DEA awards seventh cannabis cultivation license for research

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Maridose has been licensed by the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Justice for the bulk manufacture of cannabis to supply marijuana, MJ extracts (including isolated chemical constituents) and THC to researchers.

Maridose is the seventh company to receive such a license, the cannabis-focused pharmaceutical business in Brunswick, Maine, announced Friday.

The University of Mississippi, aka the National Center for Development of Natural Products, received the first DEA cultivation registration in 1968.

The DEA did not award another cannabis bulk manufacturing license until 2021.

Those licenses went to:

  • Scottsdale Research Institute, Cave Creek, Arizona.
  • Biopharmaceutical Research Co., Castroville, California.
  • Groff North America, Red Lion, Pennsylvania.
  • Royal Emerald Pharmaceuticals, Desert Hot Springs, California.

This year, the DEA licensed Irvine Labs in Huntington Beach, California, and now Maridose.

An aspiring DEA cannabis bulk manufacturing licensee, Bright Green, made news in May when it listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Maridose founder Richard Shain said the license was “the culmination of over five years of working with the DEA and enables Maridose to legally sell a wide variety of cannabis products through the DEA to researchers and DEA-licensed pharmaceutical companies in the United States and internationally.”

Researchers who work with DEA-licensed bulk manufacturers must also be approved by the federal agency to conduct cannabis studies.