Everything you need. Nothing you don't.
The equipment your prescription didn't come with.
If you've recently been issued a cannabis-based prescription in the UK, you're part of a fast-growing group of patients — and you've probably discovered that the prescription is only part of the picture.
Unlike most medicines, which arrive ready to take, a cannabis prescription usually needs equipment. Nobody seems to tell you that, and nobody hands you the vocabulary either.
As Prescribed is the shop we wanted to find.
We started with a simple question: why is there nowhere to buy this properly?
When the UK expanded access to cannabis-based prescriptions, it created something the system hadn't planned for: a growing number of patients prescribed a medicine, with nothing built around how to actually use it.
The medicine is covered. The prescription process, increasingly, is straightforward. But once you leave the clinic or the pharmacy, you're on your own.
We know because we got it wrong. One of our founders was prescribed, and what followed wasn't the medicine being difficult — that part worked. It was everything after: which device, which accessories, what was genuinely needed as against what a shop wanted to sell. We researched it as well as we could, spent a few hundred pounds, and bought the wrong thing. Not a bad product — just the wrong one for them, and nothing on the page we bought it from would have told us that.
The shops selling this equipment were not built for you
Look at where else you can buy a vaporiser in this country. The same sites sell cannabis seeds, rolling papers, bongs and grinders shaped like cartoon characters. The photography is smoke and neon. The copy is written for a hobby.
None of it mentions prescriptions. None of it mentions clinics, or pharmacies, or the fact that some of the people buying are managing MS, or chronic pain, or the aftermath of cancer treatment. Search those sites for the word "prescription" and you will mostly find nothing at all.
And everything is written for someone who already knows. Nobody tells you that a 510 battery is just the standard screw fitting your cartridge attaches to, or why one device is called convection and another conduction, or whether that should change what you buy. You're expected to arrive with the vocabulary.
Most people with a new prescription don't. We didn't.
That isn't really a criticism of those shops — they're serving the customers they built for. It just means that when a clinic prescribes you flower and you go looking for a way to use it, you end up somewhere that has no idea you exist.
What we decide what to sell
There are a lot of vaporisers. Most shops stock all of them and leave you to work it out.
We stock a short range instead, chosen on four questions. Can the battery be replaced, or does the device have an expiry date built into it? Can someone with reduced grip or limited hand strength actually use it? Can it be cleaned easily, because a device that's a nuisance to clean doesn't get cleaned? And is there a warranty that can genuinely be claimed in this country?
Plenty of well-reviewed devices fail one of those. We don't stock them.
And every product page says plainly who a device suits and who it doesn't. If it needs a firm grip, we say so. If the battery is sealed and will want replacing in a few years, we say so. If something cheaper does the job better, we'll point you at it.
That came directly out of our own expensive mistake. Some of it costs us sales. We'd rather you bought the right thing once.
What we stock
Dry herb vaporisers, for flower prescriptions — devices that hold a steady temperature rather than burning your medicine.
510 batteries, for oil cartridge prescriptions — simple hardware, but the difference between a reliable one and a cheap one matters when a failure means you can't take your medicine.
Consumables and spares — capsules, cleaning kits, screens, mouthpieces. The things that make a £250 device last five years instead of one.
On discretion
Medical cannabis still carries stigma, even with a perfectly legitimate prescription, and not everyone has told their household. So our packaging is plain, our bank statement descriptor is neutral, and we ship in unmarked boxes with ordinary carriers.
Our Story