Bogotá — Of the nearly 1,250 firms that have obtained licenses for cannabis cultivation in Colombia, “only 960 maintain some operations,” and which means that less than 1% of the licensed cultivation area is currently being planted, Miguel Samper Strouss, president of the Colombian cannabis industry association (Asocolcanna), told Bloomberg Línea in an interview.
This is due to regulatory barriers and all of the paperwork that has to be done as a requirement by a number of government institutions, Samper said, adding that the great disadvantage of such regulation is that companies have to set up a very robust infrastructure and comply with very demanding and costly protocols before they have even begun to reap income from production.
The control is based on the assumption that producers must endure the whole process of preparation and registration before they have sold a single peso of the plant, he says.
“The situation is complex in terms of planting because there are 57,000 hectares (140,850 acres) licensed and a little more than 532 hectares (1,314 acres) planted, which means less than 1% of the licensed area is being planted at the moment,” Samper said.
He also points out that 95% of the companies with licenses to plant are micro-enterprises, another 4.7% are small companies and the remaining 0.3% are medium-sized.
“There is no firm that can be classified as a large company in this industry,” he said, although players with foreign capital do compete in the industry, especially Canadian companies.
For Samper, although there are enormous challenges, there are also “fantastic opportunities for this industry to flourish and expand the base of producers that are waiting to enter the industry”.
Regarding the proposals by Colombian President Gustavo Petro to legalize cannabis in the country without companies having to request a license to plant, he said that this would be “the ideal world”, that the production “in any of its uses and meanings” would not require these licenses.
“That would be the ideal world, that is where we have to go as a country; however, we do have to take some very conscious steps so as not to affect public health at any time with products derived from cannabis,” Samper said.
In this sense, he explained that “although processing, cultivation and distribution should not be licensed in an ideal world, the truth is that quality and phytosanitary standards must be guaranteed” to patients who use these products to treat chronic or oncological pain.
“The truth is that today these regulatory barriers are preventing, for example, the registration of cannabis-based medicines and phytotherapeutic products. To date, there are only five medicines that are registered by [the country’s drug and food administration] Invima, produced by two brands, one of which produces in the United Kingdom and the other here in Colombia, but the raw material is imported,” he said, lamenting that “Colombian users and potential patients are not being able to access products produced here”.
He also said the non-inclusion of these medicines or cannabis-based therapeutic drugs in health plans has meant that patients, mainly those with low or medium resources, cannot access them and acquire “more dangerous and addictive” products, such as morphine or certain opioids.
“So it is a paradox that we have an industry ready to go to market, to offer less risky solutions to Colombian patients, and that this possibility is stymied because the health system is only financing at this moment products that are of greater risk for consumers”, he noted.
He said that Asocolcanna has expressed these concerns to the Ministry of Health and has found “open doors and a lot of receptivity to work and solve this issue”.
The medicinal cannabis treatment clinic Zerenia, which was opened in 2020 by Khiron Life Sciences, recently announced its imminent closure, having allegedly been affected by the red tape that creates barriers for hundreds of patients and impedes their receipt of formulas within the Colombian health system.
Samper said it is positive however that Khiron has joined Asocolcanna again to advance these discussions together.
“We have drawn a roadmap that has three cardinal points to which we have to aim,” Samper said. “The first one is to allow users and patients in the country to have access to Colombian products, and for this we not only have to talk with the Mmnistry of health about the possibility of including this in the benefit plan, but also to generate specific registration rules, especially for therapeutic products, which are not required to comply with what is being demanded for pharmaceuticals,” he said.
This point also takes into account the possibility of advancing in the inclusion of cannabis in food and beverages, he added, and which requires discussions with the ministry of health to explore the possibility of prescribing dried cannabis flower as a finished product.
The second point would be the opening of international markets and finally the strengthening of the union among producers and consequently the industry, according to Samper.
“We have to unify our voice to have a solid dialogue with the government, with Congress, with public opinion, and we also have to see how we can support small growers who want to enter the industry or who are already in the industry, but have not been able to expand due to the lack of access to technology and information,” he added.
