Pubdate: Sun, 14 Aug 2016
Source: Calgary Sun, The (CN AB)
Copyright: 2016 The Calgary Sun
Contact: http://www.calgarysun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.calgarysun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/67
Author: Shawn Logan
Pages: 4-5

CANADA'S BUDDING MEDICINAL MARIJUANA INDUSTRY MODELLING ITSELF ON BIG
PHARMA COUSINS

CREMONA, Alta. - Driving past the gravel driveway that leads to an
unremarkable rural bungalow just outside the Village of Cremona, most
would never know the property is also home to the fastest growing
manufacturer of medical marijuana in Canada.

Just beyond the rustic homestead, encircled by a stout chain link
fence topped with barbed wire, sits a massive one-storey factory that
this year is expected to produce 7,000 kg (about the weight of a
full-grown African bull elephant) of cannabis for patients who've
found relief for a wide range of symptoms thanks to a new frontier of
medicine.

Aurora Cannabis is Alberta's only licensed producer of medical
marijuana, and just seven months after it began selling dried
marijuana through mail order, the company based in Mountain View
County, about an hour's drive north of Calgary, already boasts
thousands of loyal customers.

Cam Battley is Aurora's senior vice-president, and has also earned the
nickname Captain Cannabis as the chair of the advocacy committee for
the Canadian Medical Cannabis Industry Association, lobbying for a
sector he argues is an important extension to the nation's existing
health care system.

When he's not extolling the virtues of a drug that not long ago was
seen as a street-level scourge, Battley's a Cub Scout leader with the
1st Campbellville Scouts just outside Mississauga, Ont.

"The purpose of what we're doing here is to help patients who have not
been satisfied by traditional or conventional medical treatments," he
said, during a recent tour of the 55,200 sq.-ft., purpose-built
facility in southern Alberta's foothills.

"What's most satisfying about this business and what makes me most
passionate is when we talk to patients who've had their lives
literally transformed by the use of medical cannabis."

It's less Cheech and Chong at Aurora, and more like Pfizer and Bayer -
an industrial marijuana grow-op with rigorous standards usually seen
in large pharmaceutical companies.

It's a world Battley is very familiar with, having joined the
burgeoning medical cannabis industry after a career in biotechnology
and pharmaceuticals.

Aurora is one of 34 licensed medical marijuana producers in Canada,
the vast majority of them based in Ontario and B.C. The factory
operations began sprouting up after the federal government enacted
Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations (MMPR) in June 2013,
dumping home operations in which medical pot was cultivated by
patients for personal use, in favour of much larger-scale, for-profit
operations.

By the end of March 2016, the number of medical marijuana users
registered by Health Canada had soared to 53,649. With growth of about
10% every month, Battley expects that number is now in excess of
85,000, and still growing by leaps and bounds.

"So demand is growing very, very fast and that's a measure of the
scale of the unmet medical need," he said.

Some 64 people are employed at Aurora, which produces about two dozen
cannabis strains named after mountains in the Canadian Rockies - 3
Sisters, Tower, and Odin among others - and production has blossomed
to the point they're harvesting a crop of plants weekly.

Inside the facility, marijuana plants are cloned using cuttings from
so-called mother plants that are then grown in sterile petri dishes
before moving on to a "flowering room," where they will continue to
grow until they've become mature. The buds from the plants are then
stripped and placed in a drying room to remove moisture before they're
apportioned, packaged and shipped out to customers.

The rooms are kept immaculately clean with recirculated air and
sterile environments, though some rooms offer an artistic nod to the
product at the heart of the facility, including a small stained glass
window inside the secured entryway featuring a leafy cannabis plant in
the middle of it.

Given the fact that the medical-grade weed is so potentially valuable
to black marketeers, Health Canada security requirements are
exceedingly strict.

Some 150 video cameras film every square inch of the facility, inside
and out, and the data must be kept for two years for audits and
investigations. Every tiny bud or plant clipping is accounted for and
finished product, stored in silver protective bags each worth about
$8,000 on the street, are kept behind a vault with concrete walls and
a massive metal door.

"The security requirements are to make sure there's no diversion
possible to the black market," Battley said.

"More importantly I think, from a patient's perspective, is the
quality regulations that ensure that the products that we grow and
that we ship out to patients across Canada are absolutely pure and
there are no contaminants such as you might find in a street product."

The Aurora facility uses no pesticides or gamma-irradiation, instead
using tiny natural predators - good bugs, they're called - to attack
pests that commonly prey on marijuana plants.

Even as the medical marijuana business continues to boom in Canada, a
bumper crop of prosperity is on the horizon with the federal
government's pledge to legalize pot. Justin Trudeau's Liberals are
aiming to introduce legislation next spring, though it remains unclear
when consumer marijuana will hit the market, or how the new regime
will look.

Whatever the case, legalization of the drug seems inevitable, and
Aurora and other producers will be in on the ground floor of the new
marketplace.

"We were surprised last year when the Liberal government was elected
and they reiterated the fact that, yes, they were serious with their
election promise they were going to legalize the consumer use of
cannabis," Battley said.

"So this is going to happen. It's going to obviously be good business,
it's going to have to be done exceedingly carefully and responsibly
and that imparts a particular responsibility to us as producers of
cannabis."

That means those in the production and distribution side of the
marijuana business will have to work closely with municipal,
provincial and federal governments to ensure consumer pot is
introduced safely to a broader customer base, Battley said.

It will also mean expansion, with demand expected to shift from the
illicit marketplace to a new legal playing field.

"The demand for medical marijuana is already very, very significant
and so we're preparing to expand simply to meet the demand for medical
cannabis," Battley said.

"Layering on top of that the much larger demand for consumer cannabis
means that our entire industry is going to have to grow, so a lot more
production capacity is going to have to be required."

In the meantime, Battley said the industry is lobbying on a couple of
fronts to improve access to the drug. The association representing the
medical cannabis industry is in negotiations with insurers and the
feds to provide the same coverage and tax breaks available for other
forms of medication.

"One of the next big challenges for patients and for producers of
medical cannabis is getting patients reimbursement for their use of
medical cannabis on their health insurance," Battley said.

"In some cases the use of medical cannabis is actually less expensive
than the former regimen of conventional prescription medicines
patients were using.

"So this is a bit of a moral issue and it's certainly an economic
issue for patients.

"It's something we believe as an industry, through our association
Cannabis Canada, is definitely worth fighting for."

The push is also on to persuade the federal government to exempt the
drug from sales tax, just like any other approved medication.

"It's a prescribed product and it's the only prescribed medicine on
which GST and HST currently apply," Battley said.

"We think we're going to win that battle, we know that we're in the
right, we've got the support of the medical community. The time will
come when we believe the GST and HST will be taken off medical cannabis."

Still a fledgling industry, Battley said its pioneers have to ensure
it grows the right way, quelling any fears that continue to linger in
the public that it's somehow not a legitimate medical operation.

"If we ever forgot the federal government's policy objectives here,
which is to keep cannabis out of the hands of kids, keep the profits
out of the hands of criminals, and to take a vast underground,
illegitimate market and bring it up into the light of legitimacy …
that would be a major problem," he said.

"So we have to make sure that that doesn't happen - we have to be
incredibly responsible and get this right the first time."
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MAP posted-by: Matt