New Medical MJ R&D Facility
US company to partner with Canadian Maliseet First Nation Tribe
A US medical marijuana company is moving full speed ahead with plans to build a first-of-its-kind cannabis campus that will include a treatment center, hospital facilities, a lab for research and product development and a cultivation site that will grow both MMJ and hemp.
The X-Change Corp. – one of the few publicly traded companies in the medical cannabis space (ticker symbol XCHC) – hopes to one day treat patients from around the world at the facility, offering cannabis-based remedies for their ailments.
How is this possible, given that marijuana is still illegal federally and state MMJ laws don’t cover these types of operations? The X-Change Corp. plans to build the campus on a big swath of land in New Brunswick, Canada, belonging to the Maliseet First Nation, the indigenous people of the region. The tribe – which has its own government and laws – has agreed to partner with the firm and the two sides are now hammering out details, including a projected timeline and the overall scope of the project. The partnership allows The X-Change Corp. to avoid the legal issues that prevent it from building such a facility elsewhere in Canada or the US – though there are still many challenges involved.
The X-Change Corp. actually bought the rights to the project from another US company, Cannabis Science, which planned to move forward with the development last year but has been unable to do so because of competing priorities.
Robert Kane, who is president of The X-Change Corp. and also handles investor relations for Cannabis Science, spoke with Medical Marijuana Business Daily about the project and what it means for the future of the marijuana business. Following are excerpts of that conversation:
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