In the Press: Medical Cannabis News and the CVCC Team

Medical cannabis is not one story. It is several stories running at once, in countries that legalised at different times, for different reasons, and with very different outcomes for patients. At Cura Vida Cannabis Clinics we follow all of them closely — partly because members of our leadership team helped build three of these markets, and partly because Costa Rica now has the rare chance to learn from what worked elsewhere and what did not.

This page gathers the coverage we think matters, explains what it means for patients here, and introduces the people whose experience shapes how we practise.

Costa Rica: from a contested law to pharmacy shelves

Costa Rica's framework arrived slowly and under close public scrutiny.

January 2022 — the President partially vetoed the cannabis bill, returning it to the Legislative Assembly.
2 March 2022 — Ley N.º 10113, governing cannabis for medicinal and therapeutic use and hemp for food and industrial use, was signed into law.
May 2023 — the first licence to cultivate and process cannabis for medical purposes was granted to a Costa Rican company.
4 February 2025 — Decreto Ejecutivo N.º 44917-S was published, enacting technical regulation RTCR 515:2024, which covers sanitary registration, labelling, specifications, control and advertising of cannabis-based medicinal products.
22 June 2025 — the regulation entered into force and sanitary registration opened through the Regístrelo platform.
June 2025 — national and international outlets confirmed the shape of the market: sale through pharmacies only, against a digital medical prescription.

Two themes dominate the Costa Rican coverage.

Caution. Representatives of the Costa Rican pharmacists' association have publicly positioned cannabis as a complementary therapy rather than a first-line treatment — something to be managed with the same rigour applied to any other medicine, and dispensed only against a verified digital prescription.

Friction. Some producers have argued in the press that routing all retail through pharmacies limits competition, with at least one company publicly raising the possibility of a constitutional challenge.

What this means for you. Access in Costa Rica is real, but it is clinical. You need a physician who will assess you properly and issue a valid digital prescription, and you collect the product from a pharmacy. That is precisely the model CVCC was built for.

Australia: explosive growth, then a reckoning

Australia legalised cultivation for medicinal purposes in 2016. Almost all products reach patients not as registered medicines but through the Therapeutic Goods Administration's Special Access Scheme (Category B) and the Authorised Prescriber pathway.

The growth has been extraordinary. Published analyses of TGA data put SAS-B approvals at roughly 57,700 in 2020, rising to around 177,800 in 2024, with more than a thousand distinct products in supply.

Then came the correction:

In July 2025, Ahpra and the National Boards issued formal guidance on medicinal cannabis prescribing. National broadcasters reported regulatory action affecting more than fifty medical practitioners, pharmacists and nurses.
Through late 2025, the RACGP, the AMA and the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia all publicly pressed for tighter controls on high-volume telehealth prescribing and single-purpose dispensing models.
Trade press in 2026 reported a sharp contraction in Australian medical cannabis sales following the crackdown.

What this means for you. Australia proved two things at once: patient demand is enormous, and a market built on tick-box telehealth eventually gets regulated hard. The clinics that come through it are the ones doing genuine medicine — proper assessment, a documented clinical rationale, structured follow-up, and a willingness to decline treatment when cannabis is not the right answer.

United Kingdom: legal since 2018, still hard to reach

The UK rescheduled cannabis-based products for medicinal use in November 2018, following high-profile paediatric epilepsy cases. Among them was that of Alfie Dingley, whose long-term licence was secured by a clinical team led by Professor Mike Barnes — today a member of the CVCC advisory board.

Seven years on, most UK coverage is about the gap between the law and the reality. In November 2025 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Medical Cannabis under Prescription published Recommendations for Government, a paper prepared by Professor Barnes with the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society. Its headline findings included:

Only six NHS prescriptions for full-spectrum cannabis medicines since legalisation in 2018.
An estimated 1.4 million people still sourcing cannabis illicitly for medical reasons.
A mature UK market potentially worth around £5 billion a year.
More than seventy countries now operating legal medical cannabis frameworks.

The report's recommendations included commissioning new NICE guidance that treats cannabis as a botanical rather than a conventional pharmaceutical, enabling electronic prescribing of controlled drugs in the private sector, and a full inter-departmental review of the sector.

Estimates of the UK private patient population vary widely depending on methodology — trackers published across 2025 and 2026 have put it anywhere between roughly 50,000 and 140,000 — which is itself a sign of how immature the data still is.

What this means for you. The UK is a cautionary tale about what happens when the law changes but guidance, funding and prescriber confidence do not follow. Costa Rica's advantage is that it can build clinical infrastructure at the same time as legal infrastructure, rather than years behind it.

The common thread

Across all three countries, the same three factors decide whether patients actually benefit:

Whether physicians are trained, confident and independent.
Whether products are properly characterised, tested and labelled.
Whether there is a real clinical relationship rather than a transaction.

Regulation eventually follows. It always does. We would rather be ahead of it.

The people behind Cura Vida

Robert Callaghan — CEO & Founder

Robert is widely recognised as a pioneer of the global medical cannabis movement. He launched MMS in Canada in 2013 and went on to expand operations into Australia, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica — building patient access across three distinct regulatory environments. He is one of the original architects of the modern cannabis clinic model now used internationally, and has worked through the obstacles every new market faces: regulation, public perception, physician training and patient access.

Cura Vida is the next step in that work: respectful, affordable and seamless patient care delivered through technology, expert practitioners and access to high-quality medicinal cannabis products.

Professor Mike Barnes, MD FRCP — Advisory Board

A consultant accredited in neurology and rehabilitation medicine, and the UK's foremost expert in medical cannabis. Chair of the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society and President of the Cannabis Industry Council. Over two decades he helped introduce Sativex in the early 2000s, authored the pivotal 2016 report for the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform that preceded the 2018 law change, and has continued to shape medicinal cannabis legislation and parliamentary policy — most recently as author of the APPG's November 2025 recommendations to government.

Chris Murray — Strategic Growth Advisor

Founder of FoxNRTH Inc., a health-systems consultancy providing business, regulatory and strategic advice through the lens of systems theory. A founding employee at Canopy Growth Corporation, where he served in several roles including Vice President of Advocacy & Impact. There he established the first medical cannabis direct-to-physician outreach programme, expanded access through clinic development across Canada, secured $2.2M in subsidies from the State of Victoria for Australian market expansion, led the development of Houseplant within the company, and facilitated the export of cannabis from Canada to the USA. Previously Director of Strategic Growth at Fullscript Natural Partners and a Knowledge Exchange Officer at CADTH. He holds a Master's in Applied Health Services Research and was named a Forty Under 40 recipient in 2021.

Bruce Scully, BBA — Advisory Board

An entrepreneur and executive with a long record in highly regulated industries. As founder and former CEO of WeedMD he secured ACMPR licences for pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis production facilities in southwestern Ontario. Before cannabis, he spent more than two decades in senior leadership across retirement and long-term care communities, including Regency Care, Leisureworld Senior Care and Sterling Senior Living. He brings depth in operations, development, management and government relations, plus international healthcare advisory experience in Asian markets.

Dr. Divi Chandna, MD — Advisory Board

A family physician with more than 25 years in practice and a former member of the MMS team in Canada, internationally recognised for bridging conventional medicine with mind–body–spirit healing. She is a Certified Medical Intuitive and a Mind Body Spirit Practitioner trained at the University of Washington, as well as an author, international speaker and teacher. Her work — spanning chronic pain, stress, emotional wellbeing and depression — has been featured on the TED stage, CBC Radio, national television, the Huffington Post and in several documentary films.

Laura Flanigan, BS, MS, FNC — Advisory Board

A former molecular biologist with over 30 years in scientific research, now working in functional nutrition and integrative wellness. She is a Certified Functional Nutrition Counselor through the Functional Nutrition Alliance, specialises in functional blood chemistry analysis to identify subclinical imbalances, and is a member of the National Association of Drugless Practitioners. She lives on a permaculture homestead in Costa Rica and brings expertise in soil microbiology, biochar and closed-loop composting — a direct link between soil vitality, plant potency and human health.

How this shapes our practice

Between them, our advisors have built clinics in Canada, Australia and the UK, written the legislation and the parliamentary evidence that opened UK access, licensed pharmaceutical-grade production facilities, and treated patients for decades. They have also watched three markets make the same avoidable mistakes.

That is why CVCC insists on physician-led assessment, honest conversations about what the evidence does and does not support, and a treatment plan you can take to any other doctor without embarrassment.

Talk to us

If you are considering medical cannabis in Costa Rica, book a telehealth consultation with a CVCC physician. We will review your history, tell you plainly whether we think cannabis is appropriate for you, and if it is, issue a proper digital prescription you can fill at a pharmacy.

This article is general information about the regulatory and media landscape, not medical or legal advice. Regulations in Costa Rica, Australia and the United Kingdom change frequently. Always speak with a qualified physician about your own situation.

Sources and further reading: Ministerio de Salud de Costa Rica (Decreto Ejecutivo N.º 44917-S; RTCR 515:2024; Regístrelo) — content licensed CC BY; The Tico Times coverage of Costa Rican legalisation and rollout (2022–2025); Teletica, Diario Extra, La Nación and La República reporting on the June 2025 rollout; Therapeutic Goods Administration (Australia) Medicinal Cannabis Hub; Ahpra and the National Boards, medicinal cannabis prescribing guidance (July 2025); ABC News Australia; RACGP and Pharmaceutical Society of Australia statements (2025); All-Party Parliamentary Group on Medical Cannabis under Prescription, Recommendations for Government (November 2025), via the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society. Team biographies drawn from CVCC's own records.