News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Oct. 5, 2018: By now you may have heard that a Caribbean company has shipped its first legal marijuana oil to Canada. But how did that come to be and who is this company? Here are five things you should know:
1: The company, Timeless Herbal Care, is Kingston, Jamaica-based and is owned by Courtney Betty, a former Crown Attorney at the Department of Justice Canada, who serves as its President and CEO. Timeless dubs itself as an international nutraceutical company and “Jamaica’s leading medical marijuana company.”
2: Betty said the oil was cultivated and extracted at the company’s facilities in Jamaica and is a fulfillment of a mission that began five years ago. The company partners with the University of The West Indies and the University of Technology – internationally recognized as the leading cannabis research institutions – to ensure safety standards are met. It was shipped last month for analytical testing by Synfine Research, an affiliate of Toronto Research Chemicals, (TRC).
3: The company says it is committed to developing scientifically-based medical marijuana products that meet the highest standards of safety, efficacy, and quality control. The current CDB oil product is touted as “all-natural” by the company, with no additives, pesticides, or solvents based on local monitored cultivation. Timeless it is committed to developing quality medicines from carefully cultivated herbal plants and has access to up to 100 acres for weed production. Synfine hopes to combine its catalog of more than 800 cannabis compounds with natural marijuana strains from Jamaica via a deal with Timeless, to develop products and verify their medical efficacy through clinical trials.
4: Timeless has established partnerships with many companies in the market, including O.pen Vape, Organa Brands, Helix TCS, Inc., and Ziggy Marley. It closed a $100 million deal with O.pen Vape to to develop medical marijuana products in Jamaica. The company also entered into an agreement with the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (JBI), for the growing of medicinal plants on mined-out bauxite lands. Farmers will sell the yield at market value to Timeless Herbal Care, which will extract the medicinal contents for the various markets that they serve.
5: The shipment was authorized through an import permit issued by the Government of Canada through Health Canada for Jamaica, and an export permit issued by the Ministry of Health in Jamaica. Jamaica’s Agriculture Minister, Audley Shaw, has said the move by the company marks the first step in positioning Jamaica as the world’s medical marijuana hub. Since Jamaica passed the “Ganja Law” in 2015 legalizing cannabis for medical or therapeutic purposes, the country’s marijuana industry has been a center of growth.
