Let marijuana kick-start R&D

THAT A seeming start-up has pledged US$2 million (J$260 million) to fund research and development in Jamaica’s nascent medical marijuana is an exciting development about which there is not only the need for additional particulars, but it provides an opportunity for a broader discussion about the promotion and financing of R&D.

The undertaking by the Jamaican Medical Cannabis Corporation Ltd is especially notable on two fronts. One is that the proposed outlay, whatever the initial amounts may be, is almost like capital investment without it being part of a specific business plan.

Or, put differently, in so far as we can discern, the Jamaican Medical Cannabis Corporation is one of the two shareholders, with a 49 per cent stake, in the Jamaican Medical Cannabis Collective, a start-up registered last year, to grow, ship and manage research in medical ganja. The other reported partner in the venture is Jamaica Medical Marijuana Holdings. The beneficial owners of these vehicles, it seems, are Canadians.

The operating entity hasn’t, as yet, left any footprints in the Jamaican industry. It is too young to have filed annual reports with company regulators and is unlikely, we presume, to have returned a profit on its operations. So any money spent on R&D would have come, on the face of it, from shareholder capital. What makes that, in this case, significant is that it represents an unusual business model. For, while the focus will be on medical research relating to ganja, it does not appear that JMMC will have proprietary rights to outcomes.

The research grants will be channelled through the National Foundation for the Development of Science and Technology, a little-heard-of agency of the Government’s National Commission on Science and Technology (NCST).

The foundation was to have been funded primarily by corporate members/donors, but if it has been able to raise money to support scientists, it has kept quiet about it. And, like its parent agency, has had little impact in exciting Jamaicans about science and technology and R&D. Its resurgence commands them to greater transparency.

The world’s attention is now on ganja as the new business line. That global sex appeal, and Jamaica’s potential place in the emerging marijuana industry, should be parlayed by the NCST, and others, into a wider and deeper conversation on R&D, including analyses on spending in this area, per-capita engagement in the sector, potential economic gains from research and development, and what is required to realise those gains.

BEST ESTIMATE

There is a dearth of such data in Jamaica. The best estimate is that Jamaica spends no more than 0.3 per cent of its GDP on R&D, which is around half the amount for Latin American and the Caribbean. In the US, the spend is upwards of three per cent of GDP, which tells in America’s leadership in innovation and ownership of intellectual property.

We don’t expect to challenge the United States in R&D, but it is obvious that intellect and the capacity to innovate are areas in which no country has a natural monopoly. More than four decades ago, Jamaica was the global leader in medical ganja research. At the University of the West Indies, Manley West and Albert Lockhart developed drugs for glaucoma and asthma from the marijuana plant. Then the effort stalled.

In the middle part of the last century, the Jamaican animal geneticist, Thomas P. Lecky, developed strains of milk and beef cattle that were sought after in the tropics, but which the country now struggles to maintain. Like with ganja, R&D in animal husbandry retreated, as it did in other areas of agriculture.

The NCST, in alliance with the private sector and research institutions, must grasp the opportunities afforded by recent developments to kick-start a new emphasis on scientific research and other forms of innovation and demand support from the Government, including, if required, tax incentives for investments in R&D.