FOI 25-0446 LD – Data Held By Office Of Drug Control

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The Office of Drug Control released data on medicinal cannabis licence application processing timeframes from December 2021 to May 2025. The dataset shows 20 licence applications with significant processing delays, ranging from approximately 3 months to over 2 years between invoice payment and decision date. Applications paid in early 2022 received decisions between March and December 2023, while later applications from mid-2023 remained under review into late 2024 and early 2025. The longest processing period was for an application invoiced on 3 January 2023, which received a decision on 25 September 2024—over 20 months later. These timeframes reveal substantial backlogs in the medicinal cannabis licensing system during this period.