SOME medical cannabis stakeholders are blaming the Cannabis Licensing Authority (CLA) for not being able to reap the millions they expected when the legal industry was being established in Jamaica.

A Forbes article, published on March 30, 2020 with the headline ‘Aphria, Aurora And Other Big Ag Cannabis Companies Pull Out Of Jamaica’, show some of the challenges facing the sector.

However, while speaking at a recent Jamaica Observer Business Forum, CLA Chairman LeVaughn Flynn argued that the agency will not take full responsibility for the losses experienced.

He said, “I do admit that there are challenges that we face and we’re a growing industry, we’re whistling and riding at the same time, we’re figuring things out as we go along and we’re committed to improving the process, but the CLA will not take full accountability for an investor who decided that they may have over-invested or they may have jumped in too deep too soon, each licensee as a business operator is responsible for managing and running their affairs accordingly.”

Flynn is also disputing some of the claims made in the Forbes article, stating that “there’s a key element that’s missing from that story which has absolutely nothing to do with CLA or Jamaica, it is more from a business operation.” He stressed, however, that he cannot speak specifically on the details which are missing from the article.

However, he made the point that “mergers, acquisitions and pull outs in today’s business environment is quite the norm, it’s not unique to Jamaica, not unique to our cannabis industry, so I don’t think there’s anything unique if two or three local cannabis companies decide to merge or pull out,” said Flynn.

“The challenges that we face in the Jamaican medical cannabis industry is not unique to Jamaica. Canada, which legalised in 2018 for adult use, they have a myriad of problems in their industry very similar to ours. In Canada it can take a year or longer to get a licence, which is similar to us,” he continued.

Furthermore, interim CEO at the CLA Daenia Ashpole sought to dispel claims that the CLA is impeding progress in the local medical cannabis industry.

“There’s a misconception in the local context that we’re not exporting medical cannabis. We have issued since 2018 even while we await the promulgation of the official import export regulations which are soon to be promulgated in the next couple of months, we would have facilitated through interim measures the export of 113 export authorisations. For 2021, we issued 62 ganja export authorisation and 6 hemp export authorisation. We have also facilitated the transhipment of ganja from St Vincent and the Grenadines heading to Germany through Jamaica,” Ashpole stated.

Speaking specifically to the Forbes article which stated that “Canadian Licensed Producers (LP) of cannabis are leaving Jamaica in droves,” Ashpole refuted that “we’ve issued 92 licences, so think about two or three from 92 looking at the percentages and we have over 60 active licences.”

She further noted that “the cannabis industry doesn’t stand alone, it is also subject to Jamaica’s commitment on anti-money laundering as well as the island’s commitment on counter financing of terrorism and so because of that you walk the client through the requirements.”

She explained that these requirements sometimes delay an applicant from receving export authorisation approval for more than a year. But she noted that the CLA isn’t always at fault.

“There are many moving parts, they could be delay on the part of the client themselves in terms of satisfying the requirements, there could be delay on the part of the CLA in terms of due diligence and the know your client requirements. Notwithstanding, internally we have implemented standard operating procedures (SOPs) to ensure that we do not have a situation where it’s more burdensome than necessary because the idea is to have the legitimate cannabis industry be more lucrative than the illegitimate cannabis industry,” said Ashpole.

With that said, she told the Jamaica Observer that an applicant can receive an export authorisation from the CLA in as soon as 48 hours subject to testing requirements being met.

At the same time, Flynn admitted that “as we’ve established with any new industry, there’s going to be teething pains, there’s going to be a learning curve that you have to go through; so when you take that on a macro level of establishing a national industry, or even a global industry in some respects, there are going to be to be challenges that we will have to overcome. Sometimes the narrative is that ‘Jamaica naa gwan wid nuh’n’ or CLA a hold up progress’. Every medical cannabis country in the world that I’m aware of has many of the challenges that we go through, the question now is: How are we going to plot a path to success and that goes back to the vision that the board established? We have three clear outcomes: economic enablement, contributing to a public health and social inclusion.”