It had been more than a quarter-century since Smokey McGreen first lit up. After years of buying from sketchy dealers, waiting in car parks , playing phone games, and not knowing what he’s getting, he finally made the leap and got a medical prescription.
Now, over a year later, he’s spilling the beans on the difference between medical weed and black market weed. He covers cost, quality, stress, and whether the old way still tempts him.
The Old Hustle: Cost, Risk, and Uncertainty
Before the medical switch, McGreen says he was paying £240–£280 per ounce for what he believed to be “top shelf” stuff like haze, Amnesia, and other premium strains. But premium didn’t always mean perfect. He recalls, “Occasionally though, you’d crack a bag and find a seed staring back at you”.
But it wasn’t merely about the bud. The real problem was the theatre around it: meeting in shadowy car parks, staging fake phone scrolls, pacing back and forth while rehearsing alibis if police showed, anxiety rising before the first toke. As he puts it:
“The whole circus of dodgy meetups … waiting in some grim car park, phone in hand … rehearsing your alibi in case the police rock into the car park.”
Dealers often promised exotic imports – “Cali,” “OG,” “LA finest” – but McGreen is blunt: “Half the Cali floating around the UK was just grown in someone’s loft.” The boast often masked poor cultivation and overselling hype.
And then there were the very real risks: legal consequences, losing his job, jeopardising housing, and driving license trouble. Always carrying, always hiding. That psychological toll was part of the price he paid long before lighting up.
Crossing Over: First Impressions of Medical
When McGreen switched to medical cannabis, the contrast was clear. He now pays £8–£10 per gram, which is similar and even slightly less than his former black market prices.
But it’s not just about cost. What completely changed was transparency and consistency. He says:
“For the first time, I know exactly what I’m getting. THC percentage, CBD levels, terpene breakdowns … it’s all there on the label.”
No more guessing. He could, for the first time, match strains to his symptoms. He observes that the medical menu now includes over 200 strains, spanning a spectrum of effect profiles. Some are mediocre, some excellent, but the sheer range is leagues ahead of the old “haze, amnesia or dog” triad. As he puts it:
“Compared to the black market … medical feels like a proper menu.”
The Real Gain: Peace, Safety & Freedom
Perhaps McGreen’s biggest advantage of legal weed is peace of mind. He no longer deletes messages or worries about being caught. He no longer has to invent stories. With his prescription in hand, he says:
“I can walk around with 60 g in my backpack if I wanted and not give it a second thought.”
He describes the shift as dramatic: the anxiety of having grams in his bag – formerly an internal drumbeat of stress – has vanished. His driving license, work status, housing concerns are all less fraught. That freedom, he says, “alone has been worth making the switch for me.”
The Caveats: Not a Fairy Tale
Medical access isn’t perfect, McGreen emphasises. He’s run into “stock issues” – strains vanishing when you want them again. He laments paying premium prices for bud that doesn’t always deliver. Refunds are rare; only loud community outcries (e.g. mould, contamination) force reversal. He comments:
“Unless there’s a massive patient community uproar … you’re going to be stuck with it.”
Still, there are signs of progress. Clinic fees have fallen since he joined, he says, and as more patients enter the system, there’s hope that prices may soften further.
At 14 months in, he concludes that medical comes out on top for him. Not because it’s flawless, but because consistency, legitimacy, lab metrics, and relief outweigh the stress of clandestine deals. Would he ever go back? Only if forced to.
He urges others to consider the shift now: “clinic fees are lower, there’s more choice than ever, quality is slowly improving.” He laughs at his past self: telling “2015 me” that, in future, cannabis would come legally in a postal box would have sounded insane. Yet here they are.
Bigger Picture: How His Story Reflects UK Realities
McGreen’s experience is personal, but it mirrors broader trends and gaps in UK medical cannabis.
Patient Growth, But Still Niche
While data is imperfect, the UK is quietly scaling. One estimate suggests over 65,000 active patients monthly in medical cannabis programs. Clinics have multiplied, and private prescribing dominates because NHS access remains extremely constrained.
Curaleaf’s UK Medical Cannabis Registry now includes more than 30,000 patients. Meanwhile, clinical analyses from the registry show improvements in quality-of-life metrics for conditions like chronic pain, especially when sleep is a comorbidity.
Constraints on NHS Provision
Though medical cannabis was legalised in 2018, prescribing remains tough under NHS constraints. Only a few conditions (e.g. chemotherapy nausea, MS spasticity, treatment-resistant epilepsy) are routinely considered. Most patients rely on private clinics to navigate regulatory and cost barriers.
Domestic Supply & Quality
One leap forward has been Glass Pharms becoming the UK’s first Home Office–licensed cultivator, when it began supplying domestically grown medical cannabis flower in 2024 via Releaf clinics. This helps reduce import dependence and may improve consistency and control.
Still, supply chain fragility persists, with some clinics struggling with intermittent inventories, leading to the stock unpredictability McGreen complains of.
What Smokey’s Journey Tells Us
Smokey McGreen entered medical access as a veteran of the black market, so his perspective is especially grounded. His narrative highlights three themes:
- Legitimacy matters. Knowing what you consume, having paperwork, moving unafraid through daily life are all intangible benefits.
- Transparency is transformative. The ability to match strains to symptom, to see CBD/THC/terpene data, are important to legitimise as a modern medicine.
- Scaling still needs work. Until stock stabilises, quality improves, prices soften, and more patients are onboard, medical access remains an improvement, not perfection.
If the UK is to move beyond niches toward broad, equitable medical cannabis access, stories like McGreen’s – voices rooted in lived experience – will matter. They help humanise policy debates, challenge stigma, and show what works in the trenches.
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