Alfredo Pascual: Hello, and welcome everyone. My name is Alfredo Pascual; I am vice president of investment analysis at fast forward innovations. And today, I will be moderating this panel with Tjalling Erkelens, CEO of BEDROCAN, and Alex Agius Saliba, member of the European parliament. And let’s start by letting Tjalling and Alex say a couple of words about themselves and how they ended up involved in the cannabis industry or policy in the case of Alex.
Tjalling Erkelens: Thank you very much, Alfredo. Yes, my name is Tjalling Erkelens, CEO and the founder of BEDROCAN. BEDROCAN is one of the older companies, and we have a strong European focus.
Since 2003, we are contracted by the Dutch ministry of health to produce high-quality cannabis for medicinal purposes. So we’re doing that for 18 years already now. One of the core things of the company is that we always say we do work for patients, and we do work at the highest quality levels.
Standardization is one of those quality legs under the stool. But also having your certificates right, so GMP and all that kind of quality assurance things are taken care of in our company. That’s who I am.
Alfredo Pascual: Thank you, Tjalling. Alex?
Alex Agius Saliba: So first of all, thanks for this invite. I think it will be a very interesting discussion, touching upon some very important points that I think should be discussed also at European level. I’m Alex Agius Saliba, a new MP; this is my first legislature in the European parliament coming from the smallest member state Malta, part of the socialist and democrats group.
I’m also a full member in the internal market committee and consumer protection within the European parliament, and also in the petitions committee and the employment and social affairs committee.
Basically, I started delving into this subject because I had some experiences in my constituency when I was visiting people, visiting patients. And even in my member state, there were some hurdles, some issues which although legislation came into being when it comes to the production of medicinal cannabis.
There are still some barriers for patients in the supply chain, and basically having full ability basically to be able to make full use of medicinal cannabis when compared to other medicinal prescribed products.
Therefore, I kick-started this also, this initiative both within my political group but also by reaching out at EU level and European parliament level with other political groups, with other MPs, to try to, I think first of all to raise awareness about these hurdles, about these issues, to have real access both when it comes to physical access, but also when it comes to practical access.
When having a product which is ultimately affordable for patients and accessible for patients. And we started basically this initiative, a cross-party initiative. Collecting and bringing together MMPs from different member states, from different political groups to raise awareness, and also to raise political pressure and political awareness at EU level.
When it comes to having less stigmatization of patients using cannabis, more focus on research. And also, more focus on harmonization of national laws concerning access to medicine cannabis.
Alfredo Pascual: Alex, this is the European medicinal cannabis alliance that you called, right?
Alex Agius…
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