He’s got a company that’s going to join the gang looking to profit out of medical cannabis in Europe..
Bloomberg reports
While Europe’s cannabis market remains a byzantine puzzle of regulation, countries are embracing the medical uses of the drug at a serious clip and creating the potential for significant growth, according to the boss of one of the first movers in the industry.
“Governments are opening up at a speed that it is hard to keep up with,” Antonio Costanzo, the chief executive officer of London-based EMMAC Life Sciences Ltd., said in an interview.
Antonio Costanzo
That’s quite different from the 45-year-old’s time spent as head of public policy and government relations at Uber Technologies Inc., when getting governments to open up a previously closed market was a fight, he said. In common with ride-sharing, however, regulations and attitudes toward medical cannabis differ by country
At present, 31 countries in Europe have legalized medical cannabis, according to consultant Hanway Associates. But they’re all at different stages. Germany is already prescribing to patients, the U.K. has legalized but very few prescriptions have been written, and France is reviewing its regulation.
EMMAC raised 17 million pounds ($22.4 million) in two private financing rounds this year, giving it a valuation of about 77 million pounds. The company’s strategy is to try to build its own “single market” for cannabis by investing in businesses in larger European countries that are liberalizing their way toward making medical marijuana a mainstream product, Costanzo said.
Read the full story at .. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-23/the-former-uber-man-navigating-europe-s-complex-cannabis-rules
