Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Glass Pharms’ UK Cannabis Facility – Space, Technological Innovation and Quality.
In mid-May 2025 this was my second visit to one of the very few licensed cannabis cultivation facilities in the UK. The first was a month earlier to Dalgety in Staffordshire. It is extraordinary to see two such totally different approaches to growing the same plant.
There is hardly a more beautiful location than where Glass Pharms is based, in deepest Wiltshire, in the middle of glorious English farmland with swooping and squabbling red kites as sentinels. First you pass the anaerobic food waste digestion plant which provides heat for power as well as carbon dioxide to boost plant growth. Then, almost surrounded by a massive solar panel installation, is an unmarked, anonymous but imposing building. From ground level you wouldn’t even know it was a glasshouse.
Security precautions are strict, just like Dalgety. Once through a succession of turnstiles and doors that familar, comforting smell becomes obvious. I was welcomed by managing director Richard Lewis who explained to me that his background and that of most of the staff onsite was in fresh produce. I learned that he regards cucumbers as the vegetable crop most similar to growing cannabis.
The main area of the facility is a large section, perhaps 70 or 80 metres square, where staff attend to plants in different stages of growth, groups of perhaps 30 plants on large trays, just over a metre wide and four metres long. This is where I learned one of the most important principles of this facility – the plants come to the people, the people never go to the plants. Using a robotic conveyor system, which can move in all directions, these trays take batches of plants to where they need to be, either for different lighting and nutrient regimes to simulate the seasons or for human intervention such as de-leafing or harvest.
I also met with James Duckenfield, chief executive and founder, who is a tremendously impressive character. A chemist by training, he very quickly lost me in an explanation of terpenes, other compounds and the reasons that they are currently growing 21 different cultivars to achieve a range of flower products to meet different medical needs. This is a depth of technical, scientific expertise, unlike any I have seen elsewhere, that supports skilled growers and horticulturalists. Glass Pharms did employ a head grower from the Canadian cannabis industry for a while but it didn’t work out. This is not the conventional approach to growing cannabis. It is continuous cultivation where every day new clones are planted and mature plants are harvested.
Alongside the main area is a long corridor that runs the entire width of the glasshouse. In fact this is the only place where you realise that you’re in a glasshouse as the roof is visible. There are surprisingly few lighting fixtures and they are of an entirely different type to those more commonly in use elsewhere. None seemed to be operating while I was there. It was a very bright, sunny day but this doesn’t explain why in different areas of the glasshouse there seemed to be different colours and temperatures of lighting, presumably seeking to replicate the different seasons.
Richard explained that 40% of the lighting requirement is provided by the sun. This is a huge saving on what is the most signifiant cost in cannabis cultivation. There are further huge savings on power as it all comes at greatly reduced cost from the anaerobic digestion plant next door. Finally, in what was the most surprising revelation of all, there is not a single HVAC unit in the whole facility. All heating and cooling is provided by an ingenious heat exchanger system working off the waste heat from next door.
Back in the main room, an area to the side is partitioned off. Harvested flowers are packed quite tightly into small trays and this is where they begin the drying and curing process. Again, this is not the conventional approach. I would be concerned straightaway by how tightly packed the buds are. How could they dry properly without going mouldy? Then I learn that this is the start of a secret drying and curing process which they aim to patent – and I was told no more.
As ever, the proof is in the final product and I was given the opportunity to examine four products presented in finished form in Glass Pharms’ unique sealed aluminium tins. These are an innovation in themselves, far better than plastic tubs or mylar bags. I was able to open each container, pick out the buds, feel them, break them apart, examine them in detail. A grinder was provided so I could see how the flower looked and smelled once broken down into vapable form. As I said to James, the only thing missing was a Volcano vaporiser at the end of the table for the ultimate test. I doubt that will ever be possible under UK medical regulations!
I cannot fault what I saw. The perfect consistency of the buds, evenly dried, even density throughout, trichomes visible in the heart of the buds as you break them apart. Just gorgeous. Mouthwatering even!
It’s very, very difficult and challenging to develop a cannabis cultivation facility in Britain. I know this only too well. We are three and a half years into the process in Belfast, where Growth Industries, who I have been advising from the beginning, are still probably two years away from first harvest. But what I have seen at Dalgety and Glass Pharms is tremendously impressive, even with two entirely different approaches. This bodes very well for the future of Britain’s cannabis industry. We can be world leaders in this. If only we had a government and regulators who were focused on helping the industry, rather than looking for ways to restrict it.
Denial of Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians is the Same as Holocaust Denial.
Except that it is happening right now, streamed live, while our useless, cowardly, so-called ‘leaders’ stand idly by. Never before has such evil been so obvious while those with the power to act are complicit by their negligence.
Dalgety’s UK Cannabis Facility – Excellence, Professionalism and Leadership.
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!
Israel is a Failed Experiment
Israel was created in 1948 by the UK and USA supporting Israeli terrorists in the violent expulsion of native Arabs from Palestine. They sought to provide a homeland for Jews fleeing Eastern Europe after the Holocaust.
A noble ambition but one pursued without any moral or legal regard for those people being displaced.
Sadly it is an experiment that has failed because even after the initial invasion and colonisation of the land, the Israeli state has continued to seize more land, slaughtering or subjugating the inhabitants.
This has continued every day since and is ramped up even further by the deranged, genocidal rhetoric of minsters like Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
As there is no sign at all of Israel wanting to make peace or restrain its expansionist and genocidal ambitions it is time to call a halt. It is a failed experiment.
This tragedy has been a mistake from the very beginning. Give their stolen land back to the Palestinians and give current Israeli citizens full citizenship of the new Palestine.
American Treason. Trump is a Russian Asset.
The Trump administration has betrayed America’s allies, there is no doubt. Has he betrayed America? The evidence for this is stacking up remorselessly. The stock market is plummeting. He has reneged on all his promises about tackling consumer prices, keeping inflation down and employment up. All these indicators are going in the wrong direction. The irreversible damage already been caused to trust in America will only make these things worse.
The spectacle of Trump’s attacks on Zelensky, not even mentioning Putin can only be explained by kompromat, corruption or both. Enjoying ‘golden showers’ with call girls at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel is not enough to unseat him. He is Teflon-coated about sexual scandal. There must be something much more serious. Brazen financial corruption involving billions of dollars seems extremely likely. It is probably both, though he doesn’t have much time left to enjoy a billion dollar fortune. There must be something so damaging to his status, even amongst his faithful supporters, that leaves him totally under Putin’s control.
Surely the CIA, FBI and other US security services must have a higher duty to the Constitution than a rogue President? There must be agents involved in preparing for his arrest and impeachment but the prospect of JD Vance assuming the presidency offers little hope.
It’s certain that Trump is placing Russian interests over the USA’s and its allies. Justice will be served and the world will be rescued if he spends his final years in Guantanamo Bay.
Prime Minister’s Questions, 13th November 2024. Question on Genocide from Ayoub Khan MP.
This slippery answer from Keir Starmer shows him acting as an agent of Israel in his attempt to excuse genocide. The atrocity of 7/10 has been rendered insignificant by Israel’s subsequent conduct. Brushing aside the question with such an excuse demonstrates that Starmer is a traitor to British values.
Rapists and Rappers Are Not Suitable Brands for Prescription Cannabis
Last year, as chair of the Adult-Use sub group of the Cannabis Industry Council, I was literally screamed at to “shut up” when trying to raise the issue in the executive committee. I fully understood that importers of prescription cannabis felt their monopoly of legal cannabis supply was threatened but today I see those same people using the Tyson and ‘Big Narstie’ brands to promote their medical products.
It’s clear that avarice and greed are now driving the provision of prescription cannabis services in the UK. Apart from the crass misuse of inappropriate brands, I see more and more people who claim to be prescribed 60 or 90 grams per month and invited to ‘pick and choose’ from a range of different flower products. The number of patients in the UK who have a legitimate need for such quantity is very small. But don’t take my word for it. Take note of the ‘Good Practice Guide‘ issued by the Medical Cannabis Clinicians Society in July 2024. Predictably, perhaps, the response to this from importers of cannabis products and others was angry and vituperative.
I don’t need to explain the widespread concern at using the name of a convicted rapist for a medical product. As for ‘Big Narstie’, due respect to him as a patient in his own right but I hardly think that ‘grime comedy’ is appropriate for promoting medicine. When we finally get adult-use legalisation in the UK, I’d encourage him to get involved and he’ll probably do well.
I have some sympathy for anything that circumvents the ridiculous law that prohibits cannabis for adults. While some borderline prescribing was acceptable in my judgement, within reasonable limits, it now threatens the legitimacy of the entire prescription cannabis industry. If these greedy, short-sighted fools don’t get themselves in order, the regulators are going to intervene.
The lessons here are for the importers who dominate supply of prescription cannabis. Understandably, they take a much shorter term view than the few who are now introducing UK-based cultivation. I am certain that the domestic supply chain will be much more responsible as they have the future in mind. Clinics which are involved in excessive and ‘recreational-style’ prescribing also need to think about the long term.
I spent 40 years of my life campaigning for legal access to cannabis as medicine and, by accident rather than design, the 2018 regulations provide the most progressive and flexible system for prescribing cannabis anywhere in the world. It would be a terrible thing to lose this through abuse of the system for short term greed.
Medical use of cannabis is entirely legitimate, life-changing for many, life-saving for some. Adult-use of cannabis is also legitimate in principle, if not yet legal in law.
With common sense it’s easy enough to access cannabis for adult-use without putting oneself in great legal peril. The argument for legalisation is about liberty but most importantly about fighting the massive harms of the gangster-dominated criminal market.
Of course, between medical use and adult-use, there is some blurring at the margins but it’s prudent to separate the two and be disciplined about it.
Why is the British Government Promoting and Arming Israeli Extremism?
Israel is a terrorist organisation responsible for tens of thousands more deaths and infinitely more destruction and misery than Hezbollah and Hamas combined. Why isn’t it also proscribed?
Ministers in both the previous Conservative government and the current Labour government are, without doubt, complicit in many of Israel’s war crimes. Some are directly involved by authorising licenses for arms sales and for undisclosed military support. Exactly what is Britain’s military role is unknown and will probably never be revealed but there is compelling evidence of special forces involvement and assistance with targeting using aircraft based in Cyprus.
It is absolutely clear that Crown Immunity which protects ministers from prosecution does not apply to war crimes. These include: Rishi Sunak, David Cameron, Grant Shapps, James Cleverly, Keir Starmer, David Lammy, John Reid and Yvette Cooper. There will be many others and officials in the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. It is the duty of the current and future government to investigate these crimes and ensure due process. However long it may take, it is essential that these ministers are brought to trial.
The Idea of ‘Not for Profit’ Cannabis Reform is Bound to Fail
The whole premise of ‘not for profit’ cannabis reform is misguided. For decades, governments have gifted the huge profit opportunity in cannabis to organised crime. Now they want to deny legitimate business the opportunity.
We live in a market economy. Profit is not a dirty word in any other market. In fact profit creates jobs and puts food on families’ tables. The only people who object to profit are ideological socialists and naïve academics who don’t live in the real world.
But closet prohibitionists claim that a market in cannabis, regulated like any other consumer product, will result in aggressive marketing and greed-driven peddling of drugs to vulnerable people. Even some involved in cannabis reform share this fear. The jargon of ‘corporate capture’ and similar hyperbolic criticism supports an anti-business agenda which misses the key purpose of reform – that cannabis and its consumption must be reintegrated into society as ‘normal’. It is the demonisation of cannabis and its prohibition that has caused so much harm. Not just by the persecution of consumers but the consequential effects of creating a multi-billion-pound criminal market.
It is essential that reform enables cannabis to be produced and sold just like any other product, with appropriate regulations, just as we apply to tobacco, alcohol and OTC medicines. If we don’t let legitimate business trade in it, we invite organised crime and irresponsible actors to continue to dominate supply with all the harm that causes.
The EU is one of the main protagonists in trying to keep business out of cannabis. Just look at the problems Malta is experiencing. Already it has had three people in charge of its regulation authority, the first two with a history of opposing reform and they had so much difficulty appointing a replacement that the latest is the prime minister’s brother-in-law! Its preferred solution of cannabis social clubs is in chaos. After three years there are only 2,000 people registered as members and the bureaucracy is overwhelming, threatening the clubs’ viability.
Germany wanted to move forward with a legally regulated commercial supply chain but the EU knocked it back, insisting on the cannabis social club model. It too is experiencing great problems with administering this vastly complicated approach.
Malta, Luxembourg and Germany also provide for limited personal cultivation and this is a very good thing. Germany intends to move forward with pilot schemes for commercial supply but these are yet to get off the ground. The Czech Republic is next in line for reform and it is certainly trying to stand up to the EU but it may yet be knocked back into the social club model as well.
Cannabis social clubs were invented as a way of circumventing prohibition in jurisdictions where individuals growing plants for personal use was not banned. The idea was simply that group of individuals were clubbing together. I don’t have any objection if that is what people want to do but the idea that these clubs are the solution to organised crime production is nonsense. In fact, they are the perfect cover for organised crime.
While growing two or three cannabis plants is not difficult, once you move up to a dozen or more it becomes much more complex and demanding. Without the profit opportunity, weighed down with onerous regulation, the risk of losing a large harvest is too much. I cannot see that social clubs will ever be a solution. They can only be a minor component of a system of regulation that must include commercial supply.
The solution is easy to see on the other side of the Atlantic in Canada and in most of the legal, adult-use US states. California is an outlier where greedy politicians have made a terrible mess with levels of taxation that have continued to promote and support criminal production. Mind you, problematic as it is, no one in California is talking about going backwards!
Canada is a roaring, delightful success. Latest government data show that 82% of all purchases are now made through legal channels. After just six years this is a complete vindication of legalisation, of the sensible, logical approach that permits grow-your-own, prescription by doctors (it’s called ‘authorisation’ in Canada) and a legally regulated supply chain with licensed producers and retailers.
The pious, timid belief that cannabis must be provided on a not for profit basis is grounded in prohibition and that is where it should remain: repealed, abandoned, a relic of prejudice and historical failure.
Humanity Needs A Rallying Point To Stand Against Israel
I have resisted the urge to write about Israel over the past year because it is so painful. Every day I am moved to greater outrage, often to the point of tears. Never has such evil persisted on this planet while it pretends to be a civilised democracy and is shamefully supported by the USA, UK and EU.
I have no hesitation now in supporting a one-state solution where the state of Israel is dissolved and all its former citizens guaranteed full citizenship in the new state of Palestine. This is justice.
Every red line has been crossed. It is an open truth that Netanyahu promotes conflict to evade both an election and his return to face serious criminal charges in court.
My opposition is not to a people, a race or a religion, it is to a nation state, the state that has become a venal, degenerate insult to the human race and to any concept of decent moral standards.
Israel is evil manifested through its political and military leadership. The IDF is its armed enforcer and the world needs a new judgement on what responsibility must be placed on individual soldiers. If the Nuremberg doctrine applies then the list of war criminals in the IDF is almost too long to comprehend.
Western governments are responsible for their support which clearly breaches international law and many treaties. If they are to maintain any moral leadership, they must, without delay, provide the forum through which Israel and its leaders will be held to account.
Of course, I acknowledge the grievous wrongs against the Israeli people and that those responsible must be held to account. Equally, Israel’s criminals must face justice but the state itself is compromised beyond redemption.
I cannot see that it should survive. The Israeli people must be offered equality and protection in the new state of Palestine, which must be guaranteed at the UN.
Peter Reynolds 