Derek Chisora Backs Medical Cannabis Service for Chronic Pain

Derek Chisora has stepped into territory that tens of thousands of UK pain patients navigate privately: he is using a prescribed cannabis-based medicine, and he is being public about it. What he is building around that disclosure is the more substantive development.

The former heavyweight contender, who turned professional in 2003 and accumulated 50 fights over more than two decades, announced the launch of WarOnPain in May 2026 — a patient education and access platform aimed at guiding people living with chronic pain through the UK’s legal medical cannabis prescribing system. Chisora, now in his 40s, says years in the ring have left him with persistent daily pain in his knees and hands, and that a specialist-led consultation through the platform produced a prescription he is now using.

The prescription and the platform

His current medication is a 10-gram pouch of dried cannabis flower at 26% THC and less than 1% CBD, administered via a dry herb vaporizer — a standard format in the UK’s private medical cannabis market, alongside pharmaceutical extracts and oils. The prescription followed a 30-minute video consultation with a specialist clinician and was dispensed by a licensed online pharmacy, the typical private pathway in the UK: eligibility screen, physician assessment, regulated dispensing.

WarOnPain, a unit of the War Health Group, has partnered with Grow Group Limited, a Nottingham-based medical cannabis operator. Pierre Van Weperen, Grow Group’s managing director and a former senior pharmaceutical executive at GSK with more than 35 years of industry experience, described the service as built around clinical oversight and patient education rather than simplified access. The cannabis supply is sourced from Safricanna, a South African producer operating to pharmaceutical-grade standards.

Chisora and Van Weperen both attended the Cannabis Europa conference at London’s Barbican Centre on May 26, 2026, where the platform launched formally — an event that doubled as a backdrop for the UK’s broader policy conversation about who funds and clinically oversees the country’s rapidly expanding private cannabis sector.

Access without NHS backing

Cannabis-based medicines became legal to prescribe in the UK in November 2018, but the National Health Service has almost entirely stayed out of this market. Per available industry estimates, more than 99% of UK cannabis prescriptions are issued and funded privately, leaving patients to bear the full cost of specialist consultations and medication. A YouGov poll cited by the group found 73% of British adults believe doctors should be able to prescribe cannabis for medical conditions — a strong public-appetite figure that tracks poorly against actual NHS prescribing rates.

The gap WarOnPain is targeting is primarily educational: the group estimates approximately 28 million people in the UK are living with chronic pain, many of whom may not know that cannabis-based medicines are a legal prescribing option or what a legitimate clinical pathway involves.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, however, does not endorse this space for NHS practice. NICE guidance on cannabis-based medicinal products advises against offering THC, nabilone, dronabinol, or THC-CBD combinations to manage chronic pain in adults — full stop. CBD on its own should not be prescribed for chronic pain unless the patient is enrolled in a clinical trial. That guidance remains in force and applies to NHS clinical practice, though specialists in the private sector are not bound by it in the same way.

What the clinical evidence supports

The research on cannabinoids for chronic pain is substantial but mixed, and the specific format Chisora is using sits in an underexplored part of that literature.

A 2023 systematic review published in PLOS ONE, drawing on 16 trials with more than 2,000 chronic-pain participants, found cannabinoids outperformed placebo on pain reduction — but at effect sizes that fell below the investigators’ predefined threshold for clinical meaningfulness. The reviewers concluded that the risk of non-serious adverse events appeared to outweigh the probable benefits and that expanded cannabinoid prescribing for pain remained questionable on current evidence.

A 2024 living systematic review, indexed on PubMed, found low-to-moderate evidence for small pain improvements — primarily in neuropathic conditions — with extracted THC:CBD formulations. Evidence for whole-plant cannabis, the category Chisora is using, was judged insufficient to draw conclusions.

High-THC dried flower has seen far less rigorous study in chronic musculoskeletal pain than the pharmaceutical-grade extracts used in most clinical trials. A 2025 review in PMC noted that randomised trials in chronic non-cancer musculoskeletal pain have produced inconsistent results, with limited available data. Patient-survey evidence does consistently show people reporting reduced pain and lower opioid reliance — a finding that has appeared in observational research covered here — but self-reported outcomes in open-label settings can’t establish what’s doing the work.

None of that makes WarOnPain’s model clinically indefensible: the UK’s private prescribing system requires specialist oversight and licensed pharmacy dispensing, separating it from the unregulated supplement market. For athletes and patients evaluating cannabis-based medicines for long-term pain management, the platform’s emphasis on physician-led assessment and realistic education is the right framing — even if the evidence base for what they’re prescribing is still catching up.