The UK economic growth faces a paradox of two seemingly opposing pressures, yet both may be resolved by moving in the same direction.
On the one hand, sickness absence and long-term ill health continue to weigh on productivity: 148.9 million working days were lost to sickness in 2024 (4.4 per worker), and economic inactivity remains elevated even as rates fluctuate quarter to quarter. On the other hand, the government has explicitly placed life sciences among the UK’s priority growth sectors, recognising its potential to drive regional jobs, investment and better health.
With growth still topping the political agenda, deliberate action is necessary to finally shift the economic dial. According projections from the Health Foundation, 2.5m more people in England will be living with a major illness by 2040, a shift set to pile further pressure on the country’s workforce, NHS and wider economy.
Against that backdrop, building a credible, UK-anchored medical cannabis industry is not a niche play; it’s part of a broader life-sciences asset the country can cultivate at home, creating skilled jobs, retaining IP, and generating clinically useful data while improving patient options and outcomes within a regulated framework.
This piece, developed by Dalgety, Celadon Pharmaceuticals and Glass Pharms, sets out why cultivation in the UK is the foundation for capturing that value, economically and clinically, and what a practical pathway forward looks like.
