Momentum Public Relations
Blog: February 16 2018
Sun Life Signals the Start of Mass Medical Cannabis Market
Aphria Becomes SAQ Recreational Marijuana Supplier
Tetra Bio-Pharma Receives Approval for Phase Three Medical Cannabis Cancer Chronic Pain Treatment
As the countdown to marijuana legalization accelerates the acceptance of medical cannabis has become more common. A defining moment has taken place with the decision by the Sun Life Assurance Company of Canada to include medical cannabis in group benefit health plans. It is the first Canadian insurance company to do so.
According to the Globe And Mail, employers will have the option of including medical cannabis coverage under an extended group health care benefit plan, starting on March 1, 2018.
As any Canadian knows Sun Life is a huge company. Its benefit plan serves 22,000 companies and covers more than five million employees and dependents.
In the Globe And Mail Story by Clare O’Hara, the senior vice-president of group benefits at Sun Life, Doug Jones, is reported to have said that the company decided to include medical cannabis coverage in its group benefit health plans because the companies it offered coverage to were asking about cannabis coverage on an increasing basis.
Employers will now have the choice about whether to include medical cannabis coverage and up to what level. Under the new system, coverage will be available from $1,500 to $6,000. So far coverage is going to be extended to five severe conditions including chronic cancer pain, nausea associated with chemotherapy and palliative care.
Eight Capital has predicted the international medical cannabis market at C$180 Billion within 10-15 Years.
Sun Life obviously sees medical cannabis coverage as a valuable commodity either in terms of customer retention or customer acquisition.
A significant factor in all of this is that Sun Life is offering coverage without the benefit of a DIN number. DIN stands for drug identification number. A DIN number is awarded to a drug that has successfully gone through clinical testing and been approved by Health Canada in Canada or the Food and Drug Administration in the United States.
Once a drug has a DIN number it can be legally prescribed by doctors and covered under insurance plans. While Canada has been allowing the sale of medical marijuana through licensed growers nobody yet has actually proved that medical marijuana works.
That is about to change. Montreal-based Tetra Bio-Pharma, (TSXV: TBP) (OTCQB: TBPMF) has just received Health Canada approval for the phase 3 clinical trial of a smokable dried cannabis prescription drug. The drug, now known as PPP001, targets chronic pain, as well as pain associated with advanced cancer.
The clinical testing is designed to prove the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis and specifically of PPP001. Tetra Bio-Pharma CEO Bernard Fortier describes it like this: “It will be a landmark trial. It will be a landmark approval. It will be the first smokable cannabis drug that will be approved, as a legitimate drug, to be prescribed by physicians.”
Tetra has a strong development pipeline featuring drugs that treat chronic pain, nausea, insomnia, PTSD, and eye ailments. As CEO Bernard Fortier says, “We are not a one molecule company.”
In late 2017 Tetra launched its first product, the trademarked Rx Princeps, a unique blend of dried medical marijuana used in its ongoing clinical trials for PPP001, a chronic pain treatment for terminal cancer patients. Rx Princeps is available for registered medical marijuana users in Canada through Tetra’s partner and licensed medical cannabis producer Aphria Inc.
Aphria, (TSXV: APH) (USOTC:APHQF) has recently been snapping up other licensed growers in the industry and is Canada’s lowest cost cannabis producer. It has also just signed a deal to become one of the six licensed growers chosen to provide marijuana to Quebec’s Societe des alcohols du Quebec (SAQ), the provincial liquor agency chosen to also distribute marijuana when legalization comes into effect. Aphria will be providing up to 12,000 Kgs of marijuana to Quebec annually.
With six different growers all offering different types of marijuana it would seem fair that Quebec is going to treat marijuana much as it does wine by providing a wide variety of product. Marijuana has come a long way but it still offers an investment opportunity in either producers or drug development companies like Tetra that may not come again.