I think there is encouraging news in that area. I've been working on this for over 20 years. I can remember when I knew all the doctors prescribing cannabis in Canada. You could count them on two hands. The latest report from Health Canada, from September, suggests over 18,000 physicians across Canada have prescribed cannabis at least once. That's a quarter of all physicians across Canada. Under those circumstances, it's hard not to think of medical cannabis as, in many ways, being a blockbuster treatment.
I completely agree that this is not the right treatment for all patients under all conditions. There are vulnerable populations out there, be they youth, women who may be pregnant or people with a predisposition for psychosis or schizophrenia, and of course we believe there should be some tracking to ensure the safety of those patients. It's one of the reasons that Tilray and patient groups have been advocating for pharmacy-based access to medical cannabis so that patients can get the benefit of a health care provider and get their advice as they pick up their cannabis, rather than just simply having it sent directly to the door, as is the case under the current system.
Licensed producers would love not to have to fund clinical research anymore. It's an expensive endeavour. That's why very few of us are doing it right now. There are 130 licensed producers in Canada. Only a couple of them are funding phase two or phase three clinical-style research. If the funding was available through the federal government, we'd be more than happy to make that available.
I also want to point out that like any clinical research project with academic affiliation, these studies have gone through rigorous ethics reviews, both via Health Canada and the academic institutions where they're taking place. In regard to our PTSD study, that would be the University of British Columbia. To mitigate any conflict of interest associated with funding or otherwise, we're completely separated from the data gathering, data analysis, associated with those studies. This is a very common practice, and we want to ensure that the data we collect is as independent as possible so that we can learn about the benefits and harms associated with medical cannabis.