Sabbath - wish this was easy but you have to dig a little to...

Sabbath - wish this was easy but you have to dig a little to understand how this all works - this is my understanding, hope it helps:

the key distinctions are probably recreational versus medical where recreational cannabis is legal you can sell whatever the rules allow but mostly cannot make any claim of health benefit (Canada & some US states like colorado are biggest markets)

And in medical OTC (over the counter) versus drug registration is the key distinction

OTC means that you can buy whatever a government allows - such as CBD products in UK but those products are mostly non-THC (THC is the element that gives a high)

MC is mostly thought to be some kind of THC/CBD mix

In places like Australia and the UK - the government regulates supply BUT allows compassionate access under schemes such as the SAS where no registered drug exists (yet) - that is where AGH and all the other Australian companies are now competing - AGH doing very well on back of better doctor service and IT platforms

However:

Drug registration basically means it has been tested and trialed to show it safe, has no side effect or at least the side effects are understood, that it is consistent, the dosage is understood, that it works and so on - then it can be "registered" which is very important as that is basically a green light for doctors to start prescribing without fear of problems down the road and also it paths way for drug to be covered by medical insurance and so on. and as i said before if a drug becomes registered, it is much harder to prescribe a non-registered drug off the SAS (doctors unlikely to take risk of ever prescribing an unregistered version of a MC drug if a registered one exists/besides TGA push back)

There are 3 key drug registration regions, Europe, FDA in US and TGA in Aus

Drugs are given registration for specific conditions - such as pain management (alternative to opioids)

Globally, there is currently one registered drug in MC space - Epidiolex which is produced by GW Pharma (US and Europe listed, market cap 4Bill) - they did 70 Million in revenue last quarter and have a very narrow specific condition in epilepsy they address.

But this demonstrates the value created from drug registration, if only for a very small & specific application

DYOR