A FORMER FIREWORKS factory on the outskirts of Belfast is in the process of becoming the island’s first medical cannabis production facility.
Medical cannabis is legal in the UK and the HSE’s Medical Cannabis Access Programme allows access to cannabis-based products for medical use for certain patients here.
Speaking to The Journal, Kerry native Peter Reynolds described the work involved in preparing to open the facility.
Reynolds is a consultant in the medical cannabis industry and is also the director of communications for Growth Industries, which is hoping to open the Belfast facility sometime next year.
“We have been working on it for two years and we are halfway through the conversion of what was a licensed fireworks store just outside Belfast,” Reynolds told The Journal.
“This building was obviously subject to very strict security requirements itself and we’re halfway through converting that into a fully climate-controlled cannabis facility.”
Reynolds described it as a “very long, complicated process” that requires “huge capital investment”.
“Before any licenses can be issued, you have to do all the work and spend all the money before you can even apply for a licence,” said Reynold.
“It’s not just one licence, it’s a whole series of licences, including the UK medicines regulator, as well as the UK Home Office, which is concerned with the security aspects.
“But we are now at the stage where we can call ourselves a pharmaceutical company because we have a pharmaceutical quality management system in place.”
Reynolds explained that in the first instance, Growth Industries has to get the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) to authorise the growing of the first cannabis crops with the British Home Office.
This process takes about three months.
Reynolds added: “We then have to go back to the MHRA showing what we’ve produced, and they then approve it or tell us we need to go back to the beginning and start again.
“So it’s very, very demanding as you can imagine.”
Despite the demanding nature of it all, Reynolds said it’s “something I’ve been trying to work on in the Republic of Ireland for many years”.
However, he said the “Department of Health is resistant to it and the UK legislation is some way ahead”.
“I’ve been fighting with the Department of Health to try and open this up in the Republic for about six years,” Reynold told The Journal.
“There is provision in law to cultivate cannabis under license in Ireland, but if you go to the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA), they make you run around in circles for months and then eventually, somebody from the Department of Health steps in and says ‘no’.
“The ironic thing is, Ireland actually legalised medical cannabis before the UK, because the Medical Cannabis Access Program in Ireland came in in 2017, whereas the UK didn’t change the law until 2018.”
The Medical Cannabis Access Programme is operating on a pilot basis in Ireland for five years.
It allows for access to cannabis-based products for medical use where the patient has failed to respond to standard treatments for: Spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis; intractable nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy; and severe, refractory (treatment-resistant) epilepsy.
However, the medical cannabis products have to be imported into the country.
“There are many, many large international companies, and I’ve represented some of them, who have been ready to invest millions of euros in Ireland in setting up medical cannabis facilities and the Department of Health blocks it,” said Reynolds.
“The Republic could have its own production facility, and then it wouldn’t have to import it.
“The Republic of Ireland medical establishment is about the most backwards on medical cannabis in Europe but I think soon that is going to change, it’s just a question of how long it takes.”
Reynolds adds that Ireland is importing medical cannabis from the Netherlands and that it would “makes a lot more sense” and make it “more easily accessible in the Republic” if it could be imported from Northern Ireland.
He says it also makes more sense for patients in the North.
“There are now 30,000 patients in the UK using medical cannabis, and the highest concentration of medical cannabis patients in the UK is in Northern Ireland.
“But presently, all the cannabis they prescribe has to be shipped over from Britain.”
When asked about the differences between medical cannabis that his prospective facility would be producing and CBD oil, Reynolds points to a “myth” that is common-place about medical cannabis.
“One important thing to say is that there’s a myth going around that medical cannabis doesn’t have THC in it,” Reynolds told The Journal.
THC is the main psychoactive compound in marijuana and is the substance that is primarily responsible for making people feel “high”.
“Some media reports say medical cannabis won’t get you high because it doesn’t have THC in it, but this is not true.
“Medical cannabis does have THC in it, sometimes in very high proportions, because THC is the chemical that has the main painkilling properties,” said Reynolds.
“But it’s a bit like talking about opioid-based medicines, because obviously you can get high off those as well, but that’s not why people take these and that’s not the reason that people take medical cannabis.
“While the ingredients in medical cannabis are exactly the same as any other form of cannabis – it’s all just cannabis – it does have to be produced to very high quality standards in order to be classified as medicine.”
Reynolds then explained that CBD is an “important cannabinoid in the cannabis plant but CBD, without some THC in it, is nowhere near as effective”.
“It’s not an accurate analogy,” says Reynolds, “but it’s like comparing a very weak over-the-counter painkiller to a painkiller you can get on prescription.”
Some people may have an image in their mind when they think of a medical cannabis production facility.
When asked if these preconceptions have resulted in any local opposition to the facility, Reynolds said: “You wouldn’t even know what the factory was from the outside, it just looks like a normal industrial building.
“It’s located in the middle of open countryside, there’s just a few farms around us, hundreds of yards away.
“There have been some concerns about potential smells, but this is a completely hermetically sealed unit and all the air that goes in and out is scrubbed by carbon filters.
“I can understand that people may have concerns about it, but previously these premises were licensed to hold 500 tonnes of explosives, and obviously a building licensed to sell 500 tonnes of explosives in Northern Ireland has to be a fairly tightly controlled thing anyway.”
Reynolds noted that the team has put “an awful lot of investment and an awful lot of time into this”, adding: “We have very high hopes for it and we hope that at some stage in the future, we might be able to open another facility south of the border.”
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