Report side effects of medicinal cannabis

Updated 12 March 2024

If you use medicinal cannabis or are close to someone who do, you can report side effects (sometimes called adverse reactions) from these products by using our Danish e-form.

Please read the text below and then click on the link to the form to report a side effect you suspect to be caused by medicinal cannabis.

You will find it helpful to have the pack of medicinal cannabis with you to fill in details about the product.

Find the form here.

It takes about ten minutes to fill in the e-form.

If you have questions along the way or cannot use the e-form to make a report, please call us on +45 4488 9595.

Tell your doctor if a side effect happens to you or someone close to you

You should always tell your doctor if you, a relative or someone close to you experiences side effects. Your doctor can assess if the side effect means you should receive a different treatment.

What are side effects?

Side effects are unwanted effects caused by a medicine, in this case medicinal cannabis.

A side effect could be:

  • Tiredness
  • Dizziness

No systematic studies have been carried out of the types and frequency of side effects of medicinal cannabis.

When you make a report about a suspected side effect, we receive personal information about you that we register and process. Read more about personal information here.

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We are the data controller – how to contact us

As data controller, the Danish Medicines Agency processes the personal information we receive from you. Please find our contact details below.

Danish Medicines Agency

Axel Heides Gade 1
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
CVR (company registration) number: 37052485
Telephone: +45 44 88 95 95
Mail: Send an e-mail

Contact details of the data protection officer

If you have questions about the processing of your data, please contact our data protection officer.

Our data protection officer, Troels Mogensen, can be contacted in the following ways:

E-mail: Send an e-mail

Letter:

Danish Medicines Agency


Axel Heides Gade 1
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
Attn.: ”Data protection officer"

The purposes and the legal basis of the processing of your personal data

We process your personal data for the following purposes:

  • The Danish Medicines Agency records all suspected side effects of cannabis end-products in our database of side effects, and we use data about side effects to investigate if there are new or changed product risks.
  • The side effect data will be used for our monitoring and evaluation of the four-year medicinal cannabis pilot programme.

The legal basis for our processing of your personal data follows from:

Part VIII of Danish act no. 1668 of 26 December 2017 on a Medicinal Cannabis Pilot Programme and Danish Executive Order no. 1732 of 26 December 2017 on the Reporting of Adverse Reactions from Medicinal Cannabis and Processing of Adverse Reaction Reports.

Categories of personal data

We process the following categories of personal data about you:

  • Health data and basic information, e.g. name, initials, CPR (civil registration) number.

Recipients or categories of recipients.

We disclose or transfer your personal data to the following recipients:

  • The Danish Medicines Agency's database of side effects, a database established and operated by the British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The Danish Medicines Agency thus uses the MHRA as a data processor.

Transfer to recipients in third countries, including international organisations

Your personal data is transferred to recipients outside the EU and the EEA.

The data processor, MHRA, used by the Danish Medicines Agency is based in the UK. On 28 June 2021, the European Commission adopted a decision, acknowledging that the UK has an adequate level of data protection and thus is a secure third country pursuant to article 45 of the General Data Protection Regulation.

MHRA, uses a subcontractor, Accenture India, in India.  The Danish Data Protection Agency has authorised the specific transfer of data to a third country by its authorisation dated 8 October 2010, cf. article 46(5) of the General Data Protection Regulation. You can request a copy of the authorisation granted by the Danish Data Protection Agency by contacting us.

Storing of your personal data

At present, we cannot say for how long we will be storing your personal data, but it will be retained in the four-year period of the medicinal cannabis pilot programme (1 January 2018 – 31 December 2021). In determining for how long your data should be stored after this period, we will pay special attention to the following:

Your data is retained only for the period necessary to identify and contact you if we need more information to safeguard patient safety. After that, patient details will be anonymised.

Your rights

The General Data Protection Regulation gives you a number of rights to control how we process your personal data. 

You can use these rights by contacting us.

Right to see your data (right of access)

You have the right to access the information we process about you as well as other information:

Right to rectification (correction)

You have the right to have inaccurate information about you corrected.

Right to erasure

In exceptional cases, you have the right to have information held about you erased before the time we would otherwise do so.

Right to restriction of processing

In certain cases, you have the right to restrict the processing of data held about you. If processing has been restricted, we are – with the exception of storage – only allowed to process these data with your consent, or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or for the protection of the rights of another person or for reasons of important public interest.

Right to object

In certain cases, you have the right to object to our otherwise legal processing of your personal data.

Read more about your rights in the Danish Data Protection Agency's guidelines on the rights of data subjects. The guidelines are available in Danish at the website of the Danish Data Protection Agency: www.datatilsynet.dk.

Lodging a complaint with the Danish Data Protection Agency

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Danish Data Protection Agency if you are displeased with the way in which we process your personal data. The contact details of the Danish Data Protection Agency are available at www.datatilsynet.dk.

Do you have questions about medicinal cannabis?


If you have a question about medicinal cannabis, you are welcome to contact our Information Centre on +45 44 88 95 95 or send an email.

 

You can also post a question on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/laegemiddel/

The Danish Medicines Agency is the data controller in respect of the processing of the personal data we have received from you. Please find our contact details below.

Danish Medicines Agency

Axel Heides Gade 1
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark

CVR no.: 37052485

Telephone: +45 44 88 95 95

E-Mail: Send an email

If you have questions about our processing of your data, we advise you to contact our data protection officer.

Our data protection officer, Troels Mogensen, can be contacted in the following ways:

Danish Medicines Agency
Axel Heides Gade 1
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark
Att. ”Data Protection Officer"

We process your personal data for the following purposes:

  • The Danish Medicines Agency records all suspected side effects to cannabis products in our database of side effects, and we use data about side effects to investigate if there are new or changed product risks.
  • The side effect data will be used for our monitoring and evaluation of the medicinal cannabis pilot programme.

The legal basis for our processing of your personal data follows from:

Part VIII of Danish Act no. 1668 of 26 December 2017 on a Medicinal Cannabis Pilot Programme, and Danish Executive Order no. 1732 of 26 December 2017 on the Reporting of Adverse Reactions from Medicinal Cannabis and Processing of Adverse Reaction Reports.

We process the following categories of personal data about you:

Health data and basic information, e.g. name, initials, CPR (civil registration) number.

We process the following categories of personal data about you:

Health data and basic information, e.g. name, initials, CPR (civil registration) number.

We disclose or transfer your personal data to the following recipients:

The Danish Medicines Agency's database of side effects is a database established and operated by the British Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The Danish Medicines Agency thus uses the MHRA as a data processor.

At present, we cannot say for how long we will be storing your personal data, but it will definitely be stored throughout the duration of the period of the medicinal cannabis pilot programme (the pilot programme ends 31 December 2025). When it is to be decided for how long your data will be stored after the period, the following will be emphasised:

– that your data are stored for as long as it is relevant for reasons of patient safety to identify you to pose follow-up questions. After that, the patient details will be anonymised.

The General Data Protection Regulation gives you a number of rights in respect of our processing of your personal data. 

If you want to make use of your rights, you need to contact us.

Right to see your data (right of access)

You have the right to access the information we process about you as well as other information.

Right to rectification (correction)

You have the right to have incorrect information about you corrected.

Right to erasure

In exceptional cases, you have the right to have information about you erased before the time we would generally erase the information.

Right to restriction of processing

In certain cases, you have the right to have the processing of your data restricted. If you do have the right to restriction of processing, then we are only allowed to process your data, with the exception of storage, with your consent or for the establishment, exercise or defence of legal claims or for the protection of the rights of another person or for reasons of important public interest.

Right to object

In certain cases, you have the right to object to our otherwise legal processing of your personal data.

You can read more about your rights in the Danish Data Protection Agency's guidelines on the rights of data subjects. The guidelines are available in Danish at the website of the Danish Data Protection Agency: www.datatilsynet.dk.

You have the right to lodge a complaint with the Danish Data Protection Agency if you are displeased with the way in which we process your personal data. The contact details of the Danish Data Protection Agency are available at www.datatilsynet.dk.

Have a question about medicinal cannabis?


If you have a question about cannabis, you are welcome to contact our Information Centre on +45 44 88 95 95 or send an email to Send an email.

You can also post a question on our Facebook page