Lucas McCann, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer Company, CannDelta Inc.
Dr. Lucas C. McCann is the Chief Scientific Officer at CannDelta Inc. where he provides scientific oversight of all projects. Lucas is a synthetic organic chemist by trade and worked within Canada’s federal government in the Inspectorate labs of Health Canada before leaving to begin consulting with CannDelta where he specializes in new technology regulation, lab practices, and scientific/regulatory document writing. He is an expert in the natural product synthesis, industrial-scale processing and laboratory set-up and installations for medicinal cannabis research and development.
Lucas has been decorated with several research awards and has had his work published in many high-profile peer-reviewed chemical journals, including several features in Angewandte Chimie, and Chemistry and Engineering News, by the American Chemistry Society (ACS). He is also a chemistry textbook author having written and published “Organic Chemistry Laboratory Techniques”, a laboratory text that sold 5000 copies its first year to top-tier university science programs at UOttawa, Vanderbilt, Baylor and Texas A&M (Corpus Christie) University. Lucas’ science background combined with his acquired knowledge of controlled substance analysis has catapulted him to the frontlines, where technology and regulation interface.
lucas@canndelta.com
http://canndelta.com
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
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[00:01:07] Welcome, everyone. This is Thinking Outside the Bud. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Lucas McCann. And Lucas is chief scientific officer at Camp Delta, which is a company out of Canada. We're going to talk a little bit about cannabis. We're gonna talk about regulation. We're going to talk about the Canadian market with that. Lucas, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. Nice to be here. Yeah. So let's start with just kind of getting to know you a little bit. Your background, how you got on the cannabis. What was your professional background? What was the your area of study and how did you get into the cannabis space? I guess the way I got in was pretty backwards and opportunistic.
[00:01:39] So just a bit of a preface to that. My background is in organic chemistry. I did a lot of national product synthesis playing around the lab for for quite a bit of my life through through graduate school. Not really sure where I was gonna go or how that was going to end up for me later on. I just knew that I didn't want to become a professor and just sort of stuck to it. Read a read at a school I ended up getting a job at at Health Canada, which is like the FDA. It's Canada's way of protecting the safety of Canadians from anything from drugs, illicit substances seized at the border to natural health products available on the shelf. And that opened up a door very wide open for me into this space. I didn't really know it at the time, but they became or were at the time, actually the regulating body for for the regulation surrounding medical cannabis. So just a brief history on that.
[00:02:22] Yeah. What do you give us a rundown of the Canadian cannabis market for those that don't know for sure.
[00:02:27] So for those that don't know medical marijuana, it was called at the time or no medical cannabis was legal in Canada in 2001.
[00:02:33] What that allowed people to do was to have legal home Groser to allow your friend or your neighbor or your colleague to grow cannabis for you in their home and then and then provide that to you for the purposes of treating some kind of ailment that maybe wasn't treatable with with with other measures that came after he was a class action lawsuit against the federal government for restricting medicine to two folks that needed that. And then we started to open up the doors in terms of the regulations even more in 2013 by allowing other producers or private companies to come into the space under very, very strict regulated conditions and again, produced cannabis for those medical patients.
[00:03:09] Got it. So it was a purely medical. And it sounds like up until the more recent ones, I mean, it was really homegrown. I mean, people could grow. It was probably limited by number of plants or something like that. You had some kind of regulation.
[00:03:19] That's right. So, you know, we saw a few iterations of this, but it was always surrounding the medical market. And then up until recently, I don't use in recreational use was illegal until the 17th of October of 2018. They've opened up the doors that the new set of regulations called the Cannabis Act. And now if you don't have a prescription, you can still get your hands on on cannabis by going to a retail store or ordering your authorized provincial body that advance cannabis online so you can get cannabis in the mail now.
[00:03:44] Yeah. And what you kind of break down a little bit for us. You know, in the U.S., we have this funny kind of federal state system. You've got this, you know, federal and provincial system. So it's now federally illegal. But how does that break down in terms of the actual provinces and then the actual jurisdiction or, you know, counties and things like that? How does how do they actually implement cannabis law? Yeah.
[00:04:05] Great. So, I mean, in terms of your ability to be able to possess. I mean, that's a federal level. So you're allowed to carry about 30 grams, which is probably more than you would need at any given the substantial amount. And then with the new sets of regulations as well, they've opened it up for four hung growers. So anyone can now grow four plants per household. So that means if you don't want to buy the so-called government's stuff, you can you can be growing your own using whatever method you think is best wherever you are in Canada.
[00:04:33] So this is regardless of the provincial law or a local law, you have the right as a Canadian citizen to have four plants or something like that in your and your domicile.
[00:04:43] Now, there are some other things that are coming into play with that. For example, if you're living in a condo and your landlord can pass a law, it says that, you know, this isn't going to happen here. And we're still we're still looking at what that looks like in terms of people that are know medical patients looking to access their medicine that way or even consuming as well, because there's some sort of, I guess, discrepancies as to, you know, what people that are, you know, in the landlord situation want and what people that are actually having to use this stuff are looking to do as well. So there's some discrepancies there. What the provinces do. So, you know, we are states more or less have different rules surrounding the retail store. So where you would go just a body. Yes. Yeah. And that's where all the discrepancy sort of happened at that level as well. So I was at Health Canada, you know, I saw this this was going to be something that was gonna move into the private industry. It's a great opportunity and with somebody else. Actually, in the medical cannabis program, there was an inspector checking the facilities, making sure that they were compliant. They're following the regs. We decided to jump ship from Health Canada and move into the private world because, you know, we were getting asked questions anyway. People were coming to us and asking us this sort of subject matter experts, at least in the regulatory field.
[00:05:48] And we thought, you know, this is a great opportunity to start our own business and and move away from from from the government.
[00:05:53] Yeah. Good. Good move. I've spoken to several people in this industry now that have coming out of either research or government or policy folks that have built up businesses around around that expertise. And in fact, I think it's one of the that's probably the faster growing segment of the cannabis industry is the ancillary services and products, the stuff around it, not just that the core kind of growth chain stuff. So.
[00:06:14] And when did you set up shop? Well, how long ago? So it's been over a year now and we've been incorporated since since last March. But we were working well before that. You know what started off as favors grew into, you know, having to get incorporation of a business name and, you know, leaving the full time gigs to really pursue this. And, you know, now's the time because, you know, in five years, there won't be a demand for this. Yeah. But now, because, you know, cannabis is pretty, pretty strictly regulated in Canada, people don't really necessarily know how to sort of navigate that regulation if they want to start a small business. Yeah. So with the new set of regulations, they added this this new type of license type that you can get called out like a microbrew license, Romero cultivation. And that allows people that want to get into like a craft growing situation, them sort of the space to enter that way. They don't have all necessarily the same security requirements for four cameras and there are a lot of security requirements for these big producers. They essentially have to monitor every square inch of the exterior and in some sense, you know, every doorway inside the facility. And that's that's that's a pretty costly investment. But with this new microgram license, it's allowing those those new craft growers to come in and claim they're part of the space as well.
[00:07:16] Now was said and I guess. How did that come about? I mean, is there a history with the regulation of. Was that always there? Was that kind of because of the previous regulation, they didn't want to kind of knock out the individual grower? Well, I have this.
[00:07:28] There's a lot of great, great reasons for it. I think probably the most important one to consider is that they're allowing people that we're what we call legacy growers, you know, have maybe 20, 30 years experience in the cannabis cultivation space, allowing them an opportunity to easily transition into a white market. Right. So by opening up the doors, giving them a lower barrier to entry, less security requirements, they can easily get a space, make you compliant and start growing in and selling to those that want there. The recreational use cannabis.
[00:07:56] Yeah, it's an interesting one, because I think that, you know, part of the dynamics in this cannabis faces is dealing with, you know, pre legalization cannabis culture and cannabis business. You know, whether it's grey market, black market, you know, and it's one of the concerns of legislatures and policy makers is that, you know, not creating a situation we're going to create about conflict or or you're going to push that stuff even more underground. You know, part of the goal of this, the legalization process is, you know, let's make it an above board industry that we can actually, you know, have some controls around, you know, whether it's health, safety, whether it's, you know, just from a taxation point of view, you know, having some kind of regulation, that stuff makes sense to, I guess. What part of the market have you been focusing on? Who's who's your kind of ideal customer or core customer in terms of helping them with this navigating the regulation side? So we service a wide range of folks in the space.
[00:08:44] Anyone that's looking to be a startup, you know, that maybe doesn't even know what a cannabis plant looks like, but know that they want to get into the business people that are already well established, licensed producers for cannabis that might already have their license but may want to open up a second site. So we get a lot of folks often they're they're friends with colleagues that they they found in there. They're looking to get in usually the micro style licenses. That seems to be a very popular one right now because, again, low, low barrier to entry to market and the security requirements aren't too much. But I mean, I think something else that's very, very notable in this space now is what Health Canada has allowed people to do. Entering the market is to bring in a one time influx of black market genetics or starting materials, which is important because up until up until that point where everything was being sourced from was from other legal markets, most notably that's in in Europe. So all of these starting materials are coming over and we've sort of almost a race, all that all that work in genetic research that the black market had done for creating new strains and all these new genetic types. Yeah. But now with these new regs, you know, Health Canada is basically turning a blind eye to wherever you get your source from. Just, you know, just do it one time and we'll forgive you and allow you to sort of translate all that material into the white market, which I think is is really good for all those legacy growers.
[00:09:55] Yeah, it's been an issue here in the United States. I know that there's always this kind of a questionable beginning part for a state. When a state passes it, it's like, OK, well, where do you get the source seed? And everyone kind of just looks the other way. You know, it's not really written into the laws, but it's you know, it has snap and it's got a it's got to start somewhere.
[00:10:11] We're not you know, we're not zapping salient solutions to recreate life on a state by state level. Like you've got to start somewhere. So let's talk about the regulations a little bit.
[00:10:19] What area or what part of the kind of cultivation, processing, dispensing, retail part of the chain are you dealing with or are you dealing with the whole chain? Are you helping people with the whole process? So we hope with all the license types, so the federal ones have to do with the cultivation, the processing, the sales, you know, creating starting materials in the nursery, but then we've got the provincially regulated ones, which are the retail stores. So we help folks with all all sets and the retailers are sort of a very scaled down version of cultivation. And at this time in Ontario, at least anyway, we don't have cultivation and retail happening on the same site. They're looking at opening up the doors to what's called the farm gate model, where, you know, maybe like a what we call, you know, Niagara on the lake or it's, you know, vineyards where you go. You sort of see the facility that, you know, the candidate is growing in. And then, you know, you'd go to the retail shop and the gift shop at the end and purchase a few products to take home. That's still coming out. That hasn't quite quite gotten there yet. Still still to be seen in, you know, very exciting what was coming out as well as the regulations surrounding edible. So at this time, you know, edibles aren't a legal market, but we're seeing a lot of interest there for that. Want to want to basically cultivate, you know, process the oils and then they got oils and make things like you like cookies, gummies beverages, top of all that market. So we're we're seeing a lot of interest in that area as well. But annual for anyone that's looking to do just a basic cultivation setup, you know, we assist with that. I myself, like I'm a chemist, so that's my strong suit. So, you know, lab setup is something I'm passionate, both of those looking to do. You know, CO2 extractions or, you know, process, process materials and the different products. That's something I love assisting with. But also on the retail side, we help there.
[00:11:49] Yeah. And so let's talk about the retail side a little bit, because I think that's that's certainly kind of an issue here in the U.S. or as as, you know, as this kind of plays out in the U.S., it's so cheap. But I think from a Canadian point of view, I mean, there's and I'm curious how much you've borrowed from your alcohol side of things. I know I was a graduate at McGill. I spent a lot of time in Montreal. And I know we'd always go to the essay queue to get, you know, to get our our liquor. And I know the Ontario has the beer store. And so these two in right now for alcohol. I know for some of the provinces that the retail is controlled by the province, you know, literally by brand like you, you go to the provincial store to get your product for the most part. Well, how are they approaching the kind of the same kind of cannabis strategy, same approach in a lot of provinces? Yes.
[00:12:33] You know, for example, B.C. has got a mixture of public and private, but most of them are retail authorized dealers that are, you know, that had the storefront, the brick and mortar store ready to walk in and purchase almost all cases you can buy online, which I think a lot of people are gravitating to. But there are some people that want to be tracked. So they want that that store where they can go in a cash transaction there as well.
[00:12:51] Yeah, the anonymity is kind of driving some of this stuff. So talk to me about the online purchases. So is this do you have to purchase through the province that you are in? Yes, exactly.
[00:13:00] Siegel You're your provincial retailer. I mean, you could theoretically visit any of the sites, but the only ship to that specific province got it.
[00:13:08] So you just need to use shipping address needs to be the one that the province that they're authorized in.
[00:13:12] Yeah, but if you're traveling, you can walk into any retail store, obviously just off the street and don't make a purchase that way. And you know, you can fly with cannabis as well on your person through all the airlines. You can pack it in your carry on. You can throw it into that green Bennett security. And, you know, security will just sort of look past that, which I think is a stark contrasts where we used to be with that.
[00:13:30] Yeah, well, we look past it. I mean there's no there's no reason to look at it now. Yeah. And obviously, you know, that's the challenge we're having here in the States as we've got these state by state things. But anything that's interstate, interstate or, you know, airline or anything like that, you know, you run it all that kind of complexities and challenges. So let's talk about the regulation side, too. You know, why, I guess why have regulations? What is the goal for Health Canada in terms of creating these regulations and what are they trying to actually regulate? Well, Bruce, that's a great question.
[00:13:58] So Health Canada has got this mandate. I mean, mostly they're they're interested in protecting the safety of Canadians who don't want the products that are released to be safe, you know, free pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants. It could hurt people because, well, recall suck. You know, it's bad for the producers and it makes Health Canada look really, really bad. So that's probably one of the biggest one. They're looking to prevent diversion into the black market as well, or have people grow black market cannabis and then infuse that into into the white market. So that's that's another huge concern and that's why the security concerns are so serious surrounding that. So what Health Canada has done since the beginning is take taking an evidence based approach to making these regulations. So there's a lot of consultation that's gone on consultation with with the public, you know, schools, teachers, parents, doctors, even children, you know, First Nations community as well, to get sort of a sense of where they stand. And they're there supporting a set of draft regulations, you know, putting those up again for consultation and then, you know, taking that feedback from the general public, reiterating it and then passing those regulations. And I suspect with any regulating body, the regulations are going to start very strict.
[00:15:00] I mean, right now, you can't do any marketing or advertising. You can't have cannabis coming in, in flashy packaging with with foil letters or anything beyond basically black to cartoon characters saying, hey, try me no more, no more joke cannabis. I guess I'm on the front of your pre rules. So I mean, that that's something that's that's been very, very strict in terms of the branding space because, you know, how do you sell something that you can't advertise? You know, that that's a that I think is a huge concern there. But, you know, we're gonna see these things loosen up. I would suspect in 10, 20. Thirty years, it's gonna be a very, very different world. Definitely. You know, they're they're easing Candida into this market because this product still carries a serious stigma. You know, though, there's a lot of religious groups that are very much opposed to this that they don't want these retail stores opening up around them in Ontario specifically. They've given cities the chance to opt out of having retail stores within them, which, you know, is not necessarily a great idea if you're looking to crack down on that. That black market is a double edged sword.
[00:15:55] I see that.
[00:15:56] Exactly. So, you know, they're keeping that in mind. At the same time, they're backing everything up with evidence. But, you know, having said that, on the whole, Canada's behave very well. I mean, we haven't had an influx of new eyes for folks using cannabis. I think there was one time where it wasn't properly stored in a car. In the last couple weeks in the news and someone got a two hundred dollar ticket for that. But, you know, aside from that, we're not seeing a huge, huge influx of people driving into the people. People are going crazy, going crazy. You know that not all of a sudden starting fights in the street. So in terms of that, we've been on pretty good behavior. So I think because of that, we're gonna start to see the regulations loosen up a bit.
[00:16:31] Yeah. And so as a business owner, as an entrepreneur or someone who's starting an cannabis business, how do I go about figuring out what regulations apply to me? How do I sort of interpret or understand the regulations? And then what is what is the kind of ongoing requirement from a regulatory process? Yeah, I mean, that's a that's that's great.
[00:16:49] I mean, ongoing regulatory requirement. OK. So, I mean, the first thing you have to do is you have to know what you want to do. And, you know, a lot of people come in our doors. No, I want to cultivate and I want to open a retail store. I want to do processing oils. And it's like, oh, hang on. What you what you just described as a multi-million dollar operation, at least in terms of a regulatory perspective. So, you know, stick to one thing that you can do very, very well. That's honestly the best advice I can give you, especially if you've got a small team. So, you know, if you're a grower, you know, we like to let the growers grow. If you're someone who likes the process, that's a whole other science unto itself. So if that's not something that you're necessarily capable of doing today, you know, maybe don't go down that alley because it might be just wasted time and effort. So stick with what you know. And then surrounding each one of those activities are different rules and regulations. So, you know, cultivating cannabis. That's something that's that's easy to do in terms of being that's very strict standpoint is very straightforward. But it seems you want to take that cannabis and sell it to someone. Well, now you've just sort of open up this chain of events. Now that you know, now you need this kind of license. Now you need these these kinds of staff here. You have to run these kinds of tests on your product before releasing it. And, you know, eventually the price tag and the timelines to be able to get those licenses and get to that point have now increased. So, I mean, you have to really decide what's important for you. I think number one.
[00:17:59] Yeah. And so I was regulation and. I mean, what does it give it give us a sense of. Is this mainly people are self-monitoring. I mean, do you have agents that are running around, you know, doing site checks? What is this? What is the actual enforcement side of regulation look like? Yeah, absolutely.
[00:18:15] I mean, if you have a complaint about something that you see. Health Canada has a, you know, a complaints line where, though, they'll take feedback from Canadians on it, you know, something that might not follow the regulations will investigate that. They also have site inspectors as well. So they'll have folks that will literally just go show up, knock on the door and say, you know what? We're going to spend the whole day today going through all your systems and making sure everything's in place. When that happens, people at that licensed producers site, they know what they're doing today. And that's responding to each one of the questions that the Health Canada site inspectors will have. And they'll do things like, you know, show me this day, this time. This camera, the security footage here. And it's going to match up to, you know, some other events. You know, you have to have a retention of like a year's worth of security footage. And that's all, you know. You know, for cameras that there is a huge amount of attention, but it's also got to be accessible. All the recordkeeping has got to be able to be tracks that will go, you know, find a box in the warehouse, you know, count the number of containers in that box and make sure that lines up with what's in the records as well. So these site inspectors will will go and do that. If a producer slips up, they get what's called an observation and observations are really bad. You know, you don't really want to have any of those. So they do have boots on the ground going knocking on doors, making sure that everything looks good and everything's being checked as well. And, you know, the provincial retailers also have auditors that will be visiting retail stores and making sure that they're not selling to anyone under the age of whatever the majority is in that province.
[00:19:32] So. So they're they're doing spot checking or they're doing some kind of sampling of some of these locations to make sure that they're compliant.
[00:19:40] Exactly. That in the products that are going out are also being checked as well. Right. Yes. So tell me about that. So what would they actually check in product? So each each person that's going to be doing something kind of packaging and there is a last step before that product goes and gets sold at a retail store. I've only what's called the quality assurance person that understands how to read a certificate of analysis. So they'll go and they'll sample their product. And, you know, it's really up to them to make sure they're giving a representative sample of the product, you know, top, middle, bottom of the flowers, you know, in different areas of the gross space for each one of the batches that they have, which could put a strain they planted on certain days. For instance, right now they'll have to take that product, whether it's oil flower Senate offer an analysis, and that's got to go to a third party lab so they can do internal testing. But then they'll have to confirm those results with another exterior lab as well.
[00:20:21] This is a private. This is a private lab. This is a government lab.
[00:20:23] Yeah. So it'll be a private lab that's certified or licensed by Health Canada as well. Well, the. Tests for things like residual solvents. If this is like an oil or some other kind of process cannabis, make sure that the solvents are good, the solvent levels are acceptable. They'll run a profile test for the trappings and the cannabinoids. I mean, this is optional, but it's very important because, you know, the the the typical consumer wants to know what they're what they're Turpin profile profiles going to look like. You know, having the THC and CBD is going to be very, very important. But know there's a big focus on the means because that seems to contribute a lot to the entourage effect and all the the additional effects that having the mixture of compounds brings. They also the check for pesticides. You know, there's there's only a very limited list of allowed pesticides for cannabis. I believe it's in the the 20s. It's somewhere at 22 or 23 guy Michael toxins as well. So things like E. coli, bacteria, ochre, toxin, all these other things that can really hurt you, hurt you if you if you ingest a product that contains any of those things. Those results get sent back to the lab. If that looks out OK, I mean, everything everything checks off on that certificate of analysis that cute people released that that that batch to the public. And then with all the software that they have, they can actually trace the product back. So if a product goes to a consumer, something inside that product was not good. They can go all the way back to, you know, what facility that was on, what truck that was on, what day that was on, what seed it came from and what other batches are surrounding that as well.
[00:21:43] You know, are they are they collecting that information? Is that something that Health Canada has, you know, is keeping us a database so they can do? You know, if there's a contaminant or a problem, they can quickly trace back and say, OK, where else might this product be? Right.
[00:21:54] So they are not. But the license for there has to be. And then that's part of it to, you know, the regulations to sort of control that. We call that the record keeping part. So there are special softwares that people will generally used to trace everything from from seed to sale, as they say, and they can go backwards in case that, you know, something does happen.
[00:22:10] Yeah. Well, so let's let's talk about if something happens, you know, nobody's perfect. You know, someone inspector comes in, finds a violation, finds a, you know, nonconformity, inconsistency. What is the what is the process or how do you deal with that, as you know, as a business owner or as a, you know, operational manager when that stuff comes up? Yes.
[00:22:29] So, I mean, depending on the severity of the observation that they have, a bunch of different things can happen if something severe enough, what they'll what they'll do is issue a recall, you know, for certain batch number, probably an area where the product was sold and, you know, release a warning or advertise it not to the general public to to get that product back into the hands of the government. And then that obviously has to be destroyed if it's something that's, you know, relatively simple. You know, the licensed producer has, you know, a timeline to be able to to correct that issue. You know, it's very, very serious license producers take this very seriously, because if there's something that they're doing that's that's not complaining or they're going to get shut down, potentially shut down, get an observation, and that's going to really affect their their production line. I mean, the the regulations are very strict in terms of how everything gets labeled, how everything goes out the door. They can trace everything back to its source.
[00:23:13] Yeah. Sounds like they've got to the system is pretty well mapped out. What are the what are the common problems or challenges that companies have in either setting these up or managing over time? Where where do people typically fall down or have difficulties? That's a good question.
[00:23:26] You know, a lot of these licensed producers, they do they do want to be compliant. They are looking very much to follow the rules. You know, they know that this is the game that they have to play and they want to stay well within the regs. But especially when someone is is just getting started for the first time. I think a big part of it is they don't know what they don't know. Yeah. So so the idea that there's an education part and big learning curve for for these folks to be able to implement these things, that that makes them compliant. So there's a huge challenge here and just basically getting to know everything, you know, in terms of the standard operating procedures that they'll have. They've got, you know, 50 hundred pages of basically explaining how each job has to be done in their facility. And sometimes it can be a matter of, you know, paying attention to all those documents basically simultaneously and being aware of their existence, which is, you know, it's pretty challenging for anyone to do. Yeah. You know, again, those rules are in place for a reason.
[00:24:11] Yeah. I think it's, you know, any early stage company, you know, faces risks. They make tradeoffs. They figure out corners they can, you know, cut slightly. Yeah. And figure they I mean, not that you want to cut corners on this stuff, but there is an understanding what the both kind of you kind of required levels are as well as practical reasonable levels that you have to get to for business. One of you understanding those, deciphering those, you know, you certainly to want to overengineered these processes are over. You know, you'd want to be kind of overly compliant on this stuff, especially early stage where you've got limited resources. But if you don't know if you're not educated and you don't have experience, you know the kind of the tools to be able to make those decisions. I could see that being a challenge and potentially being an area of risk.
[00:24:52] It's huge and probably mostly financial risk. And the risk of losing time and time is money. I mean, we saw a lot of these big changes also happening in this very turbulent regulatory environment as well. You know, they required the product to be stored in something like, you know, a level nine vault. Right. And then, you know, these licensed producers were installing these two storey vaults in their facility, you know, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, making these bolts necessary requirement. And then, you know, within the span of a couple of months, you know, that the vault thing was was a thing of the past, didn't require hold just some sort of secured area, just destroy the product. Now, we were with a lot of pharmaceutical companies to, you know, helping them get their. License for. for things like processing and packaging. They can sort of capitalize on things like the CBD market, for instance, right? Yeah. And you know, despite the fact that the illicit street value for cannabis is like exponentially smaller than something like, let's say, fentanyl. So fentanyl, a kilogram of fentanyl, it's illicit street value. Somewhere along the lines of three million dollars for cannabis is probably closer to something like ten thousand. Yeah. You know, and the requirements for storing cannabis and even even for the facility, not just the load storage, but even even the requirements for having a room with cannabis activities in it. Yeah. Camera at the door. You have no key card to point access. So it's gonna be like a proximity swipe and a pin pad and then a camera looking at you as you're coming in as well. It's not even about value or safety. It just seems to be about a lot of the optics that.
[00:26:15] Yeah, it seems. I mean, I would imagine that a lot of this is just there because of the optics, because of kind of the social cultural stigma of cannabis being belt suspenders about this whole regulatory area is a way of just, I think, for the for the government to cover all of its bases. I mean, do you suspect that over time this stuff will sort of normalize and it will start to come down to reasonable levels or appropriate levels on par with other kind of regulated controlled substances? Yeah, I mean, I sure hope so.
[00:26:45] I mean, the pharmaceutical company that we saw just the other week, you know, they had tens of kilos of stuff for it was a precursor for methamphetamine. You know, that was under sort of a lock and key. And we told, look what you wanted to cannabis inside the vault. You're gonna have to have a locked cage. And, you know, it just doesn't make any sense to that. You're gonna have to increase your security requirements. And, you know, it's just that that doesn't necessarily follow a particular sort of logic. I mean, there is logic in sort of what they're doing, but it just seems that you have to go very, very hard, you know, again, in terms of keeping everything very, very tight. Yeah, as you said, belt and suspenders. Yeah. Yeah. And then slowly, slowly over time, start to loosen up these regulations.
[00:27:22] Yeah. Well, I think figuring out how to how to navigate those changes are gonna be key for the success. People that are successful in this industry are gonna be, you know, knowing how to be compliant, but also be agile when it comes to, you know, changes in that cause. You know, certainly being able to dial that down is going to be a visit advantage. You know, once the regulations start to shift and become more reasonable.
[00:27:41] But I mean, that's a great comment. Just a lot of strategy that's involved in this as well. You know, when folks want to come into the market, you know that the lead times for these these big what we call standard processing license. And that's like a notes feeling of how much you can produce the lead time to get that license is somewhere between 12 and 18 months. And it's only going higher. Yeah, I mean, that's a long time. But, you know, if we recommend that perhaps someone that's looking to get into the business go with one of the micro style licenses, you know, they have a limit on how much they can produce their lead time is going to be about a third of that, if it would be four for the, you know, the standard style licenses. So there's almost some level of strategy in here as well to sort of get into the market as quickly as possible and then maybe amend or adapt. Once you're sure they're licensed.
[00:28:17] Yeah, that makes sense. And certainly having having a plan, knowing knowing what you want to do, like what is your end game and what's your end goal? And then what's the best first move on this, particularly in this market when it's so. So.
[00:28:28] And that's spreading yourself too thin, too.
[00:28:29] Yeah. Yeah. Focusing your resources. This has been great. I've learned a lot. It's been fun conversation. I think it's been informative for our guests. If people want to find out more about you, about can Delta, what's the best way to get that information? Yeah.
[00:28:42] I mean, they can visit our website canndelta.com/. We're very active on social media, Twitter, Instagram at CannDelta. You know, we love it when people drop us a message or a question. We're very happy and quick to respond. So feel free to do it that way.
[00:28:53] Great. And I'll make sure that the links and the handles are in the show notes so people can click through and get those again. Lucas, this was great. I appreciate the time. Thank you, Bruce.
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