Medical student wins inaugural MCCS essay competition
July 1, 2026 | IN NEWS | BY Kate Thorpe
We are pleased to announce Abir, a fourth-year medical student, as the winner of our inaugural Medical Cannabis Student Essay Competition.
The competition invited medical students to explore one of the most pressing and misunderstood issues in UK healthcare: why access to medical cannabis through the NHS remains so limited, and what wider NHS prescribing could mean in practice.
Students were asked to respond to the question:
“The prescribing of medical cannabis has been legal in the UK since 2018. Since then, there have been hundreds of thousands of prescriptions for unlicensed medical cannabis products. For a condition of your choice, evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of medical cannabis as a treatment option.”
Abir’s essay focused on endometriosis, a complex and often poorly understood chronic condition. The essay examined the limitations of current treatment pathways, including delayed diagnosis, repeated surgery and reliance on opioid prescribing, before exploring how cannabis-based medicinal products may offer a multimodal treatment option by targeting pain, inflammation, sleep and wider quality-of-life symptoms.
In his essay, Abir argues that the continued restriction of cannabis-based medicinal products within the NHS reflects a disconnect between regulation and clinical reality. He contrasts the risks and limitations of current endometriosis care, including repeated surgery and opioid prescribing, with the potential for CBMPs to offer a biologically plausible, multimodal treatment option. He also makes the case that relying too heavily on double-blind randomised controlled trials risks excluding valuable real-world evidence, and may deepen the existing two-tier system in which access is shaped by ability to pay rather than clinical need.
📝 Download and read Abir’s essay
The competition was judged by members of the Society’s committee, including Vice Chair Dr Rowan Thompson.
Dr Thompson said: “I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the submissions and I genuinely struggled to choose between two of them as my favourite. It is incredibly encouraging to see medical students engaging so critically with the evidence surrounding medical cannabis and approaching the topic with such maturity and academic rigour.”
Kate Thorpe, Director of the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society, said: “All of the judges of the MCCS’s first essay competition have been blown away by the quality of the submissions. It has been fantastic to see such a high level of knowledge, insight and engagement within the student population regarding medical cannabis.”
Congratulations once again to Abir on an outstanding piece of work, and thank you to every student who took the time to enter.
The enthusiasm, knowledge and quality of this year’s submissions give us great confidence in the future of medical cannabis education and clinical practice.
The Society would also like to congratulate Taranjot Bhoot, who was awarded second place. Their essay will be published on the MCCS website shortly.
First prize includes publication of the winning essay here, a certificate of achievement, a free place on Medical Cannabis Explained: Become a Confident Prescriber, and an exclusive From Plant to Prescription educational visit to an EU GMP-licensed facility.
Supporting Medical Students
The essay competition forms part of the Society’s wider commitment to supporting the next generation of clinicians.
Alongside student membership, educational resources and the UK’s first dedicated Medical Cannabis Elective, the initiative aims to encourage evidence-based learning and informed discussion around cannabis-based medicines within undergraduate medical education.