes through orders and short provisional notices, providing a way to adjust the legal lists as policy developed.

Medical authorisation still depended on the legal route

The drug-law amendment expressly addressed exceptions for medical, research and other special purposes. It also supplied a definition of medical purposes covering treatment, prevention, diagnosis and other effects on bodily functions.

A later 2016 court hearing clarified the minister’s existing power to consider a personal application to import and possess cannabis for medical use, according to contemporary reporting. Michael Brangman’s case concerned that licensing power; the minister retained the ability to refuse an application.

The government later proposed local medical production

In December 2019, Attorney-General Kathy Lynn Simmons proposed a further scheme for prescribed cannabis used by inhalation, with local growing and manufacturing under licence.

Her statement distinguished that proposal from the pharmaceutical products already regulated under existing law. The history of medical access in Bermuda therefore includes the named medicines permitted in 2014, personal licensing decisions and the later effort to create a broader local supply system.^[1][2][3][4]