Peter Reynolds

I could not have been more impressed by my recent visit to Dalgety’s cannabis facility, just north of Birmingham. It is the first UK business now permitted to cultivate and prepare a cannabis flower product in its finished form as a medicine that may be prescribed.

The team has shown great professionalism in meeting the conditions required for licensing by the the MHRA and the Home Office. There is also a huge amount of skill, knowledge, determination and financial investment.

It’s my considered opinion that Dalgety now demonstrates leadership in the UK prescription cannabis industry beyond any other business. They have brought into reality what is by far the most difficult objective to achieve. The hurdles put in place by the regulators are quite disproportionate for a plant-based medicine, which is why it has taken so long for any business to reach this stage.

Arriving at the main entrance, the security precautions are extraordinary. You enter through a series of gates, armoured turnstiles and fences. They are tall, strong, impregnable and that’s before you show ID, sign in and then continue through yet more gates. I cannot imagine that even military bases, intelligence services or nuclear installations could require anything more.

While I commend this, I cannot help thinking that 10 minutes down the road at the Dog & Duck, where eighths and quarters of weed are freely available, there are no security measures at all (despite the very dangerous drugs on sale at the bar). This is no criticism of Dalgety but it is condemnation of the absurd policy on cannabis of successive governments. There has been very little logic, rationale or common sense on drugs policy from any British government for at least 100 years – except for this small concession, nearly seven years ago, of allowing cannabis to be prescribed. .

The complex appears huge from the outside but once inside it is just like any other office where we are offered coffee and listen to a short presentation on the long and arduous process involved in development and licensing. Then we head for the grow rooms.

I am very fortunate to have already visited several licensed cannabis facilities both in Colorado and California. I’ve also seen many, shall we say, unlicensed facilities, ranging from one or two to perhaps 50 plants. I’ve never seen any of the huge illegal enterprises growing thousands of plants that supply the illicit UK market with its daily – yes, daily consumption of more than 3,000 kilos. To put that in context, at its present stage, Dalgety will produce 480 kilos per year although it will shortly expand to over 2,000 kilos per year.

The one common factor in all the facilities I have seen is attention to detail but at Dalgety this is taken to exceptional lengths. Each plant is given individual attention to ensure it reaches its maximum potential. All are propagated by cloning from mother plants but even so it is remarkable to see the consistency, almost identical growth heights, branch and flowering structure. This is common to all professional operations but Dalgety achieves a level beyond anything I have seen before.

I have also met many passionate growers. Indeed, I count one of them, Paul Shrive, amongst my closest colleagues and friends but it is impossible not to be very impressed by Brady Green, imported by Dalgety, with family and dogs, from Canada. He has the huge advantage of three years practical experience working to get the facility up and running but his knowledge and expertise is unparalleled. If ever there was a case for ‘key man insurance’, I expect Dalgtey are paying a big premium and keeping him very safe!

I am intimately acquainted with the demands of MHRA licensing, of GMP certification and a compliant pharmaceutical quality system, so I am not surprised by the cleanliness and precision of the grow rooms. They are another stage up from what I have seen in the USA. They are also much less crowded with far fewer plants and much more room around them. I was particularly impressed with the space given between branches hanging to dry. All this adds time and cost. There are no short cuts at all.

I am intrigued by Brady’s decision to dry trim and that all trimming is done by hand. This means that at harvest, fan leaves are removed and branches with flowers are detached from the main stem. These are then hung for a couple of weeks to dry with the smaller leaves still attached. This makes trimming much more difficult, particularly by hand which is completed with a team of about half a dozen people. While hand trimming can achieve a better result, it needs great skill and time. With the quantities involved I expect that eventually they will introduce machine trimming. It also has advantages of greater consistency and hygiene.

The trimming room was the closest we came to seeing the finished product. In California and Colorado such tours always end with a generous box of samples to take away, inspect and consume. No such luck under UK laws and regulations!

So I cannot judge the final product as I would wish to, at least not until I can get some Dalgety flower prescribed. Even without consuming any, I would have liked to be able to feel, squeeze, pull apart, smell and closely inspect some individual buds but the rules are far too strict for that.

I can say from what I saw in the trimming room that it looks excellent. The one big issue that I have with the regime that we have in the UK is that it places compliance over quality. The best quality flower I have ever seen in my life was in a California adult-use cultivation facility. It was far better than anything I have seen for the medical market in the UK. Without hands-on inspection, the Dalgety flower looked like may well be as good but is the the massive additional cost justified?

This is the fundamental question about growing cannabis legally in Britain. The first answer must be yes because the rules and regulations are in place and complying with them is the only way that we will develop our own cannabis industry. But the rules are manifesty absurd. Cannabis is treated as dangerous drug when in reality it is far safer even than over-the-counter painkillers. The security precautions enforced by the Home Office are about the same as for weapons grade nuclear material, despite the contrast with the free and easy availability of cannabis at the Dog & Duck and virtually any other pub even in the smallest, most remote village. Cannabis is ubiquitous, yet governments keep up this preposterous pretence that it is a ‘controlled drug’ – and in doing so they create, fuel and support organised crime. It is a ridiculous situation continued by ridiculous and weak politicians.

Is the massive cost of producing cannabis under MHRA regulations worth it in comparison to the superb quality available in the USA under much more relaxed conditions? It’s true that there is a very small proportion of potential patients with weak immune systems who may be vulnerable to contaminants but this is no real justification.

I do not resile from my admiration for what Dalgety has achieved. Indeed, I am pursuing the same path with my role in Growth Industries and this is the route that we must take. After decades of campaigning for law reform, after the change of law in 2018 I reached the conclusion that building the legal industry is the best way to achieve progress. In due course this is what will overcome the stigma, the fear and the nonsense we have been fed by governments and the media. I still hope for adult-use legalisation, perhaps in the next five to 10 years but it will probably be another 50 years, long after I am gone, before cannabis will be accurately and proportionately regarded for its immense benefits and minimal dangers.

Once I can get my hands on some Dalgety flower, I will report back with a final verdict. In the meantime, many congratulations for what the team has achieved. The issue is that UK regulators enforce a system in which compliance trumps quality. I choose that term deliberately because it accurately describes how silly it is!