Open letter: why free patient help is being blocked on r/ukmedicalcannabis

PatientsCann UK CIC is a registered Community Interest Company. A CIC is a non-profit set up to serve the community, not to make money for owners. We exist to give UK medical cannabis patients free, honest information, legal guidance and support. We take no payment from patients for any of it.

We are writing this letter because free, non-profit patient resources, ours and those we are linked to, keep being filtered, removed and banned on one of the busiest patient forums in the country: the r/ukmedicalcannabis subreddit. We have asked, appealed, and offered to follow every rule. Time and again we have been met with silence.

UK medical cannabis is new, complex, and changing fast. Patients lean on each other, and on trusted independent guidance, to stay safe and to stay legal. When the first forum a worried patient finds removes free, non-commercial education, patients are the ones who lose out.

Over the past few years we have found that resources produced by, or linked to, PatientsCann UK have been filtered and removed from r/ukmedicalcannabis. This has even included content where we were not the only author, but were simply named as a contributor or a source. At the time we operated under our former name, The Sanskara Platform, and links to that free resource site, along with crossposts linked to our work, were blocked.

The messages above are from our Managing Director. But this was never about one account, or one person. Another of our directors, Sal, a medical cannabis patient and an NHS worker, was silenced in the same community, in the same way, and for the same reason: being linked to us.

We have nothing to hide, so we will address every reason that has ever been put to us, in plain words.

1. Data and privacy

Early on, a concern was raised about our privacy policy. We fixed it straight away and made sure we met the rules in full. This was resolved a long time ago.

2. Money and sponsorship

As a CIC, our accounts are a matter of public record. Anyone can check them. We will also be completely open about the one point that has been used against us for years.

We once accepted a single, one-off sponsorship from a clinic, Releaf, to help fund an awareness campaign. The deal was simple and at arm's length: they provided funds for the campaign and had no say over what we said or did, and we stayed fair and balanced whenever we talked about clinics. That sponsorship lasted only three months. After it ended, we made the decision never to work with them again.

We were so determined to be transparent that, at the time, we went on a public podcast with MCPA to explain the partnership openly, and to say sorry for any sense that it could look like bias. Every clinic that sponsored our work was responsible for promoting itself, by turning up to our events and meeting patients face to face. Releaf, the sponsor in question, did not attend a single one.

3. Verification and flair

We have asked, through the proper moderation channels, for the organisation flair and for anything else needed to follow the community rules. Those requests, our formal appeals, and our repeated offers to talk have simply gone unanswered.

When moderation runs with no clear rules, no right of appeal, and no reply, it stops being moderation. It becomes a closed door. That door leaves patients inside an echo chamber, cut off from free, checked, non-profit tools that could help them.

A forum that is the first place many vulnerable patients land has a real duty of care. Removing free, non-profit help while refusing to talk raises fair and serious questions: who benefits from that silence, and how is this community really being led?