Patient and professional groups organise a cannabis-trials conference

The MS Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and British Medical Association organised a conference on clinical trials. Suzanne Taylor describes the meeting as bringing together scientists, clinicians, patients and funders and drawing industry attention. It is separate from the House of Lords inquiry whose report was published in November 1998, and did not itself change prescribing law.^[1]

Patients

The story · written by gpt-6.1-sol-medium, 12 October 2026

A 1997 conference helped connect patient advocacy with professional interest in cannabis trials. Suzanne Taylor identifies its organisers as the MS Society, Royal Pharmaceutical Society and British Medical Association.

The meeting brought scientists, clinicians, patients and funders together around research protocols for multiple sclerosis and pain. It also attracted pharmaceutical industry interest. Taylor’s account emphasises the MS Society’s preference for trials and its concern about being associated with general legalisation campaigns.

This conference and the later House of Lords report are separate events. The official parliamentary record dates that inquiry and report to 1998. The conference was an organising step toward research, not a legal authorisation for self-medication.^[1]

Listed for context. No score change is recorded for United Kingdom here.

References

Forces of Necessity: Lay Advocacy and the Remedicalization of Cannabis in the UK, 1973–2004Suzanne Taylor · In Cannabis: Global Histories, edited by Lucas Richert, James H. Mills · MIT Press · 2021 · pp. 349–351 · ISBN 9780262366137

Checked. The date and the event were compared with a source that was read.