WHATFG
Well-Known Member
A 300-Page Application
Dressed in a casual shirt and slacks, Mr. Rifici, 39, is built from an entrepreneurial mold. His fast speech and seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm appear to be byproducts of pitching start-up ideas to investors, or anyone who will listen, for two decades. His early interest in the Internet came from playing simple, text-based games. “Slaying virtual dragons with someone from Australia from my computer in my parents’ basement in 1991-92 was eye-opening to how the Internet would fundamentally alter how we lived,” he said. “So I had to get involved in some way.”
In 1995, during his third year of computer engineering studies at the University of Ottawa, he decided to start an Internet service provider. He sold the business in 2003 for 1.1 million Canadian dollars ($1 million) to a larger competitor, Cybersurf, where he became chief financial officer. Over the next two decades, he helped start a dozen tech companies.His interest in politics indirectly inspired his marijuana business. Mr. Rifici, who volunteers as chief financial officer of the Liberal Party of Canada, one of the three main national parties, closely tracked the evolution of marijuana laws. In October 2012, Health Canada, the federal agency responsible for drug controls, published a long, technical list of proposed reforms. One thing caught his eye: Under the new approach, customers could buy only online or through call centers, types of systems that his Internet businesses had operated.
But his background didn’t prepare him for the regulatory strictures of the medical marijuana business. Accustomed to developing start-ups on the fly with little capital, Mr. Rifici and Mr. Linton, another Ottawa entrepreneur who is Tweed’s chairman, underestimated the money they would need by a factor of three, largely because of the government’s regulatory demands. The application ran 300 pages, not including attachments. And before they could even submit applications, Tweed and other growers had to secure sites for their operations and obtain all local permissions. Applicants who passed the initial vetting then had to pass a final, two-day inspection.
The requirements are significant. Growers must have sophisticated carbon filtration systems to prevent the smell of marijuana from wafting outside. They must maintain high-security measures like biometric thumbprint readers. Employees need to pass rigorous security checks, conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which take four to six months. “If I knew how much regulatory overhead there would be from the beginning, I would have probably been just as excited about the industry,” Mr. Rifici said. “But I might have thought that I might not be able to get there. “Nothing like a bit of ignorance to allow you to move ahead.”
The red tape was part of an effort to reform Canada’s initial approach to medical marijuana. In court filings, the government suggested that the old system had become little more than a legal veneer for recreational growers, with a significant amount of marijuana making its way to illegal operations. Health Canada said users, on average, grew enough marijuana to roll 54 to 90 cigarettes a day, far beyond what they needed for personal use. “There was big, big diversion going on,” Brent Zettl, the chief executive of Prairie Plant Systems, the company that grew and distributed the government-supplied marijuana under the old system. The company is now among the newly approved growers. “They ducked behind legitimate patients and used them,” he said.
Trying to Convince Doctors
Walking the vast, 425,000-square-foot factory, Mr. Rifici talks animatedly about Tweed’s next steps. Just behind the new entrance of glass and shiny stainless steel, he has carved out space for a gift shop. He also hopes to lure a craft brewer into the unused portion of the factory. He wants to make 1 Hershey Drive a destination for tourists again. Tweed is taking a subdued, almost artisanal, approach to its branding, avoiding the Cheech-and-Chong vibe of some rivals. Many of its marijuana strains are named after fusty fabrics like tweed, as well as people and places associated with such clothes. The Herringbone strain is supposed to help with depression. Bakerstreet is used to treat anxiety. Donegal is promoted as a pain reliever.
But the industry faces an uphill battle, as prominent doctors, researchers and even the Canadian Medical Association are advising against prescribing marijuana at all. Marijuana, they say, has not been through the testing and approval process required for other pharmaceuticals. Dr. Mary-Ann Fitzcharles, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, was the lead author of a widely publicized paper recommending that, without clinical evidence, marijuana should not be prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis. About 65 percent of users in Canada under the old system said they suffered from that condition. She compares the medical claims for marijuana to those once made for tobacco. “I don’t think any physician today would say: ‘I suggest you take up smoking cigarettes to deal with your anxiety,’ ” Dr. Fitzcharles said.
So Tilray, Prairie Plant and Tweed are creating sales teams to persuade doctors to prescribe marijuana. Tweed’s chief medical adviser, Dr. John Gillis, an emergency-room and chronic-pain doctor in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is working to develop best practices for prescribing marijuana. Christopher Murray, who worked with a Canadian agency that evaluates new drugs and medical technology, leads a “medical education and outreach” group for Tweed.
A Fine Legal Line
When Tweed shipped its first two orders directly to customers on May 5, about half of the company’s management watched, partly for ceremonial reasons but mostly to make sure that its elaborate, government-mandated inventory-tracking system worked. Employees weighed the total inventory before doling out the shipments onto smaller scales calibrated to 0.01 gram. The marijuana was dropped into boxes bearing Tweed’s logo and then, to meet government requirements, vacuum-packed into odor-blocking bags. Then came a final check on the scales before the two parcels left in standard courier pouches that did not bear Tweed’s name.
As with many in the new industry, Tweed repeatedly cites a Health Canada forecast suggesting that the user base will grow to more than 400,000 from about 40,000. But some analysts wonder how the industry will reach such levels. Mr. Zettl is one of the few players who acknowledges that many buyers will probably be recreational users with sham prescriptions. Like most people in the medical marijuana trade, Mr. Rifici rejected suggestions that the industry was ultimately counting on the introduction of an open, legalized market. But there is such a possibility. Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, has vowed to legalize marijuana if he takes power in elections scheduled for next year, and polls suggest that the idea has widespread support. Mr. Rifici, speaking over the drone of dehumidifiers in the production facility, said that “the difference between medical marijuana and nonmedical marijuana is one of legislation.” “And at the end of the day,” he added, “our product is essentially high-quality marijuana under a medical platform.”
Dressed in a casual shirt and slacks, Mr. Rifici, 39, is built from an entrepreneurial mold. His fast speech and seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm appear to be byproducts of pitching start-up ideas to investors, or anyone who will listen, for two decades. His early interest in the Internet came from playing simple, text-based games. “Slaying virtual dragons with someone from Australia from my computer in my parents’ basement in 1991-92 was eye-opening to how the Internet would fundamentally alter how we lived,” he said. “So I had to get involved in some way.”
In 1995, during his third year of computer engineering studies at the University of Ottawa, he decided to start an Internet service provider. He sold the business in 2003 for 1.1 million Canadian dollars ($1 million) to a larger competitor, Cybersurf, where he became chief financial officer. Over the next two decades, he helped start a dozen tech companies.His interest in politics indirectly inspired his marijuana business. Mr. Rifici, who volunteers as chief financial officer of the Liberal Party of Canada, one of the three main national parties, closely tracked the evolution of marijuana laws. In October 2012, Health Canada, the federal agency responsible for drug controls, published a long, technical list of proposed reforms. One thing caught his eye: Under the new approach, customers could buy only online or through call centers, types of systems that his Internet businesses had operated.
But his background didn’t prepare him for the regulatory strictures of the medical marijuana business. Accustomed to developing start-ups on the fly with little capital, Mr. Rifici and Mr. Linton, another Ottawa entrepreneur who is Tweed’s chairman, underestimated the money they would need by a factor of three, largely because of the government’s regulatory demands. The application ran 300 pages, not including attachments. And before they could even submit applications, Tweed and other growers had to secure sites for their operations and obtain all local permissions. Applicants who passed the initial vetting then had to pass a final, two-day inspection.
The requirements are significant. Growers must have sophisticated carbon filtration systems to prevent the smell of marijuana from wafting outside. They must maintain high-security measures like biometric thumbprint readers. Employees need to pass rigorous security checks, conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which take four to six months. “If I knew how much regulatory overhead there would be from the beginning, I would have probably been just as excited about the industry,” Mr. Rifici said. “But I might have thought that I might not be able to get there. “Nothing like a bit of ignorance to allow you to move ahead.”
The red tape was part of an effort to reform Canada’s initial approach to medical marijuana. In court filings, the government suggested that the old system had become little more than a legal veneer for recreational growers, with a significant amount of marijuana making its way to illegal operations. Health Canada said users, on average, grew enough marijuana to roll 54 to 90 cigarettes a day, far beyond what they needed for personal use. “There was big, big diversion going on,” Brent Zettl, the chief executive of Prairie Plant Systems, the company that grew and distributed the government-supplied marijuana under the old system. The company is now among the newly approved growers. “They ducked behind legitimate patients and used them,” he said.
Trying to Convince Doctors
Walking the vast, 425,000-square-foot factory, Mr. Rifici talks animatedly about Tweed’s next steps. Just behind the new entrance of glass and shiny stainless steel, he has carved out space for a gift shop. He also hopes to lure a craft brewer into the unused portion of the factory. He wants to make 1 Hershey Drive a destination for tourists again. Tweed is taking a subdued, almost artisanal, approach to its branding, avoiding the Cheech-and-Chong vibe of some rivals. Many of its marijuana strains are named after fusty fabrics like tweed, as well as people and places associated with such clothes. The Herringbone strain is supposed to help with depression. Bakerstreet is used to treat anxiety. Donegal is promoted as a pain reliever.
But the industry faces an uphill battle, as prominent doctors, researchers and even the Canadian Medical Association are advising against prescribing marijuana at all. Marijuana, they say, has not been through the testing and approval process required for other pharmaceuticals. Dr. Mary-Ann Fitzcharles, a rheumatologist and professor of medicine at McGill University in Montreal, was the lead author of a widely publicized paper recommending that, without clinical evidence, marijuana should not be prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis. About 65 percent of users in Canada under the old system said they suffered from that condition. She compares the medical claims for marijuana to those once made for tobacco. “I don’t think any physician today would say: ‘I suggest you take up smoking cigarettes to deal with your anxiety,’ ” Dr. Fitzcharles said.
So Tilray, Prairie Plant and Tweed are creating sales teams to persuade doctors to prescribe marijuana. Tweed’s chief medical adviser, Dr. John Gillis, an emergency-room and chronic-pain doctor in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, is working to develop best practices for prescribing marijuana. Christopher Murray, who worked with a Canadian agency that evaluates new drugs and medical technology, leads a “medical education and outreach” group for Tweed.
A Fine Legal Line
When Tweed shipped its first two orders directly to customers on May 5, about half of the company’s management watched, partly for ceremonial reasons but mostly to make sure that its elaborate, government-mandated inventory-tracking system worked. Employees weighed the total inventory before doling out the shipments onto smaller scales calibrated to 0.01 gram. The marijuana was dropped into boxes bearing Tweed’s logo and then, to meet government requirements, vacuum-packed into odor-blocking bags. Then came a final check on the scales before the two parcels left in standard courier pouches that did not bear Tweed’s name.
As with many in the new industry, Tweed repeatedly cites a Health Canada forecast suggesting that the user base will grow to more than 400,000 from about 40,000. But some analysts wonder how the industry will reach such levels. Mr. Zettl is one of the few players who acknowledges that many buyers will probably be recreational users with sham prescriptions. Like most people in the medical marijuana trade, Mr. Rifici rejected suggestions that the industry was ultimately counting on the introduction of an open, legalized market. But there is such a possibility. Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, has vowed to legalize marijuana if he takes power in elections scheduled for next year, and polls suggest that the idea has widespread support. Mr. Rifici, speaking over the drone of dehumidifiers in the production facility, said that “the difference between medical marijuana and nonmedical marijuana is one of legislation.” “And at the end of the day,” he added, “our product is essentially high-quality marijuana under a medical platform.”
normally ya here that stuff from young guys with nothing to lose, I for one like others don't have those types of funds you speak of.... must be nice and of course prepared... never mind the lawyer on retainer
