India can be a global leader in development of Cannabis Biopharma products: Vikramm Mitra, Delta Botanicals & Research

Shahid Akhter, editor, ETHealthworld spoke to?Vikramm Mitra, Founder and Director, Delta Botanicals and Research, to know more about the challenges and opportunities associated with hemp industry in India.

Cannabis: Global trends

The global trend of cannabis has shifted dramatically starting from the 1980s, all that started with America's war on drugs, which basically started with the murder of a DEA agent in Mexico, spiralled into a whole new clamping down of the entire plant in every dimension as possible. Starting from that day, America has been at the forefront of it, but at the same time America has been the first country too, to have legalized it and bringing cannabis back again to the forefront of healthcare, automobiles and to different other things.

Cannabis was legalized in more than 30 states and 18 have legalized cannabis for recreational use in the US currently. Its neighbour, Canada has federally legalized cannabis both recreationally and industrially and for medicinal use too. Although, these countries were the first countries to object the use of cannabis because of its relevance and importance in different demographics where they had gone to establish sovereignty.

But slowly, the entire tide changed in support of cannabis, and these countries proactively went ahead and did it. Another country which has been again at the medical forefront of cannabis is Israel. Now, Isra is a pioneer of sorts and in fact, we can say that Dr. Raphael Mechoulam and Dr. Deidi Mieri were the first people who actually found out about the endocannabinoid system and about the uniqueness of each and every strain therapeutically with respect to diseases. Now that is something fantastic because no such country in the world has got such, such leaps of data and research medically when it comes to cannabis.

Cannabis: Indian scenario

India is a sleeping giant when it comes to the hemp industry. Our country has, have had laws pertaining to cannabis even before since the 1980s, when the USA government pressurized us into clamping down on Cannabis. Even after that, we have a very good policy in fact and that is called the NDPS Policy and in order to enforce that policy we have the NDPS Act and Rules of 1985. Our Indian government has been very supportive and clear on the laws pertaining to medical cannabis related drug development. There are many sections within the NDPs act that allows for the Industrial, medical and scientific use of cannabis.

At the same time our country India, is very much similar to the USA, wherein cannabis is federally illegal, but states have been given the leeway. Section 8 read with section 10 of the NDPS Act allows every state government to formulate its own laws related to cannabis Cultivation, Warehousing, Processing and Interstate Export and Import.

The central body, which is the Central Bureau of Narcotics, it comes under the GOI’s Department of Revenue and has the responsibility of giving out licenses also identifies medical hemp extract as a manufactured narcotic drug in the manufactured narcotic drug list Serial number sixteen. Although, section 8 read with section 10 of the NDPS Act allows the different state governments to formulate and regulate cannabis laws within their jurisdiction. Only a handful of states in the country have gone ahead and done that. Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jammu are a handful of those states, which are planning to have a cannabis cultivation license, or have certain policies in place for the same.

Coming to the case of Uttarakhand which is the first state to legalize cannabis cultivation for industrial purposes, although has a licensure in place but the 0.3 % THC limit has become a bane of contention and has stymied the industry in its budding stage. India being an equatorial country cannot support low THC cannabis cultivation, because the presence of THC in the plants is due to high UV index and high humidity.

The laws that were made in Uttarakhand was basically taken from the U S Farm Bill of 2015. Now, although the state proactively went ahead, it forgot to follow and implement the UNODC guidelines on cannabis analysis and differentiation.

According to the UNODC guidelines, there is a procedure to differentiate in between drug type cannabis and fibre type cannabis. And the steps are clearly mentioned in page number 20 of the same manual.

Cannabis: Way forward

The way forward is to basically bridge this gap of knowledge and also communication by either having or establishing a think tank with experts or an expert level committee with bureaucrats, lawmakers and business holders.

So that business holders can communicate their on-ground realities and also communicate their issues on ground effectively. And at the same time, it gives a podium for the lawmakers and bureaucrats to understand the situation on ground faced by the businesses and how to best help them and to create laws that can help in the advancement of the hemp industry in India.

A think tank, similar to that of NITI-AAYOG or an expert level think tanks that basically gives out suggestions which helps the country and the lawmakers and the businesses all together in establishing a proper industry of hemp in India.

Delta Botanicals & Research Pvt. Ltd.

During my college days in Australia, I realized the different and varied potential of cannabis at the Nimbin Mardi Gras. Here I was exposed to the different uses of cannabis. Apart from its recreational use, I saw that cannabis was not just medicine, but was used as food, fuel, clothes and even bricks and bio composites, it was too exciting.

Although it excited me a lot but at the same time what didn't sit well with me was the fact that the place where I belong from that is Odisha, has had a long history with cannabis culturally and historically. But nothing was done back home to find out the potential of this plant and how or what if cannabis could help in reviving the economy or be of any benefit to the stat.

Coming back a year after that I was told that my aunt was suffering with glioblastoma multiforme, which is one of the most aggressive forms of brain tumour and she had only a couple of days left. Knowing that this plant could help, I still was not able to talk about this. There was no way to open a communication with the family to even suggest that this plant might be of help.

That was the last pushing point for me. That's when I decided to take it upon myself and made it my responsibility to work on Cannabis and I decided to be at the helm of things, form a company to work on it. Delta Botanicals and Research was born in collaboration with Dr. Gary Starr, MD.

Delta has always identified the unique potential that India offers for cannabis based phytopharmaceutical drug development. India also has the second largest pain population of osteoarthritic knee pain. Seeing the nascent need here we at Delta have partnered up with the top research institutions in India, under the Department of Biotechnology and are conducting R&D on cannabis-based drugs for Osteoarthritic knee pain.

At the same time, Delta has partnered up with research institutions under ICAR to map cannabis landraces and phenotyping the landraces in the Shivalik regions of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand. Lastly, we as a company also provide consultation and advisory services to new and upcoming start-ups, established companies like Fortune 500 companies and International Companies as well who are planning to enter the Indian hemp industry. Our company provides a complete end to end solution with respect to all the aspects of cannabis cultivation we provide in depth GRC support. We provide complete handholding services and basically everything that is required to successfully setup launch and run your legally compliant hemp business in India.