Optimi Health Given Green Light To Produce And Distribute MDMA In Canada, The Legal Landscape Ahead

Optimi Health Corp. OPTHF received permission from Health Canada to manufacture and distribute other psychedelic substances -most notably MDMA- under the amended terms outlined in its June 20, 2022 application to the institution. Optimi holds a license to produce natural psychedelic and functional mushrooms.

The terms of the amendment became effective as of August 5, 2022. Production and analytical testing of MDMA are set to begin in October 2022, in Optimi’s facility in British Columbia.

Optimi’s chief science officer, Justin Kirkland, will lead the company towards becoming a supplier of MDMA and other synthetic psychedelic compounds for approved researchers and drug developers.

Health Canada’s amendment will allow Optimi to manufacture and distribute an extensive list of substances, including DMT, mescaline, ketamine, LSD, phencyclidine, GHB, harmaline, harmalol, salvia divinorum and 2C-B.

CEO Bill Ciprick believes Optimi’s in-house capacity to produce a wide range of scalable formulations “from lab to market” places the company at the forefront of the commercial manufacturing and supply of GMP psychedelics in North America.

“On compliance, quality, and scale, we have consistently demonstrated our plan to lead the industry in API synthesis and formulation, which gives our science and operations team the confidence to develop saleable psychedelic products that are supported by rigorous in-house Standard Operating Procedures (SOP),” stated Ciprick.

Optimi is already preparing for the expected international and domestic regulatory movement towards legal psychedelic-assisted therapies. 

“The regulatory landscape in the U.S and Canada is always evolving, specifically with the Canadian government’s recent decision to decriminalize MDMA up to 2.5 grams in British Columbia,” explained the company’s regulatory affairs advisor Michael Kydd. 

“Governments often use incremental shifts in policy to test public sentiment, which sometimes triggers broader policy change down the road,” he added. "In this sense, any company holding a license to produce psychedelics at an unmatched scale will no doubt benefit from these eventual policy changes."

Photo courtesy of Anna Shvets on Pexels.