The medicinal cannabis industry could be worth billions of dollars to the country in the not-so-distant future, if regulation's improved.
ACT leader David Seymour says he's looking at further improvements to speed up processing for exports of the plant.
He's open to improving regulation domestically as well.
Co-founder of NUBU Pharmaceuticals Mark Dye told Kerre Woodham New Zealand was one of the first countries to start cultivating cannabis for medical use.
He says the sooner we lean into it, and back it, the sooner New Zealand could become known one of the best cannabis growing regions in the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Mornings podcast from News
Talks headb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The government's considering giving the green light to reducing medicinal
cannabis exporting regulations. A Ministry of Health briefing sent to
Associate Health Minister David Seymour shows the exports have risen significantly.
David Seymour says we're missing out by not investing in
the medicinal cannabis industry. He says it could one day
rival the wine industry. Mark Dae is the founder and
(00:35):
CEO of Newboo Pharmaceuticals, also my former co host and friend.
Just to pin my colors to the mast. Nwboo will
one of the first to export bulk cannabis from New
Zealand and Mark's currently in Australia launching their third New
Zealand grand product, this one from Canterbury. Very good morning
to you. Mark.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Good morning. I've never never had a friendship declared before,
so I'm considering today At.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
First, well I've had to because somebody asked I've only
just started, but have you declared your interest? As I'm
madly enthusing about our visit to Armadale and seeing what
a medicinal cannabis laboratory. Looks like it's not a couple
of old stoners at the back with a few plants,
(01:21):
is it.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
No, And I think that's part of the issue that
we've got right. The industry is having to grow as
that stigma slowly dissipates. Yeah, and it's happening. I mean
you've seen it over the years on talk Pack. I
mean we experienced it together ten years ago. That's now
why I do the thing that I do. So I
think that that's a little bit of where where we're caught.
(01:43):
But Seymour's right, He's one hundred percent correct. Where the
more we can do to support the industry, then the
more we're going to export, and it will be the
wine industry in the not two distant future. There will
be awards evenings. You may end up being the MC
who knows.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'll have to decorate a zimmer frame.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
By the time that happened, you'll have to declare our
friendship once again. I will. Yeah, yeah, but no, no, it is,
it is And I think in my lifetime we'll probably
be talking about sending billions of dollars of the stuff overseas.
And the interesting context I guess for people listening is
that although it does feel like New Zealand is a
little bit slow on this, really we're one of the
(02:23):
first ten countries in the world to start cultivating cannabis medicinally,
so we're ahead of it. We're ahead of the rest
of the world. The sooner we lean into this and
the more we back the industry, the better we're going
to be at it. And you know, New Zealand may
become in sort of twenty to thirty years knowne as
one of the best cannabis growing regions of the world.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well that was an earlier Texter just after my openers said, surely, Carrie,
every other country is doing this, some have been doing
it for decades. What makes our product so much better?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, I mean America is definitely leading the charge for sure,
Canada probably thereafter, and then it's Uruguay, probably Australia really,
and then our whole host of European countries and US.
So again, in the grand context of the entire world,
we're actually kind of quite close to the beginning. But actually,
(03:15):
one of the cool things that the Ministry of Health
did when they created the regulations, and it's unlike anywhere
else in the world is that they allowed the black
market strains or strains that are currently being grown illegally
to be on boarded into the legal market. And I'm
so far unaware of any other jurisdiction in the world
where that's allowed. So what we can in New Zealand
(03:36):
is go and talk to the guys that have been
growing these strains. Some of them will have been in
the country for years and years and years and years
and years adapted to the climate. Here we can actually
go and take those strains and on board them into
the legal system and then start growing them commercially to
then extport overseas. And so that mechanism is incredible And
again kudos to Wellington for coming up with that and
(03:58):
allowing that to happen, a very unwellington Like thing to do.
But again, the more we can go on look at
what grows well here, test it, as you say, before,
research it, see what it's beneficial for, the stronger that
export market is going to be.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Does the fact that our isolation, our clean green image,
however false, that image may be play into our hands
as well when it comes to exports.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Oh totally. Like I'm as you said, in Australia. Now,
even in Australia selling off the exact ends and ink
story as we sell the lamb, the wine, everything right
where we're going through the process in the UK now
to get the three strains we've got selling over here
into the UK, and you know, the pitch deck and
the pitch to the clinics and the people that will
(04:46):
buy from us over there is exactly the same. So
it's the same story we sell everything, and now we're
just winding cannabis into that.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Who do you have to convince about medicinal cannabis? Is
it the patient? Is it the doctor? Is it the government?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Can I have all three?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You can?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah? Yeah, Look it's a mixture of all three and
it's yeah. I mean obviously the doctor needs to feel
secure in writing the prescription for the patient. And that
again is one of the things that the Ministry of
Health did well when they designed our regulations. Our rigs
are some of the toughest in the world. But we're
(05:28):
now using that as a selling point when we go overseas.
Is that we can sit there and say, look, it's
really really difficult to get these products to market. In
New Zealand, we meet all of those standards and so
you know you should have security in prescribing those products.
I think largely in part it has been a patient driven,
I guess scenario. We all saw, you know, the man
(05:51):
using cannabis and his parkinson shakes disappearing in the early
twenty tens on Facebook, and you know that was some
of the first insights for me that cannabis could potentially
be a therapeutic. So I think it has been borne
by the general population going to the doctrine saying hey,
I don't want to use as maniopioids, or they knocked
me around. Is there anything else I've heard about this?
I've got friends this has been beneficial for it helped
(06:14):
them through through chemo, and so yeah, I think it's
been a mixture of definitely patient driven. We've got to
convince the doctors, and then of course you can't do
anything unless unless the regulators say so. Yes, it is
a mixture of all three.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And how do you get around the drug testing, because
the drug testing wouldn't differentiate between medicinal cannabis and recreation
or would it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
No, And so that's again one of those complications right
that we're kind of stuck in a transition period, there
is some technology or there was some technology technology being
developed in America to be able to see whether or
not somebody was under the influence of cannabis whilst they
were driving, which would be beneficial if they can, if
they can execute on that to roll out in markets
(07:00):
like New Zealand and Australia, because even if you're under
the influence of medicinal cannabis, you don't want to be driving, right, No,
So I think I think again, like most things, as
as the market develops and these issues become more and
more prevalent, the industry will step up and find a solution.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Because you don't really want to encounter somebody who is
driving who has been tagging tramadol either. I mean, you're
not supposed to drive with tramadol, are you.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
No? No, well, a couple of times that I've had tramadol,
I definitely shouldn't have been behind a wheel, so and
I'm glad you won't totally. So I think again, We're
just we're just in transition a little bit. It's interesting,
you know, I've been told I haven't actually seen I've
never been to Tasmania, but apparently in Tasmani. You can
drive through Tasmani and just see poppies just for kilometers.
(07:51):
Australia is one of the biggest exporter exporters of poppies
to obviously make all all of the tremadols what have
you in the world. And there's no there's no fences
around it at all. That's just a fact of life
in Tasmania. It's the same in Spain as well, and
so it eventually probably at some point that will happen
with cannabis. But we can't do that now because if
there were fields of cannabis plants growing out in the open,
(08:12):
people will probably go and steal them, right.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So I could the fact it was like even the
leaves had to be burned on site and all the
waste disposed of otherwise they'll find heavily and as I
found out, there's not even anything in the leaves.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Wow, there's there's trace there is there can be trace elements,
there's there's there's more in the flower, there's there can
be traces. So yeah, I mean all of that, all
of that right, so some of that could be used
for food. There's arguments that the stems could be used
for fiber for building products. There's all sorts of things
that could be used with that waste. But because of
again where we've come from, where the whole thing was
(08:51):
bad and nobody should be using it again, we're all
in that transition period right now. But I think, yeah,
things are going to change significantly over the next next
few years. But it's an exciting time for New Zealand.
And yeah, good on the labor government bringing in and
good on this government for supporting the industry and tweaking
things in a positive way. And yeah, I think the
future is bright.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
How many, just finally, how many viable exporters do we
have who meet those stringent, stringent international rules and regulations?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And is there you're not the cool sing it's well,
you don't finish a question first, No, it was going on.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I was just thinking like, how many of them are
making money yet? Or is it still are they still
got the potential to grow? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I think Look ten years ago when we started researching
how we could set up this company, we couldn't even
get banking yeap. We were selling vaporizes with bitcoin online
because none of the banks in New Zealand will give
us banking for the first five years of the business's life,
we couldn't get insurance for the directors. Like, Okay, it's
(09:55):
taken a long time for us to get where we
are now. And so I kind of feel like, even
though it has been ten years since we started looking
into this thing, you know, at twenty seventeen we set
up the company, we're almost you know, just past days
zero really, and so there's a handful of companies that
are starting to succeed. And the awesome thing is that
(10:16):
a lot of them are the little guys that mortgage
the house, set up to grow, or you know, quit
the job and set up a business with their friends.
And it's it's the little guys that are succeeding that
have kind of networked together to either sell through companies
like mine or other companies to the export overseas. And
so look, I think I think those guys that are
(10:36):
doing that now have got some cash flow, will obviously succeed,
but I think it's it's just the beginning. I'm sure
some people that were involved in the wine industry and
the the early seventies will probably have better context on
how the thing evolves because it is as again as
David Seymour has said it is it is the wine
industry two point zero, so I think it was probably
a lot of there were There was definitely a lot
(10:57):
of money lost when the wine industry first began in
New Zealand, and a lot of people that thought it
would never evolve into anything but now a billion dollar
export and I think the same the same will a
curve for cannabis.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I thank you very much for your time, Mark Dave,
founder CEO NOWBU Pharmaceuticals. News Talk Set B fourteen.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
News Talk Set B from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Kerrywood and Mornings podcast from News
Talks headb.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
The government's considering giving the green light to reducing medicinal
cannabis exporting regulations. A Ministry of Health briefing sent to
Associate Health Minister David Seymour shows the exports have risen significantly.
David Seymour says we're missing out by not investing in
the medicinal cannabis industry. He says it could one day
rival the wine industry. Mark Dae is the founder and
(00:35):
CEO of Newboo Pharmaceuticals, also my former co host and friend.
Just to pin my colors to the mast. Nwboo will
one of the first to export bulk cannabis from New
Zealand and Mark's currently in Australia launching their third New
Zealand grand product, this one from Canterbury. Very good morning
to you. Mark.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Good morning. I've never never had a friendship declared before,
so I'm considering today At.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
First, well I've had to because somebody asked I've only
just started, but have you declared your interest? As I'm
madly enthusing about our visit to Armadale and seeing what
a medicinal cannabis laboratory. Looks like it's not a couple
of old stoners at the back with a few plants,
(01:21):
is it.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
No, And I think that's part of the issue that
we've got right. The industry is having to grow as
that stigma slowly dissipates. Yeah, and it's happening. I mean
you've seen it over the years on talk Pack. I
mean we experienced it together ten years ago. That's now
why I do the thing that I do. So I
think that that's a little bit of where where we're caught.
(01:43):
But Seymour's right, He's one hundred percent correct. Where the
more we can do to support the industry, then the
more we're going to export, and it will be the
wine industry in the not two distant future. There will
be awards evenings. You may end up being the MC
who knows.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I'll have to decorate a zimmer frame.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
By the time that happened, you'll have to declare our
friendship once again. I will. Yeah, yeah, but no, no, it is,
it is And I think in my lifetime we'll probably
be talking about sending billions of dollars of the stuff overseas.
And the interesting context I guess for people listening is
that although it does feel like New Zealand is a
little bit slow on this, really we're one of the
(02:23):
first ten countries in the world to start cultivating cannabis medicinally,
so we're ahead of it. We're ahead of the rest
of the world. The sooner we lean into this and
the more we back the industry, the better we're going
to be at it. And you know, New Zealand may
become in sort of twenty to thirty years knowne as
one of the best cannabis growing regions of the world.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Well that was an earlier Texter just after my openers said, surely, Carrie,
every other country is doing this, some have been doing
it for decades. What makes our product so much better?
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Well, I mean America is definitely leading the charge for sure,
Canada probably thereafter, and then it's Uruguay, probably Australia really,
and then our whole host of European countries and US.
So again, in the grand context of the entire world,
we're actually kind of quite close to the beginning. But actually,
(03:15):
one of the cool things that the Ministry of Health
did when they created the regulations, and it's unlike anywhere
else in the world is that they allowed the black
market strains or strains that are currently being grown illegally
to be on boarded into the legal market. And I'm
so far unaware of any other jurisdiction in the world
where that's allowed. So what we can in New Zealand
(03:36):
is go and talk to the guys that have been
growing these strains. Some of them will have been in
the country for years and years and years and years
and years adapted to the climate. Here we can actually
go and take those strains and on board them into
the legal system and then start growing them commercially to
then extport overseas. And so that mechanism is incredible And
again kudos to Wellington for coming up with that and
(03:58):
allowing that to happen, a very unwellington Like thing to do.
But again, the more we can go on look at
what grows well here, test it, as you say, before,
research it, see what it's beneficial for, the stronger that
export market is going to be.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Does the fact that our isolation, our clean green image,
however false, that image may be play into our hands
as well when it comes to exports.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Oh totally. Like I'm as you said, in Australia. Now,
even in Australia selling off the exact ends and ink
story as we sell the lamb, the wine, everything right
where we're going through the process in the UK now
to get the three strains we've got selling over here
into the UK, and you know, the pitch deck and
the pitch to the clinics and the people that will
(04:46):
buy from us over there is exactly the same. So
it's the same story we sell everything, and now we're
just winding cannabis into that.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Who do you have to convince about medicinal cannabis? Is
it the patient? Is it the doctor? Is it the government?
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Can I have all three?
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You can?
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah? Yeah, Look it's a mixture of all three and
it's yeah. I mean obviously the doctor needs to feel
secure in writing the prescription for the patient. And that
again is one of the things that the Ministry of
Health did well when they designed our regulations. Our rigs
are some of the toughest in the world. But we're
(05:28):
now using that as a selling point when we go overseas.
Is that we can sit there and say, look, it's
really really difficult to get these products to market. In
New Zealand, we meet all of those standards and so
you know you should have security in prescribing those products.
I think largely in part it has been a patient driven,
I guess scenario. We all saw, you know, the man
(05:51):
using cannabis and his parkinson shakes disappearing in the early
twenty tens on Facebook, and you know that was some
of the first insights for me that cannabis could potentially
be a therapeutic. So I think it has been borne
by the general population going to the doctrine saying hey,
I don't want to use as maniopioids, or they knocked
me around. Is there anything else I've heard about this?
I've got friends this has been beneficial for it helped
(06:14):
them through through chemo, and so yeah, I think it's
been a mixture of definitely patient driven. We've got to
convince the doctors, and then of course you can't do
anything unless unless the regulators say so. Yes, it is
a mixture of all three.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And how do you get around the drug testing, because
the drug testing wouldn't differentiate between medicinal cannabis and recreation
or would it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
No, And so that's again one of those complications right
that we're kind of stuck in a transition period, there
is some technology or there was some technology technology being
developed in America to be able to see whether or
not somebody was under the influence of cannabis whilst they
were driving, which would be beneficial if they can, if
they can execute on that to roll out in markets
(07:00):
like New Zealand and Australia, because even if you're under
the influence of medicinal cannabis, you don't want to be driving, right, No,
So I think I think again, like most things, as
as the market develops and these issues become more and
more prevalent, the industry will step up and find a solution.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Because you don't really want to encounter somebody who is
driving who has been tagging tramadol either. I mean, you're
not supposed to drive with tramadol, are you.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
No? No, well, a couple of times that I've had tramadol,
I definitely shouldn't have been behind a wheel, so and
I'm glad you won't totally. So I think again, We're
just we're just in transition a little bit. It's interesting,
you know, I've been told I haven't actually seen I've
never been to Tasmania, but apparently in Tasmani. You can
drive through Tasmani and just see poppies just for kilometers.
(07:51):
Australia is one of the biggest exporter exporters of poppies
to obviously make all all of the tremadols what have
you in the world. And there's no there's no fences
around it at all. That's just a fact of life
in Tasmania. It's the same in Spain as well, and
so it eventually probably at some point that will happen
with cannabis. But we can't do that now because if
there were fields of cannabis plants growing out in the open,
(08:12):
people will probably go and steal them, right.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So I could the fact it was like even the
leaves had to be burned on site and all the
waste disposed of otherwise they'll find heavily and as I
found out, there's not even anything in the leaves.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Wow, there's there's trace there is there can be trace elements,
there's there's there's more in the flower, there's there can
be traces. So yeah, I mean all of that, all
of that right, so some of that could be used
for food. There's arguments that the stems could be used
for fiber for building products. There's all sorts of things
that could be used with that waste. But because of
again where we've come from, where the whole thing was
(08:51):
bad and nobody should be using it again, we're all
in that transition period right now. But I think, yeah,
things are going to change significantly over the next next
few years. But it's an exciting time for New Zealand.
And yeah, good on the labor government bringing in and
good on this government for supporting the industry and tweaking
things in a positive way. And yeah, I think the
future is bright.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
How many, just finally, how many viable exporters do we
have who meet those stringent, stringent international rules and regulations?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
And is there you're not the cool sing it's well,
you don't finish a question first, No, it was going on.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
I was just thinking like, how many of them are
making money yet? Or is it still are they still
got the potential to grow? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:34):
I think Look ten years ago when we started researching
how we could set up this company, we couldn't even
get banking yeap. We were selling vaporizes with bitcoin online
because none of the banks in New Zealand will give
us banking for the first five years of the business's life,
we couldn't get insurance for the directors. Like, Okay, it's
(09:55):
taken a long time for us to get where we
are now. And so I kind of feel like, even
though it has been ten years since we started looking
into this thing, you know, at twenty seventeen we set
up the company, we're almost you know, just past days
zero really, and so there's a handful of companies that
are starting to succeed. And the awesome thing is that
(10:16):
a lot of them are the little guys that mortgage
the house, set up to grow, or you know, quit
the job and set up a business with their friends.
And it's it's the little guys that are succeeding that
have kind of networked together to either sell through companies
like mine or other companies to the export overseas. And
so look, I think I think those guys that are
(10:36):
doing that now have got some cash flow, will obviously succeed,
but I think it's it's just the beginning. I'm sure
some people that were involved in the wine industry and
the the early seventies will probably have better context on
how the thing evolves because it is as again as
David Seymour has said it is it is the wine
industry two point zero, so I think it was probably
a lot of there were There was definitely a lot
(10:57):
of money lost when the wine industry first began in
New Zealand, and a lot of people that thought it
would never evolve into anything but now a billion dollar
export and I think the same the same will a
curve for cannabis.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I thank you very much for your time, Mark Dave,
founder CEO NOWBU Pharmaceuticals. News Talk Set B fourteen.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
News Talk Set B from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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