Episode 390
BWB Live at the Cannabis Farm
EP 390 - Something a little different this week. We took BWB on the road to meet James Duckenfield, CEO of Glass Pharm and tour their state of the art facility for growing pharmaceutical grade cannabis.
We learnt a lot of fascinating stuff - including that the only way that you are likely to die from cannabis, certainly medical cannabis, is if someone accidentally drops a ton of it on your head.
Furthermore, this remarkable growing system is not just leading the way for growing medicinal cannabis, but its carbon negative approach and techniques are breaking new ground for horticulture in general.
Listen in and learn.
*For Apple Podcast chapters, access them from the menu in the bottom right corner of your player*
Spotify Video Chapters:
00:00 BWB Live at Glass Pharms
00:47 Andy & Medical Cannabis
01:43 The UK Cannabis Conversation
02:57 Tour of Glass Pharms Facility
06:44 Cannabis Cultivation Techniques
13:24 Regulations and Licensing
18:59 Product Demonstration and Quality Control
24:39 BWB with James Duckenfield CEO
25:51 Medical Cannabis in the UK
27:12 Public Perception and NHS Policies
28:06 Cannabis and Chronic Pain
29:31 Cannabis and Mental Health
30:33 Global Cannabis Policies
31:16 Personal Experiences with Cannabis
32:28 Challenges in the Cannabis Industry
33:09 The Endocannabinoid System
35:24 Regulatory Hurdles
42:01 Future of Medical Cannabis
49:33 Wrap Up
Watch and subscribe to us on YouTube
Follow us:
If you'd like to be on the show, get in contact - mail@businesswithoutbullshit.me
BWB is powered by Oury Clark
Transcript
We're actually regulating cannabis more harshly than cocaine.
Speaker B:And is it true to say the UK is the largest producer of medical cannabis in the world?
Speaker A:It sounds bizarre, but it is.
Speaker B:You've got this FTSE listed company, developed medical products, producing the most in the world.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, largest producer in the world of medical cannabis.
Speaker B:And then you've got this other side of the coin, which we just seem to be 100 years behind the conversation.
Speaker A:And if you go to med school in America, you'll get taught about the endocannabinoid system.
Speaker A:If you go to med school in this country, it's not even on syllabus.
Speaker A:The NHS are not prescribing it.
Speaker A: They did an assessment in: Speaker A:The only way you're going to die from inhaling cannabis is if you take a ton of it and drop on someone's head.
Speaker B:Hi, and welcome to Business Without Bullshit.
Speaker B:We're here to help the founders, entrepreneurs, business owners, anyone who wrestles with the job of being in.
Speaker B:And if you like what we do here, please rate and review us on Spotify and Apple and come say hi on YouTube if you fancy watching us in action.
Speaker B:Links are in the episode description or just search for wblondon.
Speaker B:A break from the norm.
Speaker B:This week we took the BWB crew on the road, which is basically Me Dee in a Mustang, where we can't tell you exactly where, actually, but we met James Duckenfield, CEO of Glass Farms, who took us on a tour of their stage, state of the art facility for growing pharmaceutical grade cannabis.
Speaker B:Now, the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids is still a very small market, largely because of poor public perception and a lack of medical education.
Speaker B:Did you know that doctors in the UK aren't even taught about the human body's internal endocannabinoid system, unlike American and European counterparts?
Speaker B:And did you know that the UK is the largest producer of medical cannabis in the world and has been for decades?
Speaker B:And did you know the ratio of therapeutic to fatal dose in things like paracetamol and aspirin mean that they would never pass clinical trials today?
Speaker B:And yet the only way you would die from cannabis, certainly medical cannabis, is if someone accidentally drops a ton of it on your head.
Speaker B:Places like Germany and Australia already have over 1 million medical cannabis users each, which shows just how far behind the UK is in this space.
Speaker B:And yet in the uk, problems with overseas supply and overly tight regulations.
Speaker B:I mean, brace yourself for this fact.
Speaker B:Cannabis is more Tightly regulated than cocaine, believe it or not, means that regular medical users are either being forced back to opioids or to the black market for the medication.
Speaker B:I mean, crazy stuff.
Speaker B:Please enjoy the chat and let's all wake up.
Speaker B:Today we have a special edition filming live on location from Glass Farms, a facility run by the amazing CEO James Duckenfield.
Speaker B:It is the largest producer of medical cannabis flower for cannabis based products for medical use in humans, which is a big mouthful.
Speaker B:Suffice to say, it is a serious facility which is groundbreaking in its own right.
Speaker B:James, a chemist originally by training, spent years in the technology industry and companies like Kodak and Ricoh and Xerox and has now become a cannabis farmer.
Speaker B:James, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Who would have thought it?
Speaker B:Let's just start very simply with just very briefly, Glass Farms is what.
Speaker A:So as you, as you say, we're a cultivator of medical cannabis flowers for CBPMs.
Speaker A: as what was, was legalized in: Speaker A:So it's an unlicensed medicine.
Speaker A:So we produce the raw material, it goes to a specials manufacturer in the UK and they turn it into medicines which specialist physicians can prescribe for a number of different ailments.
Speaker B:And we bump into the first thing that people aren't really aware of, that medical use of cannabis is approved in the uk.
Speaker B:But when you say unlicensed, it needs to be a private doctor almost.
Speaker B:Or it's a physician.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:So it can be, it can be NHS or private.
Speaker A:There's only a handful of NHS prescriptions, sadly.
Speaker A:But you have to be a specialist physician to prescribe medical cannabis and it's typically not reimbursable on the nhs.
Speaker A:So most of the patients in the UK are private, private clinic patients.
Speaker B:And is it true to say the UK is the largest producer of medical cannabis in the world?
Speaker A:Yeah, it sounds bizarre, but it is.
Speaker A:And we're the biggest producer for unlicensed medicine.
Speaker A:But we're dwarfed by GW Pharmaceuticals, who are now Jazz Pharmaceuticals, who produce much more than we do for licensed versions of cannabis medicine.
Speaker A:So they have two drugs, Epidiolex and Sativex, most of which get shipped overseas, mainly us, but they produce much more than we do.
Speaker B:And this is, this is a listed.
Speaker B:It's on the footsie, isn't it?
Speaker B:And they've got these huge areas for decades.
Speaker B:They've been.
Speaker A: wing Cannabis in the UK since: Speaker B:And why do you think there is such a gap between public perception of Cannabis policy and sort of the reality of it, you know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I think if you went on the streets and asked 100 people, is cannabis available legally for medical use?
Speaker A:I know 90 of them would probably say no.
Speaker A:So that there's, there's lack of public perception.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:Clearly the NHS are not prescribing it.
Speaker A: They did an assessment in: Speaker A:We actually paid for that health economic analysis to be rerun and we co funded a study at York University and it showed actually that the NHS could save 4 billion pounds a year were they to start prescribing cannabis for chronic pain.
Speaker B:Oh, for chronic pain, yeah.
Speaker B:Specifically because they only use opioids, really at the moment.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So actually there's no nice.
Speaker A:Don't really recommend any pharmacological interventions for chronic pain, amazingly.
Speaker A:So they recommend things like cognitive behavioral therapy and, and things like that.
Speaker A:They say that you could use tricycle antidepressants if you've got somebody with chronic pain, but then you're treating the consequence of having chronic pain that you become depressed rather than actually treating the pain itself.
Speaker A:So it's a really bizarre situation.
Speaker A:So you've got clinicians having to resort to opioids or pregabalin to treat pain.
Speaker A:Patients with chronic pain, which is not following the NICE guidelines and they're often pregabalin for chronic pain is an off license use of that drug.
Speaker B:Such a strange, you know, you've got this FTSE listed company, developed medical products producing the most in the world.
Speaker B:I mean, you know, largest producer in the world of medical cannabis.
Speaker B:And then you've got this other side of the coin which we just seem to be 100 years behind the conversation.
Speaker B:And also we have a culture of hedonism a little bit underneath it.
Speaker B:Britain has always been, you know, drinkers and all these things.
Speaker B:So it's like, it's very, it's everywhere.
Speaker B:I just, I just cannot get my head around it.
Speaker A:I mean, arguably it's a lot safer than alcohol.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:If you're young, if you're only 25, if you have a history of drug addiction, if you've got a family history or personal history of psychosis, it's probably not the drug for you.
Speaker B:I feel that's so overarmed.
Speaker B:I actually have a cousin, first cousin, and he has schizophrenia.
Speaker B:It runs in that family.
Speaker B:It's a rare condition, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:It's not sort of like.
Speaker B:I think the perception is that anybody can develop this psychosis.
Speaker B:It's not.
Speaker A:No, no, no, absolutely not.
Speaker A:So, yes, I mean, there have been studies in deprived parts of London on does cannabis cause psychosis?
Speaker A:But actually is the psychosis caused by the environment or is it caused by the cannabis in that environment?
Speaker A:What's the cause and what's the effect?
Speaker B:And if you consume anything all day, every day, I mean, if you get up and you're just pounding weed, you know what I mean?
Speaker B:I mean, you drink alcohol all day, I mean, what's it going to do to your brain?
Speaker B:You're going to lose sleep, you're going to, you know, and hence you need to bring it into the open and talk about it and say, this is a drug, it's not a tomato.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:So if you look at Germany, you know, the straight men of Europe, or you look at Australia, who culturally very similar to the uk, they started the medical cannabis journey around the same time and both of them have got around a million patients now for medical cannabis.
Speaker B:Germany's legalized it recreationally.
Speaker A:Well, they decriminalized it.
Speaker B:Is that what they've done.
Speaker A:In both countries?
Speaker A:You can get it reimbursed through medical insurance.
Speaker A:And the Australian have got a.
Speaker A:Australians have got a hybrid sort of NHS setup.
Speaker A:But a million patients in Australia, when they've got 40% of our population, I mean it's.
Speaker A:Whereas we're less than 100,000.
Speaker B:I think too, as a medical user myself, it's like people medicate with alcohol and people say that's bad.
Speaker B:But look, people medicate with a lot of stuff, they medicate with exercise.
Speaker B:Look, do I really think that someone having a few glasses a week is the end of the world?
Speaker B:I mean, I've grown up with a father doing it.
Speaker B:No, he's an extremely put together person.
Speaker B:But yes, to relax in the evening, he will have a glass of Fiorette.
Speaker B:Not every day.
Speaker B:And it's a bit like that, you know, my wife watching me with ADHD as a doctor and being like, I've seen, seen how you use cannabis, you medicate with it.
Speaker B:You know, I don't personally, I don't use it when really when I'm working.
Speaker B:But you know, as a way of sort of dealing with my brain, it's helpful.
Speaker B:And I find that conversation, yeah, very confusing very quickly because I think it's sort of wrapped up in what is recreation and what is medical.
Speaker B:Immediately, you know, it's, where are those lines?
Speaker B:But you know, do you feel you wouldn't be someone, you wouldn't want it to be recreationally, legally, from a Business perspective or do you care?
Speaker A:Well, I mean we're, we are definitely in the medical camp.
Speaker A:So we, what we want is actually to see medical cannabis more available.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:In the UK because we're definitely lagging behind the, the level of people that are self prescribing using black market cannabis, which just can't be a good thing.
Speaker A:It's putting hands, you know, putting money in the hands of criminals and who knows what they're.
Speaker A:What you're buying.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I think there should be a strong preference to medical cannabis by the regulators, both the home office, who are responsible for making sure criminality is managed more accurately.
Speaker A:But we're lagging behind and I think we're lagging behind because of lots of reasons.
Speaker A:Partly the public don't know, I think partly we don't train our doctors on the endocannabinoid systems, do they?
Speaker B:In other countries like Germany and stuff, they learn about the.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Explain a little bit the endocannabinoid systems system.
Speaker A:So the endocannabinoid system was actually characterized quite recently, medically speaking.
Speaker A:It was in the nineteen nineteen nineties.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And there's, there's a number of receptors, but they, they're allosteric receptors on the nervous system and they're found all the way.
Speaker A:So there's one called CB1, one called CB2, they're, they're all through our body.
Speaker A:There's more, more endocannabinoid receptors in our bodies than there are opioid reception receptors.
Speaker A:So they're, they're quite an, it's quite an important system.
Speaker A:And if you go to med school in America, you'll get taught about the endocannibinoid system.
Speaker A:If you go to med school in this country, it's not even on strange repression.
Speaker B:And is this suggesting the body is inbuilt, designed to receive opioids or cannabis?
Speaker B:Or is this something the body.
Speaker A:No, it's, it's, I think it's just pure coincidence.
Speaker A:So we have our own endocannabinoids.
Speaker A:So the endocannabinoids are molecules that we manufacture ourselves to perform the job.
Speaker A:And it just so happens that the cannabinoids will trigger the same receptors.
Speaker A:Their phyto.
Speaker A:Cannabinoids will trigger the same receptors as these endocannabinoids.
Speaker B:It's that sort of.
Speaker B:We never know the answer.
Speaker B:But did the plant design itself to do this so we grew more or is it just accident?
Speaker A:So the, the cannabinoids are actually, actually there to protect the plant from insect attacks.
Speaker B:Ah, okay.
Speaker A:So they're they're part of the plant.
Speaker B:The insects don't like it.
Speaker A:Yes, they're partially of insect defense mechanisms.
Speaker A:So you'll find the, the cannibaloids in trichomes and trichomes is basically means hairs.
Speaker A:It comes from the Greek for hair.
Speaker A:So on the, on the hairs, on the, on the cannabis flowers you'll find these basic anti insect compounds and they just happen to trigger our, our endocannibolin system.
Speaker A:It's a bit something like nicotine.
Speaker A:Nicotine is a, is a, is a nerve toxin for insects, of course, again so.
Speaker A:But that happens to, you know, to have an effect on humans.
Speaker A:But certainly there wasn't any evolutionary process that, that, that happened.
Speaker B:I mean we do regulate heavily in this country and maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing.
Speaker B:But you know, as a business, do you find, I mean this is a very regulated area.
Speaker B:Do you.
Speaker B:Have you found that the red tape very heavy been anything subsurge you've had to do?
Speaker A: s that the, the law change in: Speaker A:I mean I'm sure for the people who wanted the law changed in 20, probably some felt like an eternity, but in terms of law changing, it was done really quickly actually, and I think quicker than the regulator could really adapt to.
Speaker A:And in my view we still have a regulatory environment which isn't well funded enough to enable our industry to operate properly.
Speaker A:So that means that making changes to support real genuine demand in medical cannabis takes a really long time and it's not predictable.
Speaker A:And that's terrible for business, it's terrible for investing in businesses, it's terrible for operating businesses.
Speaker B:Well, it could be taken away tomorrow really?
Speaker B:Is that what you're saying?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you've got no certainty in terms of what's going on in the future, you've got no certainty in how long it takes to make changes and businesses naturally change over the course of a year you will get unforeseen changes and the regulatory system needs to be able to adapt to that foreseeable level of change, which it can't at the moment.
Speaker B:And do you think that's the sort of, that in a way is hold the industry back then it's just the unsure environment.
Speaker B:But therefore what you're doing here is quite bold, I guess.
Speaker B:What's driving this, you know, the investors driving it?
Speaker B:Or was it, you know.
Speaker A:Well, I think we, we saw that there was an opportunity to change the way that medical cannabis is delivered to patients in the uk and before, before we were set up, the medical cannabis flower was imported from overseas and the quality of the flower was very variable.
Speaker A:The, the regularity of supply was variable.
Speaker A:So not only was the quality up and down, so was the supply.
Speaker A:So things would run out, people run out of a medication that they found work for them and so they then switched to try and find another medicine that would work for them and if they couldn't find it, they would go back to the black market.
Speaker A:And I think there is.
Speaker A:There's been a revolving door of people coming into, into medical cannabis, not getting a good clinical experience or not getting good products experience, and then resorting to going back to the black market.
Speaker A:And that's been very disruptive and has stopped the growth of the markets in this country.
Speaker A:And I think had we got more proactive regulation, it could have been designed to work and made sure that it worked in a functional way.
Speaker B:So important what you're doing here.
Speaker B:You were talking that the police are coming tomorrow, because that's all about this sort of moving it forward as a conversation, isn't it?
Speaker A:You know, so we, we want to have a collaborative relationship with law enforcement and, and the regulator so that we have a properly regulated.
Speaker A:We, we don't not want regulation, we want properly managed and functional regulation.
Speaker A:So we, we've got Warwickshire Police coming in tomorrow, as you say, we had two police forces in last year to have education days and for them to understand more about medical cannabis, to learn more about the cultivation cycle, the plants.
Speaker A:What differentiates medical cannabis from street cannabis?
Speaker A:And it's got to be a good thing.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:I mean, it's, you know, perceptions only changed a little bit at the time, aren't they?
Speaker B:You know, and you exposing this incredible facility we've been around, you know, and, and I think also it's probably meeting some patients too, rather than seeing it as this sort of drug recreational use, you know, but we're still hung up on some of these conversations and we still.
Speaker B:People, you know, can't say that alcohol is a drug.
Speaker B:I mean, it's, it's mind blowing.
Speaker B:I mean, from a chemist's point of view, you must be like, you're mad.
Speaker B:I mean, so.
Speaker B:And let's just talk a little bit, you know, is running this place more like farming, pharma or finance?
Speaker B:Which one does it fit?
Speaker A:Well, thankfully, I have Richard in our, in our team is the MD.
Speaker A:Richard Lewis has been a horticulturist for over 35 years.
Speaker A:And so there's nothing he doesn't know really about running a large scale horticultural facility like this.
Speaker A:I mean this is, this is the next generation of facility compared to what he was running in his last facility, which was a, still a very advanced greenhouse, but it was 8.4 hectares growing huge tomatoes.
Speaker A:I mean it's just, it was absolutely vast.
Speaker B:What's this?
Speaker B:This is a hectare or something.
Speaker A:This is 2.4 hectares.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:So this is a baby greenhouse from his perspective, but with a lot more, a lot more technology.
Speaker A:And then we paired Richard with a cannabis specialist from California initially so that we could learn, learn the plants.
Speaker A:And we've taken the approach of listening to the recreational market growers and looking at what was how people.
Speaker B:Must be a lot of knowledge there.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And looking at how the Canadians grow and the Californians grow and distilling that into a world class facility here.
Speaker B:Do you think that what's going on here will then go and influence horticultural generally?
Speaker B:You know, it will start changing how people make tomatoes, grow tomatoes?
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean this, this is generally a, in my view, the most eco friendly glass house in Europe.
Speaker A:Certainly.
Speaker A:Now we, we're, we're heating the greenhouse with waste, with waste heat.
Speaker A:We're chilling the greenhouse and doing dehumidification with waste heat.
Speaker A:We're using, we've got our own electricity generation which is powered by waste food.
Speaker A:Now.
Speaker A:It couldn't be more eco friendly.
Speaker B:Agree.
Speaker A:So, and you know, I'm very proud of that.
Speaker A:And people are getting more and more interested in looking after the planet and it may not change consumer habits but it makes economical sense.
Speaker A:Sense as well as, as well as sense for the, for the planet.
Speaker B:Where next, James?
Speaker B:Where, where.
Speaker B:When you stare over the brow of the hill, what would you, what would you like to see?
Speaker A:So I think we, we've got a, you know, a plan to, you know, we're, we're producing the raw material now we will move on to producing active pharmaceutical ingredients and then we want to move to creating metered dose products to make cannabis medicines look less like a recreational product.
Speaker A:And my wife's GP and she thought it was peculiar that the medicine is essentially a flour which has to be weighed out by the patient.
Speaker A:And she likened it to aspirin.
Speaker A:You don't get a tub of aspirin powder and then you ask the patient to weigh out a thousand milligrams.
Speaker A:It's already made into a, into a tablet which has been weighed out for you and you know you're going to get the right dose.
Speaker A:So we want to move to things that look more like conventional medicines to.
Speaker B:Control the dosage control, which means oil vapes, does it or no.
Speaker A:So we want to use, or use the dry flour but in a pre.
Speaker B:Weighed you pop it in almost.
Speaker B:You've got to work with technology companies then who make the vapes.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And also we want edibles.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Yeah, the edibles is really.
Speaker B:And, and the, you can do the mucus edibles and things like this.
Speaker B:You go down all of that.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:And what, how much do you produce at the moment?
Speaker B:Out of interest?
Speaker A:We are producing over 150kg a month of dry cannabis flower which is not even 15% of the capacity of this facility.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Really look quite busy.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:But it can be packed.
Speaker B:Yeah, so that's what Richard was saying.
Speaker B:I want it full, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:But again back to public perception, back to having a conversation about it, you know, I mean I find it utterly bizarre that, you know, it's not a regular conversation on the BBC.
Speaker B:We need to talk about these things until we get our head around them.
Speaker B:We seem very happy to talk about other things.
Speaker B:You know, I feel there's some sort of repression.
Speaker B:But you've been very eloquent about the regulation is complicated.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, you know, it's, it's a legal, it's a legal substance provided it's got a prescription.
Speaker A:So you know, if you're, if you've got a prescription and you're following the prescriber's guidelines, which is typically that you're using a vaporizer to consume it and you know, smoking is, is, is explicitly illegal within the, within the legislation and you're not converting it to other forms then.
Speaker A:No, it's legal, you're protected by law.
Speaker A:And it's, you know, some of the heartwarming stories that we hear via the clinics that, that use medicines derived from our flower are absolutely heartwarming and life changing.
Speaker B:Yeah, I bet, I bet there's some really beautiful stories and having seen everyone watch my sister die of cancer too, you know, and you know, I know in that it can be very useful in those instances.
Speaker B:I think whenever you get a medicine that can be safe, you know, and does have an effect to restrict it is sort of crazy.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, we're actually regulating cannabis more harshly than cocaine.
Speaker B:What I was thinking of when people say oh, but it's a recognition, I was like, what do you think heroin and opioids are?
Speaker B:Diamorphine and what do you think Novocaine is, is cocaine.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker B:Is that true that we reg.
Speaker B:What Novocaine is easier to produce.
Speaker A:Cannabis is the, the most strictly regulated.
Speaker B:And yet the safest.
Speaker B:I mean, you cannot kill yourself or whatever it's supposed to be, unless you've got sort of 100 kilos fell on you or something.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I went to a medical conference and there was a pain specialist and he said, you know, the only way you're going to die from inhaling cannabis is if you take a ton of it and drop on someone's head.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:That's unbelievable.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:You kill yourself with cocaine in, you.
Speaker A:Know, an hour or two and actually paracetamol, really dangerous.
Speaker A:And aspirin are much more dangerous because the ratio of therapeutic dose to lethal dose would not be allowed if those drugs went to medical trials.
Speaker B:Nowadays, I notice on the products that it writes irradiated or non irradiated, as if this is an important point.
Speaker B:What does this mean?
Speaker A:Yeah, so we live in a territory where the microbial standards are very, very tough.
Speaker A:So if you were to buy medical cannabis in Canada, the, the microbial levels can be much higher than.
Speaker B:Meaning little things living on it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So there's two counts.
Speaker A:There's one count called total aerobic microbial count, which is the bacteria, essentially, and the other one is tymc, total yeast and molds count.
Speaker A:And so that's molds, which, some of which can be pathogenic like aspergillus and harmless yeasts.
Speaker A:But these two things have got very stringent levels.
Speaker A:So if you are growing in an environment that isn't clean or where the mold isn't controlled as fanatically as it's controlled in, in our environment, then you have to irradiate the cannabis to kill the bacteria and use radiate mean UV light or something.
Speaker B:Does it?
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:So it can be gamma irradiated, so.
Speaker A:Or it can be beta irradiated, but these are radio, radio, different parts of the, of the electromagnetic spectrum that are basically nuking the DNA in the microbes to make sure they don't.
Speaker A:They're no longer viable.
Speaker A:But it does give a false sense of security somewhat, because if the product was mouldy and failed the mold test, when you irradiate it, that mold is still there.
Speaker A:So the mold is killed, so it ceases to be pathogenic.
Speaker A:So it won't cause aspergillosis, for example.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Growing in your lungs, but the mould is still there.
Speaker A:So if you have aspects asthma and you're, you're sensitive to mole particles, it will still be allergenic.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Because it will pick up on the shape the immune system will react.
Speaker A:So it's just your, your immune system is, is reacting to the particles.
Speaker A:So I think irradiation often gives a false sense of security.
Speaker A:It's, it's there to kill things that are there, whereas if it's non irradiated it was never there in the first place.
Speaker A:And it's a much, much more difficult thing to achieve.
Speaker B:Why isn't everyone else growing it like that?
Speaker B:I would have thought Canada's on this stuff, isn't it?
Speaker A:Yeah, but the microbial levels are much higher over there.
Speaker A:And what, what people are doing is they're taking, sometimes is they're taking recreational cannabis, processing it through a GMP facility, irradiating it to achieve microbial standards and then shipping it here to well as medical cannabis.
Speaker A:Whereas we don't have that opportunity.
Speaker B:It's to going constant irony.
Speaker B:You're doing things as in a world class standard in an industry that's the biggest in the world, that nobody knows about, that can't get its head around legalizing it, that you can't talk about in a business.
Speaker B:You can't, nobody can mention it.
Speaker B:You know, maybe it'll slowly happen as there's more and more people around you medically licensed.
Speaker B:But it's sort of, I just, it's so we are such a strange group of people at times.
Speaker B:I think you've explained it brilliantly.
Speaker B:You know, I guess the question for us all is is Britain ready for an honest conversation about cannabis?
Speaker B:But you're trying to have one, you know.
Speaker A:Anytime, Anytime.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:Jee.
