Lumby-based medical marijuana company still awaiting Health Canada approval

LUMBY – It’s been slow going for a company looking to grow medical marijuana in Lumby.

Darcy Bomford, the CEO of True Leaf Medicine Inc. (chaired by former B.C. premier Mike Harcourt) says the company is still waiting for full approval from Health Canada.

“It’s been almost a year waiting for this one location,” Bomford says. “It’s a little frustrating.”

He says True Leaf is one of the first companies in Canada to apply for approval to build a medical marijuana production facility under the country’s revamped system, and suspects Health Canada is “bogged down with applications.”

True Leaf already has the green light from the Village of Lumby, which granted the company a needed development variance on the building.

“Lumby has been 100 per cent behind us from the very beginning. We continue to get positive comments from Lumby,” Bomford says.

As the company awaits its final approval from Health Canada, it plans to launch a line of hemp-based pet products. Bomford says hemp is one of the highest sources of natural Omega-3 fatty acids and is very nutritional for dogs.

Nutritional dog treats will likely the the first product to come online later this year, followed by other supplements and cannabis medications. True Leaf will source the raw hemp product from elsewhere in Canada.

True Leaf is now listed on the Canadian stock exchange under the symbol MJ, and on German stock exchanges in Frankfurt, Berlin and Munich.

The company hopes to have ready-to-build approval on its Lumby production facility sometime this year. The facility would have an annual output of around1,620 pounds of dried marijuana. The product would then be shipped to medical marijuana patients through Health Canada’s mail order system.

To contact the reporter for this story, email Charlotte Helston at chelston@infonews.ca or call 250-309-5230. To contact the editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.