And lo, as the cannabis promoters try to ramp up interest in their sector again after a long dormancy, we are presented with yet another “secret” pot stock to sleuthify.
The ad I’m looking at today is a teaser pitch from Don Yocham, Executive Director of the National Institute for Cannabis Investors (NICI), hosting an “interview” with Danny Brody, who calls himself a cannabis venture capitalist and has been affiliated with NICI for a couple years and played roles in several different major marijuana companies, most recently as VP of Investor Relations for The Green Organic Dutchman (TGOD.TO, TGODF). (Not sure what has happened with that company of late, by the way, but I do see that the stock is down about 95% from its high two years ago).
And the service they’re pitching now is yet another “upgrade” for cannabis investing enthusiasts to buy into ever-more-secret information, they call it Danny Brody’s Cannabis Inner Circle, a “new private wing of the institute” — it will run you $1,950 per year, and it’s not technically a “no refunds” offer but it’s certainly not an “easy” refund… the refund pledge is full of conditions, and also requires you to try the service for a full year first.
To my mind, NICI is mostly just a gussied-up name for a high-end marijuana stock promotion outfit, and I’ve mostly been unimpressed with their wild overpromising in the past — calling something a “club” makes you feel like you belong, à la Oxford Club… calling something an “Institute” makes it seem legit and independent, like maybe it’s even a think tank or a nonprofit, but from all indicators it’s really just a publishing arm of Money Map Press. That might be a bit unfair, maybe it’s just the bad taste of their last “Cannabis Venture” pitch that’s making me look at this with an extra furrow in my brow — most publishers use wildly overhyped promises in their ads, but the NICI stuff stands out for me as being even more over-the-top.
But anyway, this pitch is that there’s a super-rare substance that one company can make, and it’s going to shake up the cannabis industry and make us all rich. Here’s a little extract of the pitch:
“This Rare Extract Costs $2.1 Million PER OUNCE…
“Leading Scientific Institutions Are Clamoring for It…
“And Now, in a Stunning Breakthrough, One Tiny $4 Company Could Now Produce It ON DEMAND…”
And they pile on with the hyperbole…
“The way I see it, not since the advent of penicillin has there been a quantum leap of this magnitude.
“Quite frankly, this can change everything.”
That’s a frequently-used promise, as you might imagine — I did a quick search through my archive of old teaser pitches, and came up with at least 25 different teases in the past five years that include some variant of “not since penicillin” or “greatest breakthrough since penicillin.”
When people are daydreaming about turning $500 into generational wealth, well, you’ve got to go big to get their attention.
More about the race to develop this “rare extract”
“At this moment, the scientific race is on, and leading institutions are clamoring for this rare compound.
“Harvard Medical School has unleashed a cadre of top neuroscientists…
“MIT is doing the same…
“UCLA has launched an unprecedented initiative staffed with 37 experts in the treatment of cancer, diabetes, neurology, and brain science…
“And NIH has thrown $140 million into 330 projects spanning all of medicine…”
And about the miraculous things that it (might) be able to do…
“Scientific testing shows this rare compound to be capable of killing cancer cells – without dangerous chemotherapy.
“It has shown the potential to treat Alzheimer’s…
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“And Parkinson’s disease.
“It can kill pain without narcotics, potentially ending America’s opioid crisis.
“Plus, because it’s such a powerful sleep inducer, it could help the 60 million Americans with insomnia throw their dangerous sleeping pills in the trash.”
And, duh, we know that this is a pitch for cannabis investors… so it’s clearly one of many spiels about the many miraculous capabilities, both proven and suspected, that lie within not just CBD and THC, which are well-known and in major production from the plants, but also the magic weed’s hundreds of different obscure cannabinoids.
But it’s really about a bioengineered way to produce these cannabinoids — without using acres of marijuana plants… more from the ad:
“… in a stunning breakthrough in metabolic engineering, a UC Berkeley chemist has invented a way to make this compound on demand.
“And now, the tiny $4 company he founded holds 871 patents, is producing this compound for $15 an ounce… that’s a staggering 99.99% cost reduction…
“And is setting up the investment play of the millennium.”
Some more clues from the interview for you…
“DANNY: Don, that’s the most important point. YES. This is starting to happen right now, as we speak. Already, a tiny $4 company behind this opportunity has the power to disrupt one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
“DON: A $344 billion industry.
“DANNY: That’s right. They’ve got 871 patents. They’ve signed a major deal with a partner and have already made their first shipment.
“DON: In other words, time is of the essence.
“DANNY: Time is of the essence because industry insiders are swarming. Folks who move fast will be able to grab a ground-floor position.”
Some other bits from the ad, to whet your appetite…
“THC and CBD have become the face of cannabis NOT because they are the most powerful cannabinoids. They are popular because they are the MOST ACCESSIBLE….
“It would cost $2.1 million an ounce to produce these other powerful cannabinoids.
“And when you consider what these rare cannabinoids can do – when it comes to cancer, diabetes, sleep, pain, weight loss – you can understand why they are so valuable.
“DON: No doubt. But you simply can’t produce that for public consumption. Not in any sustainable way. They just aren’t viable.
“DANNY: Well, they haven’t been viable until now…
“In a stunning breakthrough, a renowned biochemist from the University of California, Berkeley has developed a way to bioengineer cannabinoids WITHOUT growing a single cannabis plant.”
How does this company do it? Yeast, according to Brody:
“This tiny $4 company uses patented DNA sequencing technology to take the genes out of the cannabis plant and inject them into the DNA code of yeast….
“And because yeast reproduces so quickly…
“It’s possible to mass-produce all cannabinoids. And these are IDENTICAL to the cannabinoids grown in cannabis plants.”
Which apparently creates the business opportunity, by making production far more efficient:
“THC and CBD can suddenly be mass-produced – FASTER and CHEAPER than was ever possible. Let me put it in perspective. GW Pharma currently has to grow 18 hectares of cannabis to produce its CBD epilepsy drug, Epidiolex.
That’s 23 football fields of space! With bioengineering, it will take a fraction of the space – about one end zone of sterile vats – to produce the same amount of CBD. And you have no worries about droughts, insects, and sunlight. None of it! ….“DON: And while it would take months to grow and process the cannabis and extract the CBD, bioengineering can get the job done in less than five days!
“DANNY: And while it costs about $196 an ounce to grow and extract CBD, bioengineering reduces the cost 10-fold! Down to a mere $15 an ounce!”
They also talk about the importance of biosynthetic ingredients for all the future use cases of THC and CBD — with the argument, for example, that not everyone likes the skunky aroma of fresh cannabis…
“Using bioengineering, you can produce THC without the odor or taste. This is huge because most people – I’m talking about the mainstream market – they don’t want to smoke weed. They want to ingest the benefits of cannabis through food or beverages. And these folks want a brownie that tastes like a brownie. Not a brownie that tastes like pot! Same with drinks. You want a THC-infused lemonade that tastes like lemonade… not bong water.”
And Brody predicts a 7,500% revenue surge for the company — which he implies, of course, is a “conservative” assumption given the role it might play in cannabis as well as pharmaceutical development.
More from the ad:
“The company has already made the first shipment of bioengineered CBD. Plus, they’ve signed a megacontract to supply bioengineered CBD to four major global markets, including health, beauty, food & beverage, and pharmaceuticals. Right now, the CBD market is projected at $22 billion within the next few years. The cost advantage this tiny $4 company has over growers is tremendous. It costs growers $196 an ounce to produce CBD. This company can use their patented technology to produce the exact same CBD for $15 an ounce. And it’s 100% pure and tasteless. With this partnership, they could dominate the market.”
And one final hint…
“Right now, they have $152 million in revenue.”
So what’s the story? There are a bunch of synthetic biology companies who have tried to make a run at cannabinoids, including Precigen (PGEN — which used to be called Intrexon (XON)), little startup Willow Biosciences (WLLW in Canada), and still-private unicorn Ginkgo Bioworks, which partnered up with Cronos…
But after just a bit of cogitating, the Thinkolator sez this really has to be Amyris (AMRS), which is a perfect match for the clues. It did post $152 million in revenue in 2019, though that number has been very lumpy, and it’s not really particularly levered to cannabis and cannabinoids just yet… but it could be in the future. And yes, the “871 patents” clue is a match as well, with the company claiming “633 issued u.s. and foreign patents and 238 pending” as of their 2019 10-K (the Thinkolator can do math! Even in August!)…. though few of those patents have any specific connection to marijuana or cannabinoids.
Here’s how the company describes itself:
“Amyris is a science and technology leader in the research, development and production of sustainable ingredients for the Clean Health & Beauty and Flavors & Fragrances markets. Amyris uses an impressive array of exclusive technologies, including state-of-the-art machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence. Our ingredients are included in over 3,000 products from the world’s top brands, reaching more than 200 million consumers. Amyris is proud to own three consumer brands – all built around its No Compromise® promise of clean ingredients: Biossance™ clean beauty skincare, Pipette™ clean baby skincare and Purecane™, a zero-calorie sweetener naturally derived from sugarcane.”
And there is some movement on the CBD front, as teased — Brody says that “The company has already made the first shipment of bioengineered CBD. Plus, they’ve signed a megacontract to supply bioengineered CBD to four major global markets, including health, beauty, food & beverage, and pharmaceuticals.”
And, yes, they’ve done that — their first shipment of fermentation-derived cannabinoids to their partner, LAVVAN, came at the very end of last year.
More recently, they also announced a “breakthrough in CBD delivery,” with their Neossance Squalane providing better and faster penetration of CBD into the skin than other oils.
Amyris has been around for a long time, and did have its roots in the pioneering work of Jay Keasling and his students at Berkeley — with the first molecule they created, using funding from the Gates Foundation, being a biosynthetic artemisinic acid that helped to dramatically decrease the cost of treating malaria. The big push after that was mostly for biofuels, which I’d say was a long-running financial disaster (well covered by Fast Company here a number of years ago), but they have recently been focused on health and beauty ingredients, and particularly on building their own brands in that space.
(The story in some ways brings to mind the disastrous Solazyme, which was heavily hyped coming out of the financial crisis by David Gardner and others at the Motley Fool, among other pundits, as they were building giant plants in Brazil to use algae to make its synthetic oils. Conceptually that’s not so different from the yeast-derived oils being developed by Amyris, but after failure there they changed their name to TerraVia and shifted that technology to algae-based “superfood” ingredients — though it didn’t stop them from going bankrupt as the economies of scale from their algae production never emerged).
Recently, Amyris has even made a push to get some “COVID” connection — they launched their own hand sanitizer back in March, and have done initial testing to use their squalene as a vaccine adjuvant, including partnering up with IDRI and its RNA vaccine platform technology with the goal to “create semi-synthetic squalene-based adjuvants at scale.”
Will the CBD production end up leading to anything, or will they eventually develop other cannabinoids using their yeast-engineering technology? I don’t know, but I guess it’s possible. It’s a cool technology, and they’ve done some impressive things and even built a few brands that seem to have gotten some traction in the consumer marketplace, which is impressive and probably important given the competition (being an ingredient supplier can quickly become a commoditized, low-margin business), but it’s also a tiny company competing in a huge marketplace for ingredients and consumer health and beauty products… and there hasn’t been a lot of evidence, at least just yet, that they can generate revenue at a much larger scale.
Amyris has significantly improved its balance sheet, so that’s positive — though they had to sell a lot of shares to do so, and they continue to have a meaningful amount of debt as well as some pretty big tranches of outstanding warrants from past financings.
If you’re looking for a rosy take, then I’d say the fact that they’ve “fixed” their balance sheet for now and built up some cash for the next wave of work means that they’re pretty well-positioned IF they make a larger deal to license out their technology at a larger scale, or are able to substantially ramp up their branded products… and they’ll at last be in position to keep their work moving forward for the foreseeable future. I haven’t looked into LAVVAN in much more detail, but that’s where the big potential opportunity probably lies, since the indication was that LAVVAN was going to do the heavy lifting and Amyris would provide just expertise and licensed technologies. LAVVAN is not public, so we don’t get a lot of detail other than the articles covering their initial deal with Amyris.
CBD in general is also still in a bit of a holding pattern when it comes to FDA regulation, which has hurt all the companies who have been promoted as leaders of the next wave of CBD consumer products (Charlotte’s Web (CWEB.TO, CWBHF) was arguably the most promoted non-marijuana CBD name, though there are many others in the space, too), especially when it comes to edible and beverages. And, of course, specifically synthesizing and commercializing any of the other cannabinoid compounds beyond CBD or THC is possible, but probably many years out in the future when you’re talking about medical uses or nutraceuticals — those compounds are not nearly as well-understood, so great things might be coming eventually… but the FDA won’t want us sprinkling them on our corn flakes anytime soon.
There are a couple analysts covering Amyris stock, Rodman has been calling it a buy for years and Oppenheimer initiated coverage late last year, the published forecast from those analysts is that they’ll hit $400 million in revenue by 2022 and will be generating positive cash flow by then… and Danny Brody isn’t the only fan in pundit land — there’s also at least one Motley Fool writer saying it could be “the next big pot stock.”
It’s still quite risky to speculate in “emerging platform” companies like this who have not been able to prove up or commercialize their technologies over a long period of time, however, so anyone investing in this kind of company should be mindful of the risk… and try to figure out what timeline of commercialization seems reasonable, or which catalysts might turn a long-time R&D project into a viable and profitable business.
In my brief time looking into the stock for an hour or two this morning, I can’t say that I’m there yet — I keep reflecting on the fact that the technology is amazing, and the maybe-someday possibilities are pretty cool, but it seems like the revolutionary promise has remained persistently well ahead of reality… and there isn’t any obvious end to the trend of losing more and more money, with nearly $2 billion spent so far in trying to build the company over the past dozen years. Of course, I also would have said the same thing about Tesla (TSLA) five or ten years ago… so perhaps this caution just represents the failure of my imagination.
It’s your money, of course, so it’s your thinking that matters — ready to bet on Amyris and its vats of CBD-creating yeast? Think their lotions and oils and other bio-engineered molecules will be profit centers in the future? Let us know with a comment below… and thanks for reading!
I own it at $2.20 and it’s at $3.38 keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks for all your work and thorough analysis, I might fork out a little just observe it’s progress!
Money Map Press is, or has been, in my experience, sleazy. However, I paid almost $2,000 two or three years ago for their marijuana newsletter guaranteeing four 10-times winners or your money back, and they actually did refund my money after I lost quite a bit. That resulted from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulling back Obama’s order to let up on enforcement of the law restricting marijuana activity.
I think NICI has improved a lot with the hiring of Don Yocham. He keeps close tabs on the stocks, and advises selling when he thinks a peak has been reached. This has happened several times, and I’ve made good money on these stocks. Most of my other about 10 pot stocks are up nicely, with Planet Holdings up 152%. Charlotte’s Web, a Tom Gardner choice, has lagged for a long time and is down 43%, and a couple of others are down, as well. But NICI’s recommendations have done quite well since Yocham came aboard.
I am a member of NICI and have to wait awhile on their advice, but they seem to have some knowledge of the MJ market.
Travis, I’m so pleased to hear your current thinking about NICI. I bought a (“founder”s) basic , annual subscription for $49 and renewed last fall at the “regular” price of $99. My feelings about those guys are mixed and I think you hit the nail on the head, as usual, with your comment,”To my mind, NICI is mostly just a gussied-up name for a high-end marijuana stock promotion outfit, and I’ve mostly been unimpressed with their wild overpromising in the past.” Their performance has been marginally good, in my opinion. However, the recommended buys ,sells and stop-loss order instructions seem to be uncoordinated amongst two or more people. I sort of get the feeling all contirbutors are geographically spread to various parts of the country. I could be totally wrong. Someone should drop into their “offices” which are claimed to be “The National Institute for Cannabis Investors. 1125 N Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21201.” and see, firsthand, what really goes on there. NICI is part of Stansberry which shows the same address. There may be other newsletter services using the same address. If anyone has more insights, please share those with all of us.
Many of the Bonner/Agora-affiliated companies (which is almost all of the heavily-promoted publishers, other than Cabot, Motley Fool and a handful of others) use the same back-office support in Baltimore. Stansberry is now the biggest one, but the many different Agora folks own a bunch of fixed-up victorians in Bmore where some of the publishing brands are still headquartered, and often collaborate to some degree.
Per my comment , I totally agree with your comment and I shelled out for the lifetime membership
Just bought bought in, the science is there and I haven’t been able to buy a lotto ticket in awhile…
I researched for several hours over the Weekend and initially went with Amyris. I found stronger connections though with Cronos. S. Shaw.
S. Shaw?
I don’t know much about cannabis but I know quite a bit about this technology and Amyris. Synthetic biology is used to produce many common ingredients; the challenge is profitably scaling the technology and finding a sizable consumer market. In terms of current products, the Biossance beauty line gets good reviews (I personally recommend the sunscreen), but it doesn’t stand out in a competitive environment. Amyris’ CEO certainly has a knack for keeping investors interested. Cannabis seems to be the latest example.
Wow! Missed looking lately! The quality of detail and accuracy is wonderful!
Been busy recovering lots of bruising from the Mj. boom thar was not at al analogous to the end of Prohibition!
The healing propensity of these once restricted plants is subtle, but according to my husband’s old back injury do help him, limber up and feel much less pain, and that, just from external
application!
Will have to put Amyris “AMRY” on my list!
Been bust being frustrated by companies explaining away as due to the looseness of the PINKS the self directed accounts, selling shares of dissolved companies, which are still being and for which trading fees are collected but are not after 10 months of posting to sell, do not sell, but on a position ledger look like they are fluctuating from the original made to look great (from .00001 to .0000! Looks great for uninitiated one ones to get a servicing notification text, up 9000% AFPW! It was a dissolved co when bought in 9&10/2019! Innotigied my seller when I saw YaHoo and Barchart still tracking it!
Jusr think selling nothing having it look good on line! I finally had mine “removed” $500. For 5 million shares on a patented fuel cell & a REIT attempt? They still have sold some weeks millions of shares! The broker still gets commissions, snd the co account gets $500. Minus what I jusr sold after almost a year if money opportunity losses at $5,00 .000001!
FTC & SEC need to know! Robot trading not so straight forward!
Great to read from your great intellectual brilliance!
M✅
Do you work at an exclamation point manufacturing plant?
Just to let you now. LAVVAN has not come up with the funds they have promised to Amyris = drop in amyris price. Is this a good time to invest, or is it a sign as to the B.S. of a cosmetic Co. suddenly being interested in healing?. I am skeptical as I am a former Doctor of Acupuncture and Advanced Chinese Med. for 20 plus years.
S. Shaw.
I am a lifetime member of NICI and your observations are correct. I have been disappointed in the service because I requested that I receive not promotional emails and they said they would stop and I get many of them still. In addition, Don ha shade some recommendations that I did not think were good. One example was to tell us to sell a specific stock at a loss and a couple weeks later he told us to buy the stock back with no regard to the wash rule. He also recommended selling Canopy a few months who when everyone else is recommending to buy it. I own 24 cannabis stocks and all of them are recommended by Don and company. Many of them are doing well now after ALL of them were losing money. I get about 10 times more promotions then trade recommendations. Anyway Travis, thanks for doing a NICI recommendation and voicing your thoughts that I am ALWAYS looking forward too.
Looks like AMRS will fly high. Pun intended…
I think I will sell some cryptocurrency to buy into weed.
love the technical assessment term to rate the stock “meh”….. LOL
Today is a good day… My MJ portfolio that’s been under water foe ages is finally in the green. Always treated it as a speculation and will continue to do so. I bought the initial NICI membership for $49 but did nor renew — did not see much value. That did not stop them from sending me their picks, sells, stop losses, etc. that I mostly ignore. You don’t put a stop loss on a speculation. And I have no intention to sell my star performers. Will take a tiny stake in Amyris. Not large enough to generate generational wealth, I am afraid , but small enough to lose without losing my sleep over it :))
I’d read these this article before buying this stock.
https://kush.com/blog/natural-vs-synthetic-cbd-cannabinoids-everything-you-need-to-know/
“A key study by the Journal of Medical Phyto Research in Los Gatos, California analyzed the catabolic enzyme production of two control groups over 22 weeks; the first taking natural CBD and the second taking synthetic CBD. The second group showed dangerous levels of Alanine Amino Transferase (ALT) and Aspartate Amino Transferase (AST), two enzymes recruited to remove the synthetic CBD from their bodies. The study concluded that the human body is not equipped to properly catabolize synthetic cannabinoids.
In the summer of 2018, the FDA issued a statement warning of the “significant health risks of synthetic cannabinoid products” and linked their usage to “severe illnesses and even deaths” in several cases over the past few months in a number of states across America.”
What about IMLFF ? They claim they will be producing synthetic MJ meds and they use a technique using E Coli bacteria which is supposedly more reliable than yeast.
I tried to do my research, I came across Jay Keasling of Librede now Lygos so that’s why I thought it was this but then I did find IMLFF. I didn’t get AMRS though.
Looks like Amyris is under investigation, found this article:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/investor-alert-monteverde-associates-pc-162500891.html
good to know
I have followed cannabis investing for years and my conclusion is SCAM!! The scam is the pricing which producers claim is in the extraction. Like an Ethanol plant, extraction can be done at a rate of millions of gallons per day. Anybody can grow the stuff in their yard or basement during winter.
My wife has migraine headaches 20 to 25 days per month for 50 years. Tried everything except MJ.
Medical MJ is approved in MN but no doctor will prescribe it. Why? They make more money prescribing OPIODS. Also, Medicare and all Ins. Companies DO NOT cover Med. MJ . If prescribed cost is $500 per month. Can’t afford that on Social Security. Can you smell the SCAM now??
Bob,
Medicare and the Insurance companies won’t cover the cost because it is still a controlled schedule 1 drug under Federal Law, which essentially says that it has no useful purpose and is highly addictive. This is a result of terrible laws enacted both in the 1930s and under Nixon which have yet to be rescinded. Until that happens, we won’t see any insurance cover the cost. This is also why most banks won’t give growers, dispensaries, or shops bank accounts.At least not under their true business identities, as this would break Federal Banking laws and make them at risk for seizure of assets.
Try a pain management clinic in your state for an MD to write what you need in order to become eligible for your wife.
Don’t give up. Help is out there.
As a cannabis nurse educator, I am just going to say that all research studies that have been conducted, have proven that synthetic cannabis has been proven to be less effective in treatment for those in which the natural plant provides relief. No single cannabinoid is the miracle portion of the plant for any specific user, nor is a specific dose or route of dosage effective for all in treatment. Like any medication, each person requires an individualized approach, preferably in conjunction with a trained cannabis consultant/educator, who can work with them in order to alleviate their specific aliment and get the best results for them while maintaining their all over balance in body functionality. You can achieve the level of relief without the “high” desired when properly dosed and guided to reach optimal health and wellness. But the whole natural plant is required due to the entourage effect comprised of the various terpenes, cannabinoid levels, and plant strain.
Epidiolex is a synthetic CBD, not natural, with a yearly cost of approximently $32,500 for the purchaser and not from the cannabis plant. It falls into the same category as Marinol , Syndros, Cesamet which are synthetic THC – all oral compounds as well and in the order listed above available at capsule 2.5mg about $692 for 60 capsules, Syndros is a solution and is 5mg/ml and costs $1226 for a 30 ml bottle and Cesamet caps are 1mg at about $2055 for 50 caps.
Except for Epidiolex, the THC medications were involved in blind research studies and found that the natural product was actually more effective with less side effects prior to FDA approval for the synthetics. However, the classification from controlled schedule 1 was not done for the cannabis plant and these three drugs were allowed onto the market instead,
The fact that they state that most people do not want to smoke “weed” is in of itself an error, as this is the route that is most advantageous for most users who are attempting to self medicate or using medical cannabis for chronic pain, insomnia, anxiety or PTSD as the bioavailability is swift and effects are felt quickly. Other routes of dosing have variable durations of action which are used and are individual user dependent based upon treatment goals and needs. Anything moving through the GI tract can have a onset of action that may not have the needed effect for anywhere from 1 to three hours, which is a lifetime for someone exhibiting symptoms of a panic attack or in severe pain.
Additionally, THC (Delta9), CBD, CBG, CBN, THCV, CBDV, CBA and 8 Cannabinoid Acids are the only phytocannabinoids that have been identified to date. There are 100’s of cannabinoids in the cannabis plant, however, these are the only ones to date that have been identified and which a known action/reaction exists.
SO, you can take this information as you desire. BUT, please remember that snake oil is snake oil no matter how they peddle it to you. Unfortunately, to date the CBD industry is not regulated as it is being produced/sold outside of legalized states by utilizing hemp CBD. This is cannabis with less than 0.3%THC by dry weight. Traditionally, and pre craze, grown and utilized for rope and other industrialized uses. Synthetic pharm grade CBD or THC is going to come with the matching FDA /DEA approvals and price tags, not a lower entry point into the market and therefore will not compete with the existing natural plant which has a myriad of beneficial components that were placed there by God to heal the body and that fit exactly into the body’s endocannabinoid system like matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Having utilized both natural and synthetic with patients, throughout the years. I will say, the natural plant won, hands down, every single time. There were many times that the synthetic had either side effects or just did not work.
Pat thank you for taking the time to share all of your hands on research and knowledge. It is very much appreciated. It is so easy to get caught up in all the hype out there that it is hard to know what to trust and believe. Thankfully we have Travis to help guide us thru all this info.
My understanding of the process is that its not formulated in a lab ala Walter White but more of a GMO by splicing in the genes that cause the MJ plant to produce CBD into yeast which is fermented making extraction easier and quality consistent. From a nonscientific point of view: easier and consistent quality does sound appealing
Agreed big tuna.
Thank you for all your research and work! I am a NICI member and I’d honestly rather read your input than their quick wildly unpromising videos. I appreciate the work you put in.