Episode Transcript

Rene:  While Kirk was traveling through Morocco this summer, he made it a point to record some of the sounds he came across. What you're hearing right now are the sounds in Tanger of a birthday party at a restaurant. Welcome to Reefer Medness - The Podcast Episode 166, Part 2. In this episode, we wrap up Trevor and Kirk's conversation with Jan van Weenen. Jan has worked in the European cannabis industry for 15 years. Spent four years working with farmers, government, and doctors attempting to move the ancient Moroccan cannabis industry toward pharmaceutical grade production. In this episode, Trevor and Kirk continue to discuss the growing pains of the Moroccan cannabis industry and learning about the rules of a world's regulated cannabis market. So without further ado...

Jan van Weenen: I just want to highlight the struggles that we have here.

Kirk:  Just my experience alone demonstrates some of the struggles that you're working in, and I don't know if you had a chance to listen to the Dr. Rabii episode. I mean, he spoke about that, that there's difficulties. Trevor, did you have some questions?

Trevor:  No, I think Jan covered most of it. How about just let's assume everything goes right Jan and you figure out the heavy metals thing and get through the bureaucratic red tape. Where where would you like to see? Where would you, like to, see your company with the Moroccan hash and other Moroccan cannabis products going where In a perfect world where where would, you like, to see this going?

Jan van Weenen: Okay, so my goal and my partner's goal is with our Swiss company, we are now operating under pharmaceutical because this is the most established, like we could go into THCA, which is getting a little bit bigger in Europe, but it's a bit gray market. We could go into the other cannabinoids, but we don't like that. So we want to establish a pharmaceutical brand because eventually it will become recreational everything. And we want to establish our brand and our name in this pharmaceutical phase. So that when it becomes recreational, I want to be able to directly apply for these licenses and switch my brand into the recreational market. So what we are, our goal as our company that we import, we want to become the biggest importer and distributor of extracts and not distill it or like crude or whatsoever. No, like the extracts, nobody else is focused on, like the... hash rosin, the live rosin. filtered hash, like the static hash. I sent some videos in the chat, I believe, of the static that we have. So there's nobody really brought to the market yet on the pharmaceutical market. And since our QPs are willing to release now, this is our goal to just be the biggest distributor on the European market. And hopefully also other markets like Australia, the UK, and any other market basically that would be open.

Kirk:  I'd like to touch on, again, going back to the Somacan company. So you said, and again, we can also remove his name when we produce this, but you say he quit. He's moved on.

Jan van Weenen: Yeah, so he quit, his family lives in the south of Morocco and he also has a child, so for him, it was like too much, it was consuming too much of his time. I feel very bad that he's gone because he was an amazing guy, one of the few people that actually, like I ran with them the last cultivation season, I ran them the whole year, so we had a lot of time to talk and get to each other. Yeah, the guys, they also got thrown into the deep, let's say, with this. They just got, because like the Somacan, it's a lot of people that didn't come from the traditional hash market. Somacan hired people like studied engineers that don't actually have studies and that come from the job market. And these people, they had a lot to learn. But I managed to teach them a lot over this period because like now they are thinking a lot with me, they're helping me with everything. Like I can go now to Tanger's and leave them at the facility and do everything. Even all GCP documentation is completely done properly. So I'm very happy with the team at Somacan. I think they're the most professional in Morocco at the moment and the most profession that I've worked with. And of course there are some issues, some struggles that we have to go through still but Somacan is doing a great job actually at the moment.

Kirk:  So is this your business, is this one of your investments?

Jan van Weenen: No, no, no. So we, our Swiss company, we have a supply agreement with Somacan and a consultancy agreement. So, we help them, like our company helps them to get the product that we want. So I am on site, we agreed that I will be here on site to help with the cultivation, the processing, documentation, so that we are sure that we get what we want, so we work from the other way around basically from the client. To the product, instead from making the product to finding clients.

Kirk:  So I'm looking at their webpage and they have a whole load and I saw the products when I was there because in the boardroom they had the products so that that company is are they making their products from their cooperatives from their farmers so and then so what's the process they grab it they make it into the hash or the kief and they send it to Europe make the products and it comes back to Morocco? What's the difference?

Jan van Weenen: The Moroccan market for the hash pharmaceutical is not developed yet. We have now pharmaceutical CBD, let's say CBD is allowed to be sold in pharmacies, but like Somacan, they like it, I should say the market, it's not moving so much. So there is a bit of product being sold here. Now we are making a little bit of CBD isolate here and there, which is sold in Morocco to be processed further. But like the problem here also like isolate, distillate, or whatsoever, the margins and the prices, they don't work out. Like the farmers say, I rather go back to the black market than get the price that you give me for my biomass to do this, to be able to compete. So this is also an issue, you know, there needs to be, they need to sit together. And this is this three party system that's making it very hard where you have three entities that need to be on the same page, which are in Europe or in any other country, but not in Morocco. So, yeah, it's...

Kirk:  So where's the product coming from that they're selling then? I mean, they're sell CBD based herbal teas, they are selling hair creams. Where is that kind of product coming that they are sell?

Jan van Weenen: This comes from the cooperatives. So we have like the cooperative under Somacan and under these cooperatives you have the farmers again. So Somacan they buy from the cooperatives, the cooperatives they buy from the farmers and this is this where this product comes from that you saw in the facility, this comes from the farmers of the cooperative that Somacan has an agreement.

Kirk:  Right, and then that product becomes a hair product, so they're not making the hair product in Morocco. Is the product going out of country? How is that working?

Jan van Weenen: They make it the CBD products they're allowed to make if they are within the right limits. So we are allowed to CBD up to 1% depending on where it's being sent of course and the end product, how much is mixed in, where we can send it like to Switzerland it's 1%, some other countries it's 0.2%. So it depends a bit, but yes, this... But like I said, it's not being shipped so much to Europe because nobody agrees with the pricing. Nobody is agreeing on the pricing. And like I told them as well, like a lot of the operators, they still have stuff from three years ago and your product is not getting better because their storages everywhere, the storages are not like how they should be. And it can get very hot here. You know, it can easily like 45 plus degrees. So, you are keeping your stuff. We also had to cut off a few cooperatives that are keeping their stuff in the greenhouses at 45 degrees outside. Can you imagine how warm it is indoors, this product is almost destroyed within a day. It's a shame that this is not on point yet, but with 700 hectares, like I said before, it's impossible to be at every farmer every day because I need to spend at least a every now and then there to see what's going on, to see if the documentation is going well. And if we have 700 hectares divided over let's say 450 farmers, I cannot even visit every farmer in the whole year if I spend one day with every farmer. So this was also making it very difficult and we had the whole team like with the guys. But like I said, we decided to cut back 30 hectares now. We start with this product and we work up again on that because it's uh... And managed to fall back.

Kirk:  Is there anything else you want us, want our listeners to know about your business in regards to how you, your relationship with cannabis and your business?

Jan van Weenen: Uh, so, yes, so I can make a little shout out for myself now, that would be...

Kirk:  Yes so it Yeah, yeah.

Trevor:  Yes, yes.

Jan van Weenen: Our business, like Planteamed, I will send you the links and everything. We opened it like a little bit over a half a year ago because we had a lot of clients. We were working with big GMP facilities in Europe, but we were organizing everything but only getting a small cut. So we decided to get investors, get our own GMP facility. We have the audit now in March, so soon we'll have our own GMP licenses as well. So we don't have to use our service providers anymore to serve our clients. Yeah so basically what we're doing is importing and we are always looking for a good product. If there is any good product they can always reach out to us, they can offer it to us. We are always open for discussion. I'm always open to also help people set up their processing facilities like especially solventless I love solventless this like ice water hash, static hash. I can help pharmaceutical GAP facilities or GMP facilities with our team, help them get these kind of things implemented in their facilities. So there's like consultancy with cultivation, consultancy with processing, helping product get to market. This is basically what they're doing.

Kirk:  I'm very glad to have finally met you. It's a shame we never got to shake hands in Morocco, but another time.

Jan van Weenen: For sure, for sure Kirk.  No, I'm very happy. Thank you for having this talk, you know, and I really appreciate it. Look, I hope actually that we'll see each other sometime soon.

Kirk:  Yeah.

Jan van Weenen: You're always welcome to come by here or to come to Europe. And if not, by any of this time you've come to there, I'm sure I will be visiting maybe you guys one time there. That would also be nice.

Kirk:  Canada is a big country. And we're right in the middle of it. We're right right in middle of it. My goal is to hopefully get to South America someday. I'd like to meet Peter again and what he's doing in Saruman. That's very exciting, what he's doing down there. 

Jan van Weenen: That's amazing and you should, you should actually and if you're going there maybe I'll ask him if I can take a flight to there and we can meet up there. It's also better weather there than in Canada.

Kirk:  Oh yeah, well it's minus 35 out here right now, so it's been a pleasure sir.

Jan van Weenen: Thank you, the same like wise.

Trevor:  Thanks John.

Trevor:  Kirk, who thought on a minus 35 day in Dauphin we'd be talking to a Dutch guy in Morocco in a snowstorm?

Kirk:  Who lives in Romania?

Trevor:  Who lives in Romania, and his company is based out of Switzerland. Interesting dude.

Kirk:  Yeah, and international story, man. You know, it's funny how his experiences matches Dr. Rabii's. I mean, what is that tripod he was talking about? He was talking the farmer, the manufacturers.

Trevor:  So you've got the farmer, the co-op collects from the farmers and then the manufacturers and not unlike Canada and everywhere else the different groups are... Red tape sounds really like two of the the main problems you know everybody agrees it's it's a fantastic product like you you've said many times Moroccan hash has been known forever to being fantastic but you know if everybody wants their cut if no one can quite agree to work together and there's no coordination, you know, it does really sound like the King is working hard to get Moroccan Hash legitimate out there in Europe, in the rest of the world. But, you know, maybe Jan's right. Maybe things went a little fast and now we've got to do a little backtracking to get things to go properly. And one of the things I found most interesting is, you know heavy metals just naturally being in the soil in the rift mountains is an issue. You know it's obviously been an issue forever because it's naturally occurring. It's there so like you've said a couple times it's it's been in the recreational hash forever but now we're looking at the medicinal you know there are standards about how much heavy metal can be in there and now, people like Jan have got to look into soil remediation.

Kirk:  But this is not the first time we've heard this, the whole GAP, what is it, good agricultural practices. That's what that stands for. He was using a lot of acremen’s and I was trying to catch up with that, but I think that's good agricultural practice. It's not the time we heard it. I think Dr. Balneaves was telling us one of the biggest difficulties in Canada with doing pharmaceutical grade research with cannabis is that it's gotta be grown in GAP enviornments. It's got to meet that pharmaceutical grade. Good or bad, it's definitely affecting cannabis' ability to be seen as a mainstream medicine. I think.

Trevor:  Well, it's just it's kind of everyone agreeing on what standard we have to go, you know, if there's one standard for recreational and a higher standard for medicinal because I think we even talked about that with Eric Greening from Greencraft cannabis here in Dauphin They were working on and I've lost track if they got or not But one point they were looking at working on getting approved to European standards so they could sell to Europe. Now that is basically extra paperwork extra, extra everything they have to do it you know drives up their costs so they could sell to Europe but you know if they're just selling in Canada you know but their competitors in Canada if they don't bother you know they don't have to put in as much cost. So it's you know it's getting everybody on the same playing field would be back to Morocco. If everybody could sort of just agree on what the playing field was and like Jan said they've got to keep uh economic realities in the fact that you know yes Moroccan hash is great but you know if all you sell is you know the creme de la creme product you're throwing away a lot of market share. So it was a fascinating talk about how, yes they're running into some hurdles but I think with people like Jan, I think they will get there.

Kirk:  Yeah, yeah, and it's the birth of an industry, right? This is what we're observing here. A birth of a industry, an ancient industry that's going into the legit market. Yeah, it's fascinating. You know, and again, it just makes me want to go back and maybe do some skiing in Morocco. Because actually, you know, I think there is a ski hill in Morocco!

Trevor:  Who'd have thought it? Do you think you knew something? It could be a travel thing, you know. Camels in the morning, skiing in the afternoon, maybe the other way around, I don't know.

Kirk:  Golfing, golfing, go surfing. I'll post some of the pictures that Jan sent to us on the webpage. So yeah, this is getting a bit long in the tooth. It's been a good story. It's a been a long time coming. Talking to Jan. It seems like every time we have an opportunity to talk, a barrier gets in the way. So it's nice to meet him. And yeah, I'm Kirk. I'm the registered nurse and we're Reefer Medness The Podcast.

Trevor:  I'm Trevor Shewfelt, I'm the pharmacist and it was a lot of fun talking to Jan and hearing all about trials and tribulations like you said and the birth of a legitimate industry in Morocco. That was great.

Kirk:  All right, man, talk to you later.

Rene:  Well, that wraps up a great conversation with Jan van Weenen, a man that Kirk met while he was in Morocco and was later able to talk to, along with Trevor. I'm Rene. I'm back here in the studio. I produced Reefer Medness - The Podcast. And we have one more Morocco story coming up in the next episode. And in this episode, Kirk and Jan touched on Somacan. The next episode is going to be a conversation that revolves around Somacan and in conversation with a man who wants to remain anonymous. But the conversation was recorded in a car ride that Kirk had with him. So that'll be a very interesting wrap up story to Kirk's Morocco adventures. Thank you very much for listening to Reefer Medness, The Podcast. Make sure to check us out online. We have a great library of episodes. On any possible topic. There's now 166 episodes in that library, very searchable, wonderful resource for anyone that is canna curious or wants to delve deeper into how the cannabis industry is evolving. Anyway, Reefer Medness The Podcast. Thanks again. We appreciate you listening. For Trevor and Kirk, I'm Rene, cheers.