The Number One UK
Cannabis Campaign
We are a national organisation founded in 2020 to challenge the UK Government’s harmful disinformation and unjust legislation surrounding cannabis.
Donate now
We are a national organisation founded in 2020 to challenge the UK Government’s harmful disinformation and unjust legislation surrounding cannabis.
Donate nowWe are also the number one patient support organisation striving to end stigma, prescription discrimination and unlawful arrests via community engagement, education for institutions, organisations and businesses alongside individually tailored support for legal and discrimination cases.
Join us todaySeed our Future was established in 2020 as a campaign
organisation to protect those who use cannabis responsibly,
whether that be for medical, nutritional, spiritual or
environmental purposes.
Following the legislative change on 1st November 2018 allowing medical cannabis to be prescribed by specialist consultants, numerous private clinics and pharmacies have been established. As of May 2024, there are 40,000 patients, with numbers expected to increase rapidly.
Despite a Home Office circular in 2018, frontline officers, law firms, the crown prosecution service, and judges remain ignorant of the law, wrongfully arresting patients and ignoring the legislation. This ignorance extends across society, causing 'prescription discrimination' and serious harm to patients, many of whom are disabled. For the past three years, we have provided free support to many patients but lack the resources to assist everyone as the patient numbers grow.
Its time for Seed our Future to plant our seed of truth, overgrow the government and end the stigma.
We are asking patients to donate £30 per annum to support our work and help us grow our team so that we can continue to help you.
Please see our Patient Support page for details.
The use of cannabis cord in pottery was identified at an ancient village site, dating back over 10,000 years ago, located in modern-day Taiwan. Finding cannabis use and cultivation in this date range puts it as one of the first and oldest known human agriculture crops.
Cannabis was the first medicine to be documented in human history – by Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BCE and it has been used in Chinese medicine to treat over 120 medical conditions.
Cannabis was widely grown across Britain from at least 800 to 1800 AD, though the amount grown varied widely through the centuries. In Medieval times religious hospitals commonly grew cannabis.
It was mainly grown for fibre which was used to make sails, ropes, fishing nets and clothes; old clothes were recycled into paper. The Gutenburg Bible (15th Century) and the King James Bible (17th Century) were printed on hemp paper and our rich history of art was painted on hemp canvas. In fact, until the late 1800’s, approximately 90% of paper was made from hemp. Oil was produced from the seeds and was burned in lamps. The seeds and flowers were also used in food, as a livestock feed and as a medicine/relaxant or served to prisoners and orphans as gruel.
In 1533, King Henry VIII made the cultivation of cannabis compulsory by law. The Tudor King wanted the strong, rot resistant fibres from the plant for the ropes, sails and clothing for his new British navy which famously beat the Spanish Armada, got us through the Reformation (the Brexit of the time) and led to the colonisation of the British Empire. Every ship carried a cargo of hemp seed and this was the first crop laid down upon the discovery of new lands. There was an early peak in hemp production in England from 800 - 1000 AD, followed by a slackening in interest by farmers as new crops were discovered. In the early sixteenth century hemp was re-introduced, and its growth recommended. Large amounts of hemp were grown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but not enough for the British Navy - the war against Napoleon’s France in 1812 was fought, in part, to control the supplies of Russian hemp. In Victorian times peasant produced imported hemp undercut domestic hemp, and its growth died out in Britain.
In 1833, Irish physician William Brooke O'Shaughnessy was employed by the British East India Company as an assistant surgeon in Calcutta where he studied and researched the medicinal properties of cannabis for the treatment of cholera, rabies, rheumatism, tetanus and childhood epilepsy.
In 1856, the same year of the second opium war in China, the British Government decided to tax the cannabis trade in India and two years later, Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India and the British Government realised that they could increase their revenues by raising the tax on cannabis.
In 1890, Sir J.R. Reynolds, Queen Victoria’s personal physician, prescribed the Queen with a cannabis preparation for menstrual pains.
If this has wet your appetite to know more, visit our Education page where you can find a range of referenced reports and resources.
