Psychedelic Sunday: Ketamine Assisted Therapy (undefined:FTHWF)

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Transcript

Rena Sherbill: Ronan, welcome back actually to the Cannabis Investing Podcast at this time talking on psychedelics. Welcome back. Thanks for joining us?

Ronan Levy: Thank you for having me back. It’s been a while.

RS: It’s been a while.

RL: It’s been a long time since I spoke about cannabis. But it’s still an industry close to my heart, and certainly now psychedelics is too.

RS: Yes, I was going to ask. I mean, I remember at the end of the conversation that we had about cannabis. You said let me know if you’re interested in psychedelics. I also have a lot to say about that, and here we are. It took a couple years, but here we are. I love it if you could share with listeners in that vein, you know, kind of where you’re at with Field Trip (OTCPK:FTHWF) and talking about that. But also, I think within that journey, maybe speak to what it’s like to be part of trailblazing a burgeoning industry. Industry – I should say?

RL: Sure, yes, and thank you. So where we are with Field Trip right now is well, I’ll take a step back just to give the whole picture, but I’ll try and keep it as brief and synced as possible, which I’m not terribly good at, but I will try my best. So we started Field Trip in 2019. Field Trip was created with two operating divisions, a Drug Development Division, as well as a Clinical Infrastructure Division. Because what we saw was that the future of psychedelic medicine was going to look a lot like traditional medicine in terms of drug development, new molecules, clinical trials, all that kind of stuff.

But when we look at psychedelics and what’s happening in the industry, what we’re talking about is psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. So it’s not just giving a drug alone. It is giving the psychedelic compound in conjunction with therapy that leads to the amazing outcomes that we’re seeing. And I’m certainly happy to go into some of the details around some of the clinical studies and the results that we’re seeing right now. So we thought that if you’re going to do drug development properly, you need to do the therapeutic development in tandem as well in order to create the real outcomes, and that’s why we created these two divisions, Drug Development and Clinical Infrastructure.

As the company grew, as we continued to make progress towards our Drug Development efforts, at the same time we were building our Clinical Infrastructure. But at certain point, we made the decision that keeping two of these things into the same roof created more challenges than benefits. There are a number of benefits because we got synergies of doing drug development center — with the therapy at the same time under one roof, but when you get to organizations like the FDA more who likes things in a nice and neat tidy box. When you complicate it by having those clinics under the same roof as the Drug Development, it creates complications. And so, we separated the two businesses.

The Drug Development side, stayed listed on the NASDAQ, it’s now called Reunion Neuroscience (NASDAQ:REUN). And the Clinical Infrastructure Division took the name Field Trip. We listed on the Toronto Venture Stock Exchange. We still operate. We’ve got nine locations, three in Canada, six in the U.S., providing ketamine-assisted therapy. We also have a cultivation and research facility at the University of West Indies in Jamaica, a relationship that was born out of a lot of the work we did in the cannabis space.

And we’re creating wonderful results for people, you know, on average a client who comes into a Field Trip health center for ketamine-assisted therapy sees their depression and anxiety scores go from severe to mild and those benefits last up to six months. We’re seeing on average. As far as I’m aware, there’s no mental health treatment that comes close offering those kind of results in just four or six sessions. So we really – are creating significant, significant health outcomes for people that come into Field Trip health centers. So that’s where we are with Field Trip.

We’ve also just recently launched a new program called Freedom by Field Trip, which is a hybrid program where people can do the ketamine sessions at home or in a clinic. And we also launched our Field Trip online therapy realizing that we’ve learned a lot from doing psychedelic-assisted therapies that we can bring back into conventional therapy. You know, just talking to a therapist using those insights awarenesses, helping people tap into non-ordinary states of consciousness, without necessarily using psychedelic drugs or psychedelic compounds.

There’s ways to get there through meditation, breath work, all this kind of stuff so, leveraging all of that to create a unique and differentiated therapy experience for all those people, much like me who have always found therapy to be very underwhelming and satisfying. There’s ways to really amp it up that doesn’t involve getting a doctor or any drugs and that’s what we’ve launched with Field Trip online therapy. So that’s where we are. Now the question about trailblazing to industries is you know, I think the, the biggest lesson is there’s irrational exuberance followed by periods of irrational pessimism and survival and sanity is really tied to how prepared you are to weather those.

You know I was, we got involved in the cannabis industry in early 2014. And we’re extremely well positioned with Canadian cannabis clinics, which got acquired by Aurora Cannabis. To ride the wave of irrational exuberance to the top and that was a really fun time and probably the two best professional years of my life, because it was a lot of fun. And I felt like it never stopped, but then it stopped. And I think we’ve been slowly, slowly, slowly trying to dig our way out of the valley that formed afterwards. Same thing happened with psychedelics except the period of irrational exuberance lasted quite a bit less than the irrational exuberance that was associated with the cannabis industry.

We had about a year, to a year and a half of good times, at least from a capital a market’s perspective and have been in a pretty big funk for the last year and a half or so. And it’s certainly challenging. But I know when I first got into the psychedelics industry, I made a statement that I think psychedelics are going to be way bigger than cannabis as an industry. And the pushback I got from folks in the cannabis industry is, you’re nuts. Just looking at the – basic math using, you know, create market or black market analysis, which was that psychedelics number of people doing psychedelics were about 10% the size of the number of people using cannabis, whether for recreational or medical purposes and then – suffered perfectly fair analysis that – but that was a place in time.

Now what we see is the numbers coming out from banks that were also very active in the cannabis industry like Roth Capital and H.C. Wainwright saying psychedelics industry could be worth $400 billion to $500 billion in the U.S. alone because the quality of outcomes associated with psychedelic-assisted therapies and the safety profile, which, you know, and safety is very similar to cannabis, but in fact, in some ways, maybe even safer. Matched up against the 80 million or so Americans, we start speaking to – with the U.S. alone right now.

The 80 million or so Americans who are unserved by the mental health industry in terms of current treatment options or current medications, combines to create a massive, massive market and so it was nice to see at least my theory that, psychedelics would be bigger than the cannabis industry being validated at least according to a couple of analysts in the industry. And remarkably, those rosy and – optimistic projections were given only a few months ago when we’ve been in the doldrums for a long time in the psychedelic capital markets.

And so, there’s lots of reason to be optimistic about the future of the psychedelics industry. And if you’ve got the patience and the resources, it’s a great time to invest, because there is generally going to be a very positive evolution in this industry. When the capital markets catch up to it, I have no idea. I stopped trying to predict the capital markets a long time ago. But eventually, I’m confident there will be a positive realignment.

RS: I’m curious, speaking to that point and also the point that Field Trip broadening into, you know, at home treatments. Do you see it as a recreational kind of market that that will – that will not just grow but will, exist. I mean, there’s a lot of talk in the investment community that there won’t be, but then there’s pushback to that. I’m curious what you think about that and how big the market you see growing?

RL: Yes I mean, I anticipate there will be an adult use market. We see that coming in line in Oregon and Colorado two of the states that help trail-blaze the cannabis industry, the legal cannabis industry in the U.S. And I think that will continue for sure. I expect over the kind of medium term, the medical industry will be much larger. It’s just – the single biggest differentiator between psychedelics and cannabis is that cannabis that can be very enjoyable and could be very therapeutic.

But the evidence around it from purely medical application isn’t as robust as it is for psychedelics, like we see with the MDMA trials that are happening right now just finished now – it’s reported. It’s the results from its second arm of its Phase 3 trial yes something like 75% of participants who had chronic severe PTSD on average for 17 years or so no longer meeting the criteria to be considered a PTSD patient any longer. You have a near effective cure with two to three MDMA-assisted therapy sessions. This is mind blowing when it comes to mental health.

It is orders of magnitude more effective. And so, the medical applications of psychedelics are so much more pronounced. And when you do the health econometrics, when you look at the cost structures, when you look in fact that people get back to work and they are more productive and they are and happier families and they’re less strains on the medical resources, general health medical resources. It makes a whole lot of good goddamn sense to be supportive of psychedelic therapy even if you’re just a doctor who hates the notion of potential recreational use of this, because it really, really works. And so that’s why I’m so bullish on the medical applications.

But at the same time, one of the unique things that percolates out of all these clinical trials that we’re seeing with psychedelics is that not only are the results incredible, but people often report that their experience with psychedelics during the clinical trials are some of the most meaningful significant experiences of their life period up there with the birth of a child or, you know, the dawn of a hopefully happy and long-term marriage. It’s up there, you know, top three moments in life. Your psychedelic experience tends to be reported just one of these.

So what you get is not only the medical outcomes, but this momentum towards advocacy that just about everyone who has a positive experience with a psychedelic experience or a psychedelic compound, becomes an advocate. They get out there and they start talking to friends because it’s so meaningful to them that you’re going to have this push towards a cultural revolution. Now, the challenge with a recreational market for psychedelics is that at least with psilocybin the cost of cultivation is very low, and much, like the cannabis industry, it’s hard to differentiate. You’re going to have a whole bunch of generic products.

The differentiation is going to be challenging, but in the same token, if you think about the potential market for psychedelics, not just as the product, but the cultural movement that’s going to come behind it. I think the opportunity is significant. You know, I always hearken back to Woodstock right, the counterculture movement of the late 60s. It’s like that was estimates put it at maybe a million kids across the U.S. using LSD. And we still feel a, cultural reverberations to this day. It is still very much a significant consideration in our general ecosystem of how we think about our society one event 50 years ago with a whole bunch of kids getting high on LSD.

Now think about that when it’s not a million kids, but 10s of millions of people consciously and thoughtfully and intentionally using psychedelics, maybe for treatment of mental health disorders, but maybe just for consciousness expansion, maybe just to get through the challenges of everyday life. And you’ve started to see that the cultural significance of what’s going to happen in the psychedelic industries and the changes that I think it’s going to lead to in terms of our society are massive. And I’m not trying to present a psychedelics will save the world although Dr. Andrew Weil is writing a book actually called Psychedelics Will Save the World interestingly.

But it is going to create incremental shifts in terms of how our society works. And the opportunity on the back of that, I think, is almost incalculable. And that’s in a – more recreational kind of context. It’s hard to put texture and it’s hard to give a description of what that’s going to mean. But it is going to be significant, I think.

RS: Are you hearing a different voice in your headphones, for next store?

RL: There is next person, talking in the other room.

RS: Okay no worries. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn’t getting something else, that’s fine?

RL: Yes.

RS: I wanted to so in terms of the adult use side, do you see that – only be like, a psilocybin play?

RL: No I mean, for instance, we see in Colorado with the passage of the Natural Medicines Health Act that at least in terms of the decrement personal use aspects of it, it covers all plant-based psychedelics. So MDMA is excluded from and LSD it’s excluded from it. But psilocybin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, masculine, all of these compounds are permitted under that. And so, I do think it’s going to be more robust than psilocybin. That being said, psilocybin is pretty low hanging fruit. So I think you’ll see it start there, but then it eventually expand in most jurisdictions.

RS: And do you see it as like, a retail type of option expanding or do you feel like it’s more – you know, growing and passing along?

RL: I don’t see it as much as a retail option. I see it more of a service-based consideration. So cannabis is a product. You go to a store, you buy a joint, you buy some cannabis, you buy an edible, whatever it is you take it home, you use it. Psychedelics again, are in mostly provided in the context of psychedelic-assisted therapies. So what we see in Oregon is that you can’t just go out and buy mushrooms, but you can go to a psilocybin service center and have a psilocybin experience with the oversight of a trained therapist. I think that’s where it’s starts in terms of a regulated market.

I think you’ll see lots of Deepgram happening as well that will create a bit more of a robust recreational market, but I don’t see retail happening in that. At least in the short-term, I think we’ll get there eventually. I think once we get past the paranoia that’s associated with psychedelics. You know, people feel like it makes the hell of a lot more sense to – legalize and regulate and educate than it does to try and prohibit because Lord knows it’s never worked in the past to try and prohibit these behaviors.

RS: Yes, right? It hasn’t, it hasn’t. How did you decide to focus on ketamine? Was that something that you felt like because of the clinical trials is that – what was the thought process behind that strategy?

RL: Yes, so if we go back to the impetus for Field Trip in the first place and we had actually had a conversation. We had just left the cannabis industry myself and Joseph Del Moral, Hannan Fleiman the three of us which started the Canadian cannabis clinics in CanvasRx and sold that to Aurora. We spent a couple years with Aurora kind of saw the writing on the wall we left. And one of the first meetings that we had after leaving the cannabis industry was with someone who has explored work in psychedelics, and I remember being like, psychedelics are thing.

And vaguely recalled Peter Thiel investing in some psilocybin start-up or something like that, but it didn’t pay much attention to it. And in that first conversation, the person we’re speaking to pointed to three things that really opened my eyes. One was MAPS, which is the organization conducting the MDMA trials and just being granted breakthrough therapy designation by the FDA. So it’s not just this was a trial that was happening, this was a trial that the FDA recognized as having significant importance with a high likelihood of success to meet a significant unmet need. I’m like, oh, if FDA is doing that, then something is happening here.

Michael Pollan had just published How to Change Your Mind. But most importantly, in Canada, there are four or five online stores selling psilocybin mushrooms openly, not dark web, worldwide web putting your information, they send it to you. And at that moment, I realized the global zeitgeist around psychedelics had changed, people just having caught up to that fact. And so, we started in earnest trying to get ahead of that curve, but unlike with the cannabis industry where regulations were changing you know, literally every day.

There was no clear and legal market for psychedelics. We saw it coming but like, okay well, what do, we do now to get started waiting for the world to kind of catch up. And so, we stumbled on a couple of things. One was that in Jamaica, in addition to cannabis, psychedelics are not included on their dangerous drug lists, which means that we could, do work in Jamaica, cultivation, providing all that kind of stuff. And so, like, okay cool. And that’s how we ended up with the partnership with the University of West Indies and – the cultivation facility we have down there.

And then we learned that ketamine was being used like a psychedelic as well in mental health treatments and having just built a large network of clinic specializing in cannabis. We felt uniquely called to be able to roll out clinics providing ketamine-assisted therapy as – is kind of a stepping stone to the eventual approval of MDMA or the eventual legalization of psilocybin. So that’s where we started with – ketamine, the evidence was persuasive, the safety profile, very high, the outcomes amazing. So we’ve started with ketamine, but it’s always Field Trip has always been built with a lens towards the eventual approval or the realization of other psychedelics. It was just a question of how long that would take.

RS: So in terms of being publicly traded, I A) have a general question that I’ve been asking guess is, if you have a theory or opinion or a fact based opinion on why psychedelic stocks trade on the major exchanges and yet, cannabis doesn’t considering, in many cases, they’re similarly scheduled, if not, exactly scheduled identically scheduled drugs, that’s one question. And the other question is, was it always your intention to be publicly traded? Was that something in other words, why – why that strategy going in?

RL: Sure, the difference between cannabis and psychedelics is because of some bullshit antiquated notions around drugs that our financial institutions and our government still hold on to. It is not irrational. You know, it’s – it is really excruciating, watching the idiocy of cannabis regulation and the U.S. rollout. It really is just dumbfounding, so there’s no.

RS: It’s just luck that the psychedelics didn’t get that?

RL: No, the difference is what’s happening with psychedelics and the companies that manage to list on the major exchanges in the U.S. are much like GW Pharma. So GW Pharma had a medical product using cannabinoids, in fact cannabis, but it was an approved medicine, and therefore, somehow that makes it legitimate. But if you use it for any other purpose or touch the you know, dried flower, wow, God help you that’s not okay. With psychedelics, you know, with Field Trip ketamines and FDA approved medicine, not specifically for the treatment of mental health, it’s an anesthetic, but it’s used very effectively off label for the treatment of mental health.

You know, the drug development we’re doing is clinical trials. It’s biotech. It’s pharma. It’s that nice little package that everybody likes to see and that was the big difference. You know any cannabis company that – was just doing it within the confines of a clinical trial getting a DEA license and FDA approval taking out their clinical trials should ostensibly be able to list on the major exchanges in the U.S. But if you’re just producing it as a product for consumption, that’s somehow the line that regulators decided to drop.

RS: Got it.

RL: And then to your second question about did we intend to go public? No, our plan was to not go public, to be quite honest. But what happened was we launched Field Trip – and we’re incorporated in April of 2019 and in March of 2020. So you think came along that really screwed up most people’s plans, called a pandemic. And we saw the broader markets off 40%, but then there were two or three publicly traded psychedelic stocks MindMed was one, other company formerly known as Champignon Brands now known as I’m sorry. I’m trying to blank on his name now.

RS: I wish I could give it to you?

RL: These two stocks were up 60%, 70%. What’s that?

RS: No, I just said, I wish I could give it to you?

RL: Yes, yes it’s okay. They were up 60%, 70%, 80% and the rest of the markets were off 40% and having been in the cannabis industry and helping raise helping Aurora raise 100s of millions of dollars. And otherwise, we had great relationships with all of the Canadian investment banks that had helped build the cannabis industry. And so lo and behold, all of those relationships started picking up phone saying, like hey, you guys want to do a financing and even though we had sort of scheduled a financing for later that year, based on our progress. When in April, you had no idea if there was going to be a capital markets come September.

We took while the taking was good like – I always quote Vic Neufeld, the former CEO of Aphria. When he said – rain or snow, take the dough. So we did at that time because we wanted to make progress and didn’t know what the opportunities would be. And so, the one catch was that the financing came with a condition that we be public by, I think, October of that year. And so, we took it. You know, we rolled the dice saying we don’t really want to be a public company. There’s a lot of cost and headaches and ups and downs associated with being a private company, but we’ll do it because, you know, that’s just what’s here right now.

And you know, three and a half years later, if I could advice anybody whether they should go public or not, I would say absolutely not unless – you know, a great cash flowing company that can spit out dividends and can weather those storms. But if you need access to growth capital, it’s a razor’s edge. That’s for sure. You know, it can be positive and it can be negative and as we’ve experienced for with cannabis and psychedelics. The bad times have certainly prolonged much long – for longer much longer than the good times.

RS: Yes, and much longer, I think, than anyone was expecting. Would you say yes – I mean it’s a good segue to a question that I wanted to ask in terms of with most companies in the space being pre-revenue, what should investors be looking at? And we’ve had guests on, you know, saying that cash is the most important that clinical trial data is the most important. What would you say investors should be focused on?

RL: Yes – cash flow if you’re spinning out positive cash flows. That’s an easy one, you know, because that company is well positioned to thrive. Like I said, the growth in this industry is going to be massive. There’s no doubt about that in my mind. It’s just a question of when you start to hit that inflection point. And I think the capital markets will pile on especially if you’re making positive cash flow. So maybe if there are psychedelic companies with positive cash flow, I would say, jump all over that if they’ve got a good management and a strategy to believe in. That’s, you know, defensible.

Beyond that, you know, I think it’s a – pretty good time to invest in companies that are taking a biotech pharma approach as well. Valuations have been decimated, you know, Reunion Neuroscience trades below cash value right now, even though it just reported its Phase 1 clinical trials on a novel psychedelic, which is and then this will come back to my second point, if you’re looking at biotech pharma. It’s like it’s a great time to invest, provided the companies you’re investing in have a coherent and very simply explainable IP strategy.

Most biotech companies in the space are pursuing psilocybin or polymorph from psilocybin or other known drugs who, have been well characterized and therefore the IP, isn’t very robust. Yes, maybe you could get exclusivity for psilocybin for some orphan designation or something along those lines and get five years of exclusivity to market for that particular indication. But it’s hard to recoup hundreds of millions of dollars that go into a clinical trial in a five or seven year period. So I would look for companies that have clearly differentiated IP, the strategy, and now I’m tuning our own horn, but it’s also something I believe.

And the strategy we took with Reunion as we wanted a novel psychedelic for which we could get composition of matter. So just like any other drug development company, outside of psychedelics, you don’t often go to market and try and raise money for a compound that’s already been characterized or genericized, it doesn’t make sense. With Reunion, our first molecule, RE104 is a novel, psychedelic molecule. Now, we were very intentional about that because the molecule is actually a pro-drug of a known psychedelic. So we before we even gone to clinical trials, we knew exactly what would happen in the bloodstream.

We knew exactly what would happen from a binding perspective. It’s going to work exactly like a psychedelic. But because it was a pro-drug, because we chemically modified it slightly to make it more soluble and more stable, we have defensible IP. No one can copy that. No one can come down this path. Whereas any number of people can go after psilocybin right now. And so for investors, I would say, yes, it’s a great time to invest in biotech in the psychedelic space, because of the low valuations. But make sure what you’re investing in is defensible.

RS: Yes, the notion of patents has been also something that’s come up in conversation. You know, I think don’t underestimate the power of patents. Do you feel that it’s whoever gets there first is going to be kind of because it’s patents, because it’s a limited market to begin with? Do you feel like it’s the first mover that gets there is going to be kind of take the lion’s share of the market?

RL: I think they’re going to have a great advantage because, you know, back in the cannabis days, I remember revising certain CEOs being like, take your overpriced stock and buy fairly priced businesses that churn out a lot of cash flow. Like, don’t – be a fool and just chase all these cannabis numbers just buy real businesses with your overpriced stock. I got overruled and it never happened, but some people wish they had listened to me at the time. In the same sense, you know, I think the first to market with a defensible IP product is going to have a market cap that they can use to then go out spend to acquire competitors.

You know, the people have Phase 1 or Phase 2 to buy up the promising new products. I think there is going to be an advantage there. That being said, there are so many psychedelics. And you know – they have been researched LSD psilocybin, has been researched pretty extensively to know their safety and efficacy profiles. But there hasn’t been a ton of work in terms of how do you treat these molecules? How do you make them better? How do you make them safer? How do you make them longer lasting or shorter lasting? How do you make them sublingual as opposed to intermuscular? You know, how do you amp up the effect?

How do you minimize the effect? There’s tons of work that’s just starting there. So as much as I think the first to market is going to have an advantage. The opportunity for innovation in this space with such a significant unmet need is pretty open. And so, I don’t know how long-term that advantage is going to be unless whoever’s first is really, really good about executing intentionally on it.

RS: How are you seeing in terms of the consolidation that you envision happening where do you think we’re at in terms of the cycle? Like, do you think that that’s coming? Do you think that we’re going to see a nice amount of those in the coming year?

RL: I do, you know, a lot of companies have raised money. We were fortunate with Field Trip and Reunion and we raised more than we needed. And so, we had a cushion to weather the storm, but some companies were not as fortunate as us to be able to do so. But that doesn’t mean – there’s, not some good businesses out there that are going to be running out of cash. So I certainly see some kind of – consolidation. Much like in the cannabis industry where I expect a lot of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 players to kind of form into a conglomerate and to compete with the Tier 1 players, I think you’ll probably see that.

I think you’ll see some investors like that story quite a bit. You know because you get multiple shots on that and I genuinely believe we’re probably past the worst of the broader market tumult. And I just see if capital start to flow back in and prices start to go up and a little bit of enthusiasm to come back. And so where there’s a strategy for some roll up or some consolidation, especially with players that are going out – of business, without a financing that makes lot of sense. And so, I think you’ll see quite a bit of that over the next kind of six months or so.

RS: Do you have a sense or I mean, I assume that you have thoughts on the Canadian market and if there’s any appetite in the near term for exploring the legal side of psychedelics or are you focused mainly on the U.S.?

RL: No, I think, you know, it’s hard to make bets in Canada right now out of clear path to some sort of legal regulated opportunity. It’s just really speculative. I do think Canada will move in that direction – much like we saw with the cannabis industry where the Supreme Court was the one that ultimately called out the government to say no longer you need to do something here. We’re maybe six months to a year away from that. Unless the – government moves unilaterally, but with a minority government in Canada right now, I don’t expect that to happen. So I think you’ll see courts push towards some sort of legal path forward.

There are groups like Vericel, which is, initiated constitutional challenges on the scheduling and prohibition of access to psilocybin and other. I think, I don’t know if it’s all psychedelics or just brand based ones or just psilocybin. But it’s coming just a matter of time, you know, a number of, like I mentioned, a number of online stores – will be selling psilocybin has proliferated in Toronto. There have been two brick and mortar stores selling psilocybin open up. One got shutdown, another one popped up. In Vancouver, someone’s proposing to open a store where they’re going to sell psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, or and cocaine, and heroin, by the way.

So you see a really big – grassroots movement pushing towards regulatory change. And listen, I mean, the war on drugs has been a catastrophic failure. And I don’t think you have a lot of people in Canada still saying hey, let’s go back to the good old days of the war on drugs. So I think with some – with some gentle encouragement from the Supreme Court or the court of appeal and courts of appeal in Canada, the government will move to do something that’s fairly progressive and thoughtful.

That being said, you know, as we saw with legalization of cannabis, the restrictions on dispensaries and the [ADAC], you know, well intentioned ADAC, but it was still ADAC in the matter of regulations and restrictions they put on dispensaries such that most people are still going to the black market to get their cannabis. You know, there’s going to be hiccups along the way, but we’ll get there eventually.

RS: So those stores that opened and shut, those were pointed kind of deliberate I guess, for lack of a better word, like, attacks on what progress can be made, you feel like there are more advocacy than anything else or I don’t know…

RL: I don’t think so. I don’t think any of those yes. No, I think it’s – I think it’s a progressive attempt to advance the dialogue. Yes, I don’t think any of those people, especially people who’s, like, first step is to go to the media and to announce their arrival in nationwide media.

RS: Right.

RL: Are intending that to make this like good ongoing cash flowing business for the sustainable future. I think they’re trying to push an agenda – and I love them for that. You know, I think it’s especially with the one with the cocaine and heroin I’m like you got to be cool, man. I don’t know if there’s a good idea or a bad idea. I could see it going both ways. But at the very least, you’re inciting a conversation you know the government clearly seems intent on avoiding, and we need to do something about that. So I support it.

RS: Yes, yes. In terms of what’s coming, how do, you see different industries opening up or kind of putting their hands, getting their tentacles into the psychedelic space. Do you feel that because of the mental health aspect, because of the biotech aspect, because of the patents, do you see that becoming a robust like pharma coming in, biotech, you know, the broader, more mainstream biotech players or that for the most part who you see coming in?

RL: Yes, I do. You know and big biotech pharma is already in the psychedelic space. You know, Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s, a very large Japanese pharmaceutical company is a significant investor in COMPASS Pathway. In the Field Trip, we attracted investment from some of the most well known biotech and pharma investors out there. I know conversations have been happened, not the Johnson & Johnson’s or either the big elephants in the room, but kind of the Tier 2, the jazzes and all that kind of stuff.

So I definitely foresee active involvement from the pharma industry in the drug development side. In terms of the more wellness, recreational, cultural side, not as clear to me, but as this continues to mainstream, I think you’re going to see brands get pretty – pretty proactive about trying to participate in it, because I do believe it’s going to be one of the more – one of the most significant cultural forces for the next 30 to 50 years, the mainstream you know psychedelics. And so, I think some thoughtful brands are going to get involved just a little prelude next week on our podcast.

We have a podcast called Field Tripping. I’ll be interviewing JJ and Chip Wilson, Chip being the founder of Lululemon and JJ being his brother. So, you know, you see those brand based lifestyle companies, at least the people who participated and made them successful starting to actively explore what’s happening in the psychedelic space. So you can kind of I think you can read the writing on the wall that there’s going to be a big push in that direction.

RS: And do you see that consolidation coming from that space as well. Do you see that – is that, like, a near do you see that as a near term occurrence?

RL: Hold that question for one second. My battery is about to run out.

RS: Okay.

RL: And my computer is about to run out of battery. So give me a second so I’ll move the plug over okay.

RS: Sure, sure, sure.

RL: The camera is going to switch, but hopefully, we have enough shots for a clip.

RS: Yes, yes I think we’re good.

RL: So the question was do we see – do I see consolidation coming from that side of the equation from the sort of lifestyle brand side?

RS: Yes and if you think that that’s a near term type of occurrence, if you do – if you do see it happening?

RL: I see some consolidation happening from lifestyle – on the brand side of equation into things that are a little bit adjacent to the psychedelic space for example, functional mushrooms and medicinal mushrooms. cordyceps [indiscernible] all that kind of stuff for anyone who’s watching the last of us. As far as we know, cordyceps are still – okay so you don’t have to worry about it being infected by that. I don’t know if you watched that show of cordyceps are the big evil fungus that, are taking over the world.

I could see some participation in that respect you know otherwise, the most activity in the psychedelic space in the brand lifestyle kind of ways is where Field Trip is positioned, but still pretty medical. You know, we’re still operating medical clinics with physicians and all that kind of stuff. And their restrictions on how brandy you can get in that space. And then the truly lifestyle recreational kind of stuff, like what happens in the Netherlands. It’s still a little bit too isolated. It’s you I think attract, but as Oregon and Colorado roll out as I anticipate California probably in – two years in the midterm or, I guess, in the presidential election, will probably make a move.

Washington State it’s going to be more and more opportunities to start brand building, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these private companies start to, actively export a space. I’ve heard whispers that the TSX is, you know, looking at ways to enable participation in state legally, but even if federal illegality remains an issue, who knows if that’s going to happen. But which will make a lot of sense. You know, it’s one of my one of the great thorns in my side that as a Canadian watching the Canadian cannabis industry get destroyed because the TSX won’t like Canadian companies to participate in the U.S. companies and the U.S. companies just quickly got way bigger and eventually will dominate the industry.

Is unfortunate, and is stupid. And there’s no coherent reason for it in my mind. And so, you know, I hope that doesn’t create a barrier from, you know, the best operators from taking advantage of good opportunities in the emerging psychedelic space.

RS: How strong is the psychedelic lobby in terms of pushing for federal change or even on the state level?

RL: I don’t know, to be quite honest. I mean, again, most I feel like most – most politicians are contentedly blissfully ignorant. This is us it’s just medicine. There’s no lobbying involved. We just need clinical trials, and it’s done. And that’s where the majority of capital has flowed and that being said, you do see a pretty strong grassroots movement starting to percolate up in Colorado and Oregon. You know, gaining, gaining strength in other locations as well. So I don’t – I think it’s probably operating on isolated pockets state-by-state. I don’t think there’s any coherent lobbying with the exception of Deepgram, Deepgram nature that’s, that’s going on so well. That being said, you know, Field Trip had Senator Tom Daschle as an adviser for a while.

So we were getting attention at some of the highest echelons of U.S. politics particular ones that had already had comfort – developed comfort with cannabis. So I could foresee that happening, but for so long as the majority of the focus remains on the medical side of things, it doesn’t have the same urgency because you’re going to start to see at least medically based access happening over the next few years. Without the need for politics, without the need for lobbying, or votes, you know as sciences data to clinical trials. If data is there then data by March is there, then it’s just going to happen. And so, I think that takes some of the impetus away from some of the grassroots efforts. That being said, there is still a lot of grassroots – work going on and creating, I think, very positive, at least awareness and education in this space.

RS: I’m curious if from the beginning until now you found yourself thinking of pivoting or actually pivoting in ways that have surprise you or ways that, you know, speaking to your point earlier about dealing with the – markets that that you have in front of you instead of wishing for something else. Is there something that – you foresee happening or that has happened in that regard?

RL: I can’t keep away our secret sauce. Do I see us pivoting? I do see I won’t say, I won’t comment about Field Trip specifically, but I do see, like a greater kind of differentiated – differentiation between the medical model and the people who are just all culture, you know, all recreational use and all that kind of stuff. And you know, the underground market for psychedelic services for psychedelic therapies is robust. I don’t know any guides who aren’t packed to the brim with clients and turning people away, because they’re so busy. And so, I see both sides continuing to gain momentum in parallel.

And then, you know, companies have to just make the decision about which side of the equation they want to operate on. Because, you know, as much as I’m hopeful that you know, TSX and financial regulators will get coherence about state versus federal legality issues. I don’t think they’re going to get on board with total underground market opportunities. And so, public companies are going to be forced in one direction and private companies can choose to operate on either side.

RS: Do you feel like that the underground market in that regard is, you know, for cannabis, it’s obviously leaches growth from the – legal market. Do you feel like it’s at that level for psychedelics?

RL: Yes, because in the underground market, you can easily access psilocybin MDMA, LSD any drug you want, right, you’re going to find a guide who is working with it whereas in a legal market, it really is on ketamine. You know, once we have FDA approved MDMA and psilocybin, will the underground market still leach some people probably? But I think for most of society where we are right now in terms of undoing the indoctrination of the last 60 years, in terms of government lobbying and messaging and this – your brain on drugs and all that kind of stuff.

There’s going to be a lot of people who are going to feel a lot more comfortable being in medical clinic, with a doctor present and a therapist overseeing it then you know, some Brooklyn [Sherman] taking them through an [indiscernible] ceremony. So, yes – but that that being said, I think most of the people in serious need that would be pursuing the medical path would be pursuing the medical path most likely anyway because their present need is more significant than to trust with someone underground.

RS: Do you see any reality I guess in the near term, probably long-term, definitely. But near term, do you see any reality where the medical approach to the therapy is outside or in a different setting than a doctor’s office or in somebody’s home?

RL: I mean, we designed Field Trip to field, like, not a doctor’s office. So that’s definitely different setting. In my conversation with MAPS about their MDMA trials, they anticipate that FDA approval will come with the requirement that a doctor be on call, but not necessarily be present, but that it won’t be able to be done at home. So you’re going to need spaces like Field Trip that feel a little bit more oasis like than a doctor’s office.

To create the best experiences, but it probably will be fairly restricted in terms of where the medical market can operate at least for, you know, the short-term teach us even though MDMA will no longer be schedule, and they’ll probably still be schedule three, which means it will – need to be kept in a safe or delivered directly to the clinic and kept in controlled hands and not delivered to the client. So I think the amount of flexibility you have in that that world is pretty limited.

RS: Is the setting itself? Is that something that you guys are continuously, if not constantly iterating on? Is that something that you’re always thinking about or getting feedback from patients?

RL: So the setting, not so much. I mean, I think most people come into our clinics and they’re designed to make people feel it at ease and comfortable. And generally, we’ve been a very successful at that. I think the place where innovation happens is really in the set in the therapy, which is what is the prep work you’re doing? How much work do you need to do and the different – techniques to bring and two, and how much therapy is there? When do you do the therapy? I think there’s a lot of innovation in that respect.

But now – as with any brick and mortar business, any changes to the environment there is a capital cost associated with it. And so with the exception of work that we’re not doing on virtual reality and how you use technology to substantially expand the experience. I don’t anticipate there’s going to be a lot of people trying to innovate on whether a green light or a red light in a room is going to have substantial impact. At least in the short-term, maybe there’ll be some clinical research on that then.

RS: All right, Ronan. Well, I appreciate you coming on. Is there anything or I should say, how can how can listeners find you? How can they find out more about Field Trip therapies?

RL: Sure, so to find me, I’m on Twitter and Instagram @RonanDLevy, D as in David, Field Trip is @fieldtriphealth, both – Instagram and Twitter. Those are great resources. Our website is fieldtriphealth.com. If you’re interested in learning more about what’s happening in the space and just general conversations, we do have a podcast called Field Tripping. And we have some amazing guests on that. And I’ve got a book coming out in May. Through Hay House called the Ketamine Breakthrough, which is really excited to be at the central guide to ketamine-assisted therapy. So anyone interested in it, whether you’re a client or a therapist who’s interested in learning more, Dr. Mike Dow and I will be having that out in May.

And I’ve also got a documentary coming out which is tentatively entitled to everyone. Everybody is doing drugs, which is, you know, really trying to show a firsthand experience of what psychedelic therapies are like, you know, in a very real way. I think the documentaries in work out there that has been done. It’s been fantastic. But it’s mostly talking yes is talking about science and – as much as psychedelics can help you change your mind, in my opinion, the important work is how they can help you change your heart, you know, and what you feel. And I think it’s a really cool exploration of that. Right now, it’s officially named Ordinary Trip. So if you go to Instagram, I think its ordinarytripdoc is the Instagram handle, but that may be changing. So those are all great resources to check out.

RS: Nice for the record, I like the – everybody’s doing drugs better. But that’s – fun stuff to look for. Anything that you would leave investors with or something that, you feel like – we left out of the conversation that you feel like investors should be paying attention to?

RL: From an investment perspective, it really is the market opportunity is almost in compressively massive in my mind, and I’m not the only one now screaming for updates that this is the case. You have very thoughtful people now starting to come around to this recognition. And current valuations are just through the floor. You know, most companies are trading at or below cash value. And so it’s a great time to invest if the company you’re investing in is well capitalized to continue operations and has a good management team. And it probably has never been a better time to invest in a given sector that is almost certainly going to achieve massive, massive growth. So that’s really the message – I’d sent to all investors and a certainly, Field Trip is part of that equation, but I am not even just limited to Field Trip. There’s, a lot of potentially very good companies that weren’t looking at just given the current circumstances?

RS: Well, thanks for coming on, Ronan. And anybody who can touch your podcast and I guess all your upcoming – book documentary always have a great conversation. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing and being part of the conversation here. I appreciate it. Thank you.

RL: Thank you for having me back – and it was great to chat, and it was great to have an opportunity to talk about psychedelics and maybe be I’m still very actively involved in a company called Trade Biosciences, which is a cannabis biotech company, and they’re just started to commercialize their product, which is – an actually water-soluble CBD as opposed to emulsified CBD. It’s a pretty cool product. And so maybe once we get to a little bit further ahead, we can talk about it – all the game changing implications of that, but what’s the evident time.

RS: Awesome, I would love it. I would love it. Yes that’s why you were here last time talking trade, so we can come full circle once again. I love it?

RL: Indeed, it took much longer to get to where I thought we were going to with trade. But I’m glad we were finally there.

RS: If we could sum up the cannabis industry in one line, I think it might be that took a lot longer than we thought it might yes, yes.

RL: Yes.

RS: Yes, Ronan and thank you very much. I appreciate it.

RL: That’s a good point.

RS: Yes.

RL: Thank you.

RS: Yes, take care. Thank you.

RL: Have a great day. Thanks, Rena.

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