Wade Forrest has spent 3.5 years as the operations manager and master grower at Glasshouse Botanics in Pembroke, Ont. Previous work at Biobest Canada, Aphria and Zenabis, coupled with his science-based education from Acadia University, has prepared him for commercial cannabis cultivation within the rigors of EU-GMP. The following questions were crafted specifically for Forrest by three-time Top Grower Award judge, Stacie Hollingworth of Safari Flower.
GO: What are the challenges when transitioning into growing GMP flower for international medical markets, and has it impacted your growing style or technique?
WF: There are several challenges that we have had to work to overcome. From the insistent availability of pesticides from country to country within the EU, to the stricter and varying PHI period for pesticide applications. The extreme level of supplier control, which includes supplier qualification, lot number tracking, etc. Every regulation and requirement that has come our way via EU-GMP certification has made cultivation just a bit more challenging! We’ve had to adapt in many ways to ensure we’re meeting all requirements and maintaining yield and quality.
GO: What were the significant challenges faced when joining a team that was already operational?
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WF: The challenge was as you would expect, learning to conform to a different spin on the same rules and regulations. Learning the skillset and knowledge base on the staff and gaining the trust so that necessary changes that had to be made were met with acceptance as opposed to reluctancy.
Glasshouse Botanics is the third LP I’ve worked at with Aphria and Zenabis being the others, all of which have/had EU-GMP in their sights, so the push here for EU-GMP was nothing new to me. Thankfully (for me), GHB was at an earlier stage in the EU-GMP push, so I was looked at to help guide not only the cultivation and operational side of conforming to EU-GMP standards, but also a subject matter expert on how EU-GMP restrictions intersect with cultivation practices. It’s been an interesting and enlightening journey thus far!
GO: What benefits and challenges do you find working with an LP that was established with a strong QA mindset?
WF: The clear benefit of a strong QA mindset is that we’re always able to satisfy even the strictest auditors from all over the world. This has been proven again and again. The challenge that presents itself is in the legwork needed to ensure any necessary change is completely and thoroughly researched, risk assessed and presented to satisfy all aspects of the Change Control process.
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Kudos to the QA team here at GHB who have been able to bridge the gap in their mindset towards quality with the success and progression of our operation, where even though they ask the tough questions and expect complete answers, they understand that we’re working with live assets that will at time present challenges to us that require immediate action. The whole team works tirelessly to ensure that we’re able to do what is necessary for plant health and product quality, but in a manner that checks all the boxes for EU-GMP.
Catch our Christmas 2024 message with some holiday music as we wind down another semester. Thanks to our students, staff, donors, show guests, and event attendees for helping to recover the magic of the classroom.
“A proud product of public education, John Coleman received his undergraduate degree in history from Western Connecticut State University. Alas, that was to be the end of his flattering academic titles. Unwilling to once again become a debt slave to usurers, his graduate studies were scotched at the half-way point. John wasted over a decade of his professional life attempting to establish a high school for a community who took neither themselves nor their worldview seriously. Burned by these unseemly experiences, on Holy Saturday of 2013 Apocatastasis Institute was founded.“
Rudolf Steiner, whose teachings led to anthroposophical medicine, biodynamic farming, and the Waldorf school, said that the heart is a seven-sided regular form that sits in an imaginary box in the chest. “Regular” means that all seven sides are identical. Plato described five platonic solids, and Steiner said there was a sixth one. He also said that the heart is not a pump.
This claim was vindicated by Frank Chester, who figured out how to design a seven-sided regular form. This sixth platonic solid is now called the chestahedron, and it fits perfectly inside a cube at an angle of 36 degrees off center to the left, the exact same angle that the heart sits in the chest. When submerged in water and spun, two counter-rotating vortices are formed. Recent scientific studies have shown that these two vortices facilitate the closing of the valves. And when the vortices don’t form properly, blood clots will appear.
The man who unfolded a thousand hearts, Paco Torrent Guasp, discovered that the heart is a single muscular band folded over itself in a spiraling pattern. The heart itself is a vortex of tissue. It is not a pump, it is a vortex machine.
For centuries it was believed that matter can only exist in three states. Such as water, which can exist as liquid, ice, and vapor. Human cells are seventy percent water but most of this water is not in any of these three states. We have recently learned that with water, there is a fourth state. This fourth state is called the plasma state, gel phase, exclusion zone or structured water. And this is what pushes your blood through the entire cardiovascular system.
Fueled by Infrared energy from its environment, the water in our body becomes an electrical propulsion system. A certain percentage of the water in our body becomes structured water, and the rest remains normal liquid water, or bulk water. The structured water becomes negatively charged and forms the gelatinous outer walls of our capillaries, veins, and arteries. These negatively charged outer walls continuously propel the positively charged bulk water within, carrying the blood with it. This propulsion system will run indefinitely so long as it stays charged. And the way you charge it, is with the earth’s electromagnetic field, infrared energy, and positive thought.
The work of Dr. Masaru Emoto has scientifically demonstrated that water exposed to loving human words and thoughts is transformed into its natural hexagonal shape. It becomes structured at a molecular level based on our positive intention. This new model shows that it is the blood that pumps the heart, not the other way around. And in order to keep the flow strong and healthy, our best medicine is to connect to the earth, get sunlight, love ourselves, and love one another with physical touch.
Viktor Schauberger spent his life studying water and found that in the natural world, water will always create vortices along its path. Schauberger learned that this spiral action is what structures the water in nature. And that when subjected to modern man made water treatment, it loses its structure. Schauberger’s work led him to believe that one could generate energy out of a vortex. He described it as an energy implosion as opposed to an energy explosion.
Dr Tom Cowan, who has written about this in, Human Heart Cosmic Heart, has an interesting theory which may explain the saying, “a heart of gold.”
Another recent discovery, is that gold in it’s purest form does not appear to be gold at all. Under the right conditions, normal physical gold can be transformed into a fine white powder known as monoatomic gold. This monoatomic gold has been studied by multiple advanced laboratories and it has very strange properties. It can be made to levitate and disappear. Monoatomic gold is superconductive. And many would argue that this is what the alchemists were after.
One of the ways of turning metallic gold into monoatomic gold is by putting it through a high-speed vortex. When this transformation occurs, there is a flash of light, and a forty-four percent loss in weight. Dr Cowan believes that the trace amounts of gold in our blood is transformed into monoatomic gold as it travels through the double vortices in the heart. Creating the spark of life.
There are hints of a hidden science being studied and suppressed that involves counter-rotational spin. The NAZIs most classified project, Die Glocke, involved the counter-rotational spin of a mysterious fuel mix that included liquid mercury.
This vortex system creates an energetic field around the heart. It creates the heat within our body. And it raises a whole new set of questions about spin.
The following is a transcript of this video.(See Bottom of Article)
Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of history’s greatest novelists, but he is also one of history’s greatest psychologists. His stories contain depictions of characters who span the spectrum of human personality, from those of abject evil, to those saintly in nature. Friedrich Nietzsche was so impressed with the works of Dostoevsky that in a letter to a friend he stated that Dostoevsky’s novels contain “the most valuable psychological material I know” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Letter to Georg Brandes). In this video we explore the life events that transformed Dostoevsky into a tortured genius and helped him attain his unmatched understanding of the human psyche.
In the first months of 1849, Dostoevsky, then 27 years old, was considered a writer who had not lived up to his early potential. Three years prior he had published the book Poor Folk which catapulted him to fame in the Russian literary scene. But his subsequent works were panned by critics and largely ignored by the public and by 1849 many saw him as washed-up. Dostoevsky’s career, however, had hardly started. In the decades that followed he would write some of history’s greatest works of fiction such as Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, and Demons.
What transformed Dostoevsky from a writer of mediocre success, to one of the most famous authors of all time was a five-year descent into a personal hell. Dostoevsky was arrested, placed in solitary confinement, forced to endure a mock execution, and imprisoned in Siberia for four years where he lived in filth and squalor with criminals of the most depraved kind. This experience made Dostoevsky intimately familiar with both the darkest depths and the greatest heights of the human soul and it provided him with ample material for his stories.
The cause of Dostoevsky’s five years of misfortune began with his decision to join the Petrashevsky circle, a weekly social gathering named after its host. At these gatherings participants discussed the social and political ideas that were shaping Russia and Europe. By 1848 the number of people who attended the circle grew and it morphed into a sort of debate club. Dostoevsky, as a pathologically shy and socially awkward individual, spent more time listening to other people debating, than actively participating, or as he stated regarding his participation in the group:
“I am far from being a loudmouth, and everybody who knows me will say the same. I do not like to speak noisily and lengthily even with friends, of whom I have a very few, and still more in society, where I have the reputation of being an uncommunicative, reserved, unsociable person.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
At the time Dostoevsky joined the Petrashevsky circle these gatherings were not illegal. But in 1848, as revolutions broke out across Europe, Russia’s ruling class became nervous. Believing that European political and social ideas could initiate unrest in Russia, the Russian government began to clamp down on freedom of speech and adopted an increasingly censorious policy. The Petrashevsky circle was infiltrated by the secret police and in April of 1849 members of the group were rounded up and arrested. Dostoevsky was taken from his home in the middle of the night and locked away in the Peter and Paul Fortress where he was held in solitary confinement for six months awaiting sentence.
“When I found myself in the fortress, I thought that the end had come, and that I would not last three days…”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
Dostoevsky, however, quickly learned that he could adapt to the horrid conditions of a 19th century maximum security prison, and he discovered that as humans we possess untapped reservoirs of energy and an unrealized capacity for resilience. Most of us do not make use of these capacities unless fate forces our hand, but when it does, we discover that we can cope with challenges that far exceed what we previously believed to be possible. Or as Dostoevsky wrote in a letter from his prison cell:
“. . . a good disposition depends on myself alone. Man has infinite reserves of toughness and vitality; I really did not think there was so much, but now I know it from experience.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Letter to Mikhail Dostoevsky: July 18, 1849
In September of 1849, the Commission of Inquiry into the Petrashevsky circle completed its investigation. They concluded that the members of the circle “were in general notable for a spirit of opposition to the government, and a desire to alter the existing state of things.” (Report from The Commission of Inquiry into the Petrashevsky Circle). Dostoevsky and fourteen others were brought to Semenovsky Square in St. Petersburg where their sentence was announced: death by firing squad, to be met out immediately.
After hearing these words Dostoevsky believed he was minutes away from death. In a state of shock he turned to another of the condemned men and said “We shall be with Christ”, but the man, who was an atheist, smiled at Dostoevsky, pointed to the ground and said “a handful of dust.” Dostoevsky then experienced what he would later in life call a mystic terror, a description of which is found in his novel The Idiot where the character Prince Myshkin recounts a story about a man who believed he was five minutes away from death by execution:
“. . .he divided up the time that still remained for him to live; two minutes to say goodbye to his companions; two minutes for inward meditation one last time; and the remainder to look around him one final time. . .He was going to die at twenty-seven full of health and vigour. . . After saying goodbye, he began the period of two minutes reserved for inward meditation. He knew in advance what he would think about: he wished to focus his attention firmly, and as rapidly and clearly as possible, on what was going to happen: right now, he was existing and living; in three minutes something would occur; someone or something, but who, where? . . .Nearby rose a church whose golden cupola sparkled under a brilliant sun. . .he could not take his eyes away; those rays seemed to him to be that new nature that was to be his own, and he imagined that in three minutes he would become part of them… His uncertainty and his repulsion before the unknown, which was going to overtake him immediately, was terrible.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot
The fifteen condemned men were lined up to be executed in groups of three. Dostoevsky was in the second group. When the first group was positioned in front of the firing squad a cart arrived delivering a letter from the Tsar commuting the death sentence. Dostoevsky, however, was not a free man, as his death sentence was replaced by a four-year sentence in a Siberian military prison camp. On returning to his cell in the Peter and Paul Fortress Dostoevsky wrote a letter to his brother describing how flirting with death had change him:
“When I look back on my past and think how much time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors, laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I sinned against my heart and soul – then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness! If youth only knew! Now, in changing my life, I am reborn in a new form.”
Letter to Mikhail Dostoevsky, 1849, Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
The relief Dostoevsky experienced soon turned to despair as he was shipped off to Siberia where he would spend the next four years of his life surrounded by criminals, living in horrid conditions, eating the meagerest of rations and spending his days toiling in hard labor. Dostoevsky noticed, however, that none of his fellow prisoners seemed disturbed by the filth and squalor in which they lived, and this led him to realize that one thing that defines man is his great ability to acclimate to even the harshest of conditions. Or as he wrote in Notes from a Dead House, which is an account of his life in prison:
“Man is a creature who gets use to everything, and that, I think, is the best definition of him.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
Dostoevsky found that one of the most exhausting elements of prison life was the constant presence of other people. No matter what he did, or where he went, he was always surrounded by inmates or guards. The inability to escape from the gaze of others drove home to Dostoevsky something those in freedom take for granted, namely the value of a solitary existence, or as he remarked:
“I could never have imagined, for instance, how terrible and agonizing it would be never once for a single minute to be alone for the years of my imprisonment.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
But while always physically surrounded by others, Dostoevsky’s four years of prison was a time of unending spiritual solitude. He was, in other words, very much psychologically alone and he never developed strong friendships. At first Dostoevsky found his psychological solitude to be a burden, but over time he recognized that this solitude had the power to initiate a radical self-transformation, or as he wrote:
“I remember that in all that time, despite having hundreds of fellow prisoners, I was in terrible solitude, and I finally came to love that solitude. Spiritually alone, I revisited all my past life, went through everything down to the smallest detail, pondered my past, judged myself alone strictly and implacably, and sometimes even blessed my fate for having sent me that solitude, without which neither that judgement of myself nor that strict review of my past life could have been done. . .I outlined a program for the whole of my future and resolved to follow it firmly. A blind faith arose in me that I would and could fulfil it all…I waited, I called for freedom to come quickly; I wanted to test myself anew, in a new struggle.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
Time in prison also taught Dostoevsky of man’s great capacity for evil. Not only was he forced to live with criminals of the most depraved sort, but observing the prison guards also taught him of the relationship between power and evil. Dostoevsky came to realize that when an individual is granted too much power over others, the inevitable result is cruelty. Many of the guards who worked at the prison camp were normal, decent men when they began their careers, but the power they possessed over the prisoners consumed them and warped their characters. In Notes from a Dead House Dostoevsky warned that those who are corrupted by the evil that arises from too much power and control over others rarely recover from this deformity, or as he wrote:
“A man who has once experienced this power, this unlimited lordship over the body, blood, and spirit of a man just like himself. . .a man who has experienced this power and the full possibility of inflicting the ultimate humiliation upon another being. . .somehow involuntarily loses control of his sensations. Tyranny is a habit; it is endowed with development, and develops finally into an illness. I stand upon this, that the best of men can, from habit, become coarse and stupefied to the point of brutality. Blood and power intoxicate: coarseness and depravity develop; the most abnormal phenomena become accessible and, finally, sweet to the mind and feelings. Man and citizen perish forever in the tyrant, and the return to human dignity. . .becomes almost impossible for him.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
It wasn’t only the dark side of man that Dostoevsky became familiar with in prison, he was also awakened to man’s boundless capacity for good. When he first entered prison Dostoevsky despised most of his fellow prisoners and looked down upon them. He saw little of worth in these criminals and as an educated member of the nobility, he doubted that the uneducated and often illiterate serfs he was forced to live with would have anything to teach him. This view, however, changed as over the years he learned that under the rough persona of some of these prisoners resided a greatness of character and an advanced moral integrity. Uneducated by way of book, these men were miles ahead of most others in terms of wisdom of world and particularly of the inner world of the psyche, or as Dostoevsky wrote:
“In prison it sometimes happened that you would know a man for several years and think he was a beast, not a man, and despise him. And suddenly a chance moment would come when his soul, on an involuntary impulse, would open up and you would see in it such riches, feeling, heart, such a clear understanding of his own and others’ suffering, as if your own eyes had been opened, and in the first moment you would not even believe what you saw and heard.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
Prison also made Dostoevsky acutely aware of man’s need for meaning and purpose. This awareness stemmed from his observation that almost all his fellow prisoners adopted some form of hobby or side-business to escape from the monotony of hard labor. Dostoevsky points out that these hobbies were technically outlawed, but prison officials looked the other way in the realization that if they rid the prisoners of these purpose and meaning giving activities, the prisoners would riot. Recognizing how crucial meaning and purpose is to psychological well-being Dostoevsky suggested that if you wanted to drive a man mad, or force him to take his own life, all you have to do is compel him to spend his days labouring in some form of pointless work, such as moving a pile of rocks from one spot to another and then back again. This meaningless and purposeless existence would be an unbearable torture or as Dostoevsky wrote in Notes from a Dead House:
“It occurred to me once that if they wanted to crush, to annihilate a man totally, to punish him with the most terrible punishment, so that the most dreadful murderer would shudder at this punishment and be frightened of it beforehand, they would only need to give the labor a character of complete, total uselessness and meaninglessness. . . if he were forced, for instance, to pour water from one tub into another and from the other into the first, to grind sand, to carry a pile of dirt from one place to another and back again – I think the prisoner would . . . die rather than endure such humiliation, shame, and torment. To be sure, such a punishment would turn into torture, revenge, and would be meaningless, because it would achieve no reasonable purpose.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
Decades later, Dostoevsky’s thought experiment was put into practice in a Nazi concentration camp. The prisoners of this camp worked in a factory, but the factory was destroyed by a bombing campaign. Not wanting to give the prisoners a respite from hard labour, the prison officials forced them to perform the type of meaningless work which Dostoevsky had imagined. Eugene Heimler, a survivor of this concentration camp explained how the commander of the camp “ordered a few hundred of us to move sand from one end of the factory to another, and when we had completed this task we were ordered to move it back to the original place. At first we thought that our guards must have made a mistake, but it soon became clear they had not. From then on, day after day, week after week, we had to carry sand to and fro, until gradually people’s minds began to give way. Even those who had been working steadily in the factory before it was bombed were affected, for the work had some use and purpose, even if it was for the Germans, but in face of a completely meaningless task people started to lose their sanity. Some went berserk and tried to run away, only to be shot by the guards, others ran against the electrified wire fence and burnt themselves to death.” (Eugene Heimler, Mental Illness and Social Work)
Prison life also taught Dostoevsky that hope, in addition to meaning and purpose, is crucial to psychological health and integral in sustaining a man through hardship. Dostoevsky observed that prisoners who lacked any hope for a better future, struggled to survive the mental challenge of prison and if the capacity for hope was completely destroyed this was a sign that madness or death was not far off. For example, one of Dostoevsky’s fellow inmates lost all hope in the future and in this state of utter despair he attacked one of the men in charge of the prison, seeing a martyr’s end as better than a hopeless life.
“Having gone out of his mind, the Bible-reading prisoner. . .who attacked the major with a brick, was probably also one of those in despair, those whose last hope had abandoned them; and since it is impossible to live with no hope at all, he invented a way out for himself in a voluntary, almost artificial martyrdom. . . No living man lives without some sort of goal and striving towards it. Having lost both goal and hope, a man often turns into a monster from anguish.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from a Dead House
The hardships that Dostoevsky endured between 1849 and 1854 also taught him important lessons about nervous disorders, of which Dostoevsky had suffered immensely for most of his life. For example, he was consumed by debilitating social anxiety, so much so that he once fainted upon being introduced to a beautiful woman at a party. Dostoevsky was also a hypochondriac. He had a neurotic fear that he would fall into a deep sleep, be mistaken for dead and buried alive. This fear was so intense that he left notes around his home to inform anyone who might find him dead to wait several days before burying him. He even went through a period where he was so panic stricken that he felt himself to be dying, or as he said in conversation with a friend:
“Two years before Siberia, at the time of my various literary difficulties and quarrels, I was the victim of some sort of strange and unbearably torturing nervous disorder. I cannot tell you what these hideous sensations were; but I remember them vividly; it often seemed to me that I was dying, and the truth is – real death came and then went away again.”
Conversation with Vsevolod Solovyev, Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
After emerging from prison, Dostoevsky was able to inform his brother that his five years of immense ordeal had cured him of his neurotic ways:
“If you believe there is still anything remaining in me of that nervousness, that apprehensiveness, that tendency to suspect that I had every conceivable illness, as in Petersburg, please change your mind, there is not a trace of that, as of many other things.”
Letter to Mikhail Dostoevsky, 1855, Cited in Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Years of Ordeal, 1850-1859
Above all else what Dostoevsky’s arrest, time in solitary confinement, mock execution, and four-year prison sentence taught him is that a man is steeled by suffering. Comfort and ease are a recipe for weakness and mediocrity. While those who voluntarily, or forced by fate, do battle with adversity rid themselves of their petty weaknesses and ascend to a greater level of their potential. Without enduring his five years of personal hell Dostoevsky would have been incapable of writing the great works of fiction he is most famous for and would likely have remained a neurotic man and a writer who never lived up to his potential.
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
(GLOBE NEWSWIRE) Salinas, California – Lowell Farms Inc. a California-born cannabis company with advanced production capabilities including extraction, manufacturing, and distribution, announces the appointment of Philippe Faraut as Chief Financial Officer of the Company, effective immediately.
“We are excited to welcome Philippe as our new CFO,” said Mark Ainsworth, CEO of Lowell Farms Inc. “His extensive financial expertise and leadership across diverse industries make him the ideal addition to our team. Philippe’s proven ability to drive growth and innovation positions Lowell for an exciting new chapter as we continue to expand and elevate our presence in the cannabis industry.”
Philippe Faraut is a highly accomplished financial executive with a dynamic career spanning multiple industries. Most recently, he served as CFO of iAnthus, a leader in regulated cannabis operations. Prior to that, as CFO of Irwin Naturals, Philippe successfully led the company’s IPO and its expansion into the emerging psychedelic mental health care sector. His extensive background includes leadership roles as Managing Partner at Bastiat Partners, Chief Investment Officer at Knight Global, and senior positions at Merrill Lynch, The Sage Group, and Intrepid Investment Bankers. Philippe holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson and a Bachelor of Science from the Glion Institute of Higher Education.
Mr. Faraut steps into the CFO role, succeeding CEO Mark Ainsworth, who had been serving as Interim Chief Financial Officer.
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ABOUT LOWELL FARMS INC.
Lowell Farms Inc. is a California-based cannabis company with advanced production capabilities supporting the supply chain, including extraction, manufacturing, brand sales, marketing, and distribution. Lowell Farms has an exclusive portfolio of award-winning brands, including Lowell Herb Co, House Weed, Moon, Cypress Cannabis, and Original Pot Co. for licensed retailers statewide.
(GLOBE NEWSWIRE) Vancouver – Rubicon Organics Inc. a licensed producer focused on cultivating and selling organic certified and premium cannabis, is pleased to announce the promotion of Chief Commercial Officer to Chief Operating Officer.
Appointment of Chief Operating Officer
The Company is pleased to announce the promotion of Melanie Ramsey to COO effective January 1, 2025. This promotion reflects her exceptional leadership, dedication, and contributions to the growth and success of the Company. Since joining Rubicon Organics in 2018, Ms. Ramsey has been instrumental in building our premium house of brands and product innovation. She played a pivotal role in aligning commercial strategies with operational excellence, which has significantly enhanced the Company’s performance and competitive position as well as driving several of our strategic initiatives for growth.
In her new role as COO, Ms. Ramsey will oversee the Company’s day-to-day operations and continue to execute on its strategic growth initiatives, ensuring operational efficiency and scalability as the Company enters its next phase of development.
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Margaret Brodie, Chief Executive Officer of Rubicon Organics, stated: “We are thrilled to promote Melanie Ramsey to Chief Operating Officer. Over the past six years, she has demonstrated unwavering commitment and has been a driving force behind our commercial and operational success. Mel’s proven leadership and deep understanding of our business make her uniquely suited to transition to this critical role as we continue to grow and deliver value to our shareholders.”
Melanie Ramsey commented: “I am honored to take on this new role and grateful for the trust and support of our leadership team and Board. I look forward to building on the strong foundation we have established and leading our operations as we continue to execute our strategic priorities and achieve sustainable growth.”
About Melanie Ramsey
With over 25 years of global experience, Ms. Ramsey has held senior leadership roles at renowned companies, including Diageo, Beiersdorf, and now Rubicon Organics. She has driven success across commercial and operational functions, consistently delivering growth, operational excellence, and strategic transformation in diverse markets and industries worldwide.
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ABOUT RUBICON ORGANICS INC.
Rubicon Organics Inc. is the global brand leader in premium organic cannabis products. The Company is vertically integrated through its wholly owned subsidiary Rubicon Holdings Corp, a licensed producer. Rubicon Organics is focused on achieving industry leading profitability through its premium cannabis flower, product innovation and brand portfolio management, including three flagship brands: its super-premium brand Simply Bare™ Organic, its premium brand 1964 Supply Co.™, its cannabis wellness brand Wildflower™ in addition to the Company’s mainstream brand Homestead Cannabis Supply™.
The Company ensures the quality of its supply chain by cultivating, processing, branding and selling organic certified, sustainably produced, super-premium cannabis products from its state-of-the-art glass roofed facility located in Delta, BC, Canada.
The Good Shroom, a Canadian cannabis company, reported $691,382 in net revenue for the quarter ended October 31, 2024 (Q1 2025), but a net loss of $55,222.
This is a year-over-year decrease from the $1.3 million in net revenue and $92,586 in net profit in the company’s Q1 2024 report and $40,603 in net profit in the previous quarter (Q4 2024).
The Good Shroom Company (TGSC) recently reported net profits of $40,000 for 2024.
The company attributes its weaker performance in this most recent quarter primarily to Quebec’s biannual product call system, where it sells the majority of its products. It also recently returned $35,913 worth of cannabis products (plus the associated return fee) from the province of Alberta during Q1 2025. The Good Shroom also recently began selling products in PEI.
From the company’s press release: “This system means that one underperforming product call can result in weaker performance across two consecutive quarters. This was the case for TGSC, as the recent “rationalization” of offerings by the cannabis board of the province affected the entire market, including the Company.”
As a result of this rationalization, TGSC says it received a return of $29,622 plus associated fees and lost sales opportunities during late Q4, Q1 and early Q2. The company says this is the first time this outcome has occurred in its history and expects to rebound with the upcoming product call, beginning in late Q2 and continuing into Q3.
The company says the “significant setbacks” experienced this quarter “are not deeply pernicious.”
Of The Good Shroom’s $824,225 of revenue (before $132,843 in excise), $810,652 were from the sale of cannabis products, while $13,573 were wellness beverages (part of its mushroom business). $818,953 was sold in Canada, while $5,273 was sold in the US.
The company was first licensed as a micro processor in November 2019 before scaling up to a standard processing licence in October 2023. The Good Shroom recently released a THC-infused oral pouch under the Dyp brand in the Alberta market, and it expects to release it into the Ontario market in January 2025.
As at October 31, 2023, the Company had a working capital of $515,672.
New York marijuana cultivators and processors are pushing Governor Kathy Hochul to approve a measure that would simplify how they handle tax filings, switching the system to an annual basis.
Currently, businesses are required to pay a 9% marijuana excise tax on wholesale prices every quarter. The change would be a minor adjustment to existing regulations but one that could offer significant relief to those struggling in an already challenging market, according to Jaunty co-founder and CEO Nick Guarino.
Companies like Jaunty, alongside Ayrloom and Alliance, collaborated with Park Strategies to draft the measure, receiving support from Assemblywoman Donna Lupardo and State Senator Jeremy Cooney. The measure already passed through the state legislature.
The proposed annual tax structure is similar to the approach that has been successfully implemented in the craft alcohol industry, according to Aryloom president Mack Hueber. He maintained that it makes sense to use the same strategy for cannabis businesses if it is effective for craft beers.
According to Hueber, the current quarterly tax schedule creates unnecessary financial strain for cultivators, wholesalers, and processors who are required to submit their tax payments within 20 days after the quarter ends, yet retailers have 30 days to settle their invoices. This misalignment often forces businesses to pay taxes before they’ve received the revenue needed to cover the payments, leaving them vulnerable to late fees.
Hueber pointed out that this adjustment would give businesses the time to collect funds, making it easier to pay taxes without jeopardizing cash flow. Many cannabis businesses are already under significant financial pressure, and he believes fixing the tax payment timing is a logical and easy solution. Guarino added that shifting to annual payments would alleviate the struggle of meeting quarterly deadlines while juggling business expenses and outstanding invoices.
The push for tax reform comes after significant changes earlier in the year when the state replaced its potency-based tax with a flat 9% excise tax. Hueber described the previous tax structure, which calculated payments based on the THC content of products, as extremely complicated and burdensome.
While the shift to a flat tax was a step in the right direction, many businesses, including Jaunty, are still dealing with the consequences of past policies. Guarino shared that his company is on a state payment plan, paying $65,000 monthly to cover back taxes. When combined with current tax liabilities, Jaunty expects to owe approximately $400,000 this month alone. He contrasted the situation with personal income taxes, where the IRS provides longer repayment terms, noting that the excise tax system offers much less flexibility.
Beyond the tax reform bill, two other marijuana-related proposals are awaiting the governor’s decision. One aims to officially classify cannabis as an agricultural crop, while the other seeks to allow farmers to hold market-style events to increase sales. Both the tax legislation and the agricultural bill have gained attention from the governor’s office, raising hopes that action will soon be taken.
The challenge of unfavorable tax policies isn’t only affecting cannabis firms in New York State. Even established companies like SNDL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNDL) have to contend with tax systems that hamstring their potential for growth in many jurisdictions.
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This fall I appeared on a panel at the Grow Up Conference in Edmonton to discuss the state of the cannabis industry and offer some thoughts about its future. My assessment: with the exception of medical exports, which are growing rapidly, and perhaps cannabis health products finding new channels, Canada’s cannabis economy seems to have hit a wall.
Recreational markets have stagnated for some time, retail prices remain low while cannabis equities are still trading at a fraction of their peak values reached in early 2018. Since legalization, the Canadian Cannabis Survey has shown that recreational users of the legal product amount to a niche market, albeit at 20-25 per cent of the population a fairly large one. The domestic medical market remains small and continues to shrink. At 184,000 registered users in 2023, it’s 26 per cent smaller than in 2022. Retail coverage appears to be saturated while operating costs have risen sharply in major urban centres across Canada.
Walking about the conference I heard the familiar complaints about regulatory restrictions, high taxes and lax enforcement of illegal businesses but little about tapping new growth sources. Granted, 3 per cent overall annual growth to 2029 is forecast (Statista), but I wonder if that’s due to the surge in medical exports and provincial wholesale revenues.
So which way forward?
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One approach to consider is Blue Ocean Strategy, an analytical framework that has helped many businesses achieve high growth. In their landmark 2004 Harvard Business Review article, authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne presented the framework as a new way to innovate by discovering new value for consumers. Their thesis is that the business universe is comprised of two spaces, one red and one blue. Red oceans host most existing businesses with readily defined boundaries, characteristics and rules. The game is competition for market share. As the market becomes increasingly crowded, products become commodified, supply outstrips demand and rampant competition begats bloody, red oceans.
On the other hand, blue oceans spring up from markets not yet in existence. As the authors state: “In blue oceans, demand is created rather than fought over.” This is done in two ways: either by creating a completely new industry, as with online auctions (eBay), or by changing the boundaries of existing industries, which is what Henry Ford did in introducing the Model T. The auto industry had existed since the late 1800s, but despite 500+ manufacturers it had few customers.Only the wealthy could afford motor carriages which required skilled craftsmen at least a month to build. Ford’s genius was to expand the boundaries of that industry by adapting the assembly line from the meat packing industry to offer vastly cheaper products that could be built in days. Assembly lines and unskilled workers assembled cars at much lower cost, using interchangeable parts. Ford also deduced that he could pay his workers higher wages so that they, along with the general public could now afford cars, thereby unlocking great value and creating a huge new market.
In classic blue ocean scenarios, markets ripe for value creation are characterized by oversupply, product commoditization, reduced brand distinctiveness, margin compression, price wars, regulatory complexity and shrinking profits. Does this sound familiar, cannabis colleagues?
What might a Blue Ocean Strategy look like in our industry?
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In my previous column I described how hemp beverages took U.S. cannabis businesses by surprise to achieve exponential growth. New value was tapped by identifying demand from different customers, using familiar distribution channels (supermarkets and liquor stores) where most people shop, bypassing dispensaries. Low-dose hemp sellers turned the prevailing logic of cannabis on its head to focus on low-potency products for users who prefer these to high-THC. Hemp businesses created distinctive brands that speak directly to the intended buyer. The product is manufactured from a widely supplied ingredient that can cross state boundaries and be readily made by contract producers. Gaps in the U.S. Farm Bill paved the way, but the success of this market is not just a regulatory artifact.
Are there other blue oceans hiding in plain sight? One possibility I’ve touted is bespoke cannabis based on the premium wine model. Devoted outdoor craft producers are already approaching this model. Aided by the expansion of farmgate in several provinces these cultivators are focused on terroir and regenerative agriculture, using living soil and natural pest control. Consistency is less important here than in CPG-oriented or medical cannabis, because seasonal variation can be leveraged and even celebrated as it is in winemaking. Energy costs are much lower than indoor and greenhouse growing, and there’s benefit to be gained from the moderate THC levels and more distinctive terpenes often associated with outdoor cultivation.
The idea is not to churn out high volumes of weed but to focus on quality to achieve greater margins. Unique terroirs and extensions into tourism could be used to build brands and attract new customers. Creating regional appellation schemes to map terroir and establish standards would differentiate products and provide options at different price points. This could also shift government’s perspective, from seeing cannabis as a harmful substance to be overmanaged, to welcoming it as a business with local support and a broader constituency.
A few factors are constraining the development of this business model: a lack of capital; a need for consumer education; marketing and branding that focuses on enlisting new customers as well as pitching to enthusiasts. There are regulatory gaps and hurdles. But Canada’s domestic wine industry had similar issues not long ago. The Vintners Quality Alliance (VQA) system was developed at the behest of winery owners who worked together to lobby politicians. Climate change and calls for a cannabis tourism strategy are aligning to create more favourable conditions for this model.
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These scenarios may not produce entirely competition-free blue oceans, but they do focus on creating new value and new markets. The obstacles are surmountable.
Denis Gertleris a regulatory consultant, board member and former government regulator.
The active components of hallucinogenic mushrooms, psilocybin and psilocin, are known to affect the brain in different ways. For instance, they influence serotonin receptors associated with neuroplasticity, cognitive processes, and mood regulation.
Prior research has demonstrated that psilocybin can increase the density of dendritic spines, stimulate genes associated with neuroplasticity, and improve synaptic plasticity.
Now a new study has found that psilocybin extracts may also have a hand in reversing memory deficits brought on by chronic stress. Already, prior studies have shown that chronic stress decreases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor in the hippocampus, a region crucial for learning and memory.
The objective of this latest study was to determine whether psilocybin extracts could mitigate these effects. For their study, the researchers used 140 male Wistar rats who were subjected to an unpredictable chronic mild stress protocol. This model helps replicate the long-term effects of stress in humans. It involves animals being exposed to various unpredictable but mild stressors over a certain period, causing physiological and behavioral changes as well as cognitive impairments.
The researchers begun by dividing the rats into groups based on whether they were exposed to chronic stress and if they received a placebo or psilocybin extract, with each group having 7 rats. For a 4-week period, the rats were exposed to stressors like water and food deprivation, heat stress and cold water, with the researchers testing the effects of the extract at different times.
The researchers discovered that rats exposed to stress demonstrated impairments in memory and spatial learning, which confirmed the cognitive deficits brought on by stress. The rats also had lower brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels in their hippocampus, which aligns to previous research.
In addition to this, they observed that when the psychedelic’s extract was administered under certain conditions, it repaired memory impairments and spatial learning and also increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein necessary for brain plasticity.
While these findings are encouraging, there are limitations to consider. For starters, the study only used male rats, which raises the issue of whether similar effects would be observed in female rats.
The researchers also used psilocybin extract rather than purified psilocin or psilocybin. Additionally, the long-term consequences of the psychedelic’s administration are still unclear.
The researchers reported their findings in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, with the study’s author Dr. Salar Vaseghi, noting that psychedelics could be very dangerous and shouldn’t be openly accessible. Other researchers involved included Reza Ghaffarzadegan, Ali Razmi, Mokhtar Karimi, Samira Roustaei, Behnaz Hedayatjoo, Mahsa Mohammadi, Eghbal Jasemi, and Hamidreza Behnoud.
Psilocybin has been linked to many more therapeutic effects, and several startups like atai Life Sciences N.V. (NASDAQ: ATAI) are working to develop formulations leveraging those medicinal attributes.
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