As Dr. Waisglass said, botanical cannabis is complex. It's a plant. I think it can play a role, but I also think that if we are to call it medical cannabis, it has to be medical cannabis. Now, it doesn't have to be a medical plant. It can be a medical substance, such as an extract in pill form, for example, or a liquid extract that could be used under the tongue as a sublingual. What's really important is the consistency of the extract or the product itself and the known quantity of cannabinoids, be they CBD, THC or any of the others that we know something about, which are CBN, CBC and CBG, of the 110 or so.
We do know from excellent animal work and some human work that the complexity of different cannabinoids in the whole plant extract is more effective than one single compound alone. That was demonstrated in the trials for Epidiolex, a CBD-based anti-epileptic drug recently approved in the U.S. That is what's being looked at in Israel, and hopefully in Canada. I'm very interested in the collaborations that are possible. I'm a member of the Cannabinoid Research Initiative of Saskatchewan, at the University of Saskatchewan, and there are plans to investigate this here in Canada as well.
The intention is to create cannabinoid-based or cannabinoid-derived actual medications that are consistent from dose to dose and product to product so that they can be used as pharmaceuticals. Now, we're not there yet. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't be using cannabis, because there has been demonstrated efficacy in scientific study that goes back to the early months and years of the past century and this century. There's a great deal of evidence for this, and it is safe.
Until we actually have the pharmaceuticals, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't treat people appropriately and with the products that are indicated. It just means that we have a lot of work to do to bring it up to the standards that we all expect.