Marijuana Business Magazine October 2019

Marijuana Business Magazine | October 2019 46 In other words, medical marijuana is splitting into two clearly defined markets: • Government-approved medicines for treating disorders such as epilep- sy, post-traumatic stress disorder or cancer treatment-related nausea. • Wellness products designed to help people sleep, ease muscle aches or reduce stress, among other things. Industry executives believe there is money to be made by capitalizing on both sectors. “We believe there’s an enormous market for health and wellness products, especially with folks who are older than people who use cannabis recreationally. We see that in our stores,” said Erich Pearson, CEO of SPARC (San Francisco Patient and Resource Center), a vertically integrated cannabis company in California with a cultivation and processing site in Sonoma Valley and four Northern California retail locations. Wellness vs. Medical Many of the products and uses categorized as medical today—think smoking a certain flower strain to help with sleep or using a cannabis-infused balm to ease muscle pain—could fall under the wellness label. Medical, by comparison, will be more specialized and feature government-approved products with a pharmaceutical look, such as Epidiolex, a CBD-based syrup developed by British company GW Pharmaceuticals to treat certain types of epilepsy. Epidiolex is the first medicine derived from the cannabis plant to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). A handful of other FDA-approved medicines, such as Marinol (also known as dronabinol), used to combat nausea A NewKind of Medical Erich Pearson Courtesy Photo