How does Delic create a legal psychedelic ecosystem?

In 2019, a new breed of wellness business emerged – a legal psychedelics company. We spoke to Matt Stang, Co-Founder and CEO of Delic Corp, to learn more about their mission, as well as the strategies they have used to build a publicly traded, legally psychedelic ecosystem.

Matt Stang pioneered legal cannabis for twenty years as the former owner and operator of High Times – one of the earliest cannabis media and events companies. He built the High Times as owner and even brought the infamous Cannabis Cup around the world.

Matt Stang.

Can you describe how you transitioned into psychedelic wellbeing and Delic’s mission?

In 2018 I saw that there was a really interesting opportunity to get psychedelics online. My wife (Jackee Stang) and I started Delic as the world’s first psychedelic wellness company. Our mission at Delic Corp is to establish psychedelic wellness and psychedelics.

Matt Stang

Delic Corp started out as a media and events company itself. According to Matt, the founder of Delic, this was due to a complete lack of legal psychedelic businesses. Therefore, a media and events platform was used to “build a psychedelic ecosystem”.

How has Delic developed from its media platform?

After going public six months ago, we acquired cash flow companies in the psychedelic space. So we acquired CBDV (Complex Biotech Discovery Ventures), whose licenses for cannabis, hemp and psilocybin come from Health Canada. And we have acquired a chain of ketamine clinics called the Ketamine Infusion Centers in Arizona and California.

So we have FDA-compliant ketamine clinics that can pick up other novel molecules that are FDA-cleared for psychedelic wellbeing.

Matt Stang

CBDV is a research laboratory founded by an award-winning organic chemist who completed his Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), and so Delic introduced him deeper into the psychedelic ecosystem.

On the scientific side, we (with) Dr. Markus Roggens Firmen (CBDv) is launching an IP portfolio around psilocybin. He is licensed to Health Canada for psilocybin and so will be doing some interesting work with that license. We want to create a range of novel psilocybin IPs – vaporization and nanoparticle technology, and novel delivery and consumer product formats – as psilocybin can be treated as a therapeutic benefit product in Oregon and other countries.

We are reviewing Oregon and other federally approved markets to establish vertically integrated manufacturing and distribution of these products.

Matt Stang

Can you see the role of CBDV and its founder, Dr. Markus Roggen, describe in more detail in space?

Dr. Markus and his team developed this AI technology to understand cannabinoids, and we are applying it to psilocybin (mushrooms) to find and learn more compounds that are in them and how they are effective for humans for therapeutic use can.

Matt Stang

Can we compare science as the engine in Delic’s psychedelic ecosystem and where are you going with this novel IP?

So there is Oregon, some Caribbean nations – Jamaica allowed it. Some places are in the process of bringing psilocybin online as a therapeutic compound outside of normal FDA compliance or normal pharmaceutical versions.

We believe there is a really interesting market that includes therapeutic consumer products. By developing this IP, we will have these product lines ready to be launched in markets as soon as they go online. Then collect data using our ecosystem, our large, forward-looking content platform that attracts 100,000 visitors a month. The idea is to have a collection point so that the people who try the product can report for themselves on our website (Reality Sandwich) how they work.

We will have large amounts of self-reported data along with novel IP that can be packaged together and either licensed or sold to a biotech or pharmaceutical company looking for a pitted psilocybin product to push through their pipeline.

Pole

Do you give other companies access to research on Delic’s psilocybin license and CBDV?

For other companies we would like to allow them to intensify their activities through us. We take your privacy and secrecy very seriously and therefore try to only do what you authorize and ask for. So if something comes through and they want to announce it, we will announce it together. If they don’t want to announce, we won’t announce it.

Pole

That sounds similar to how CBDV claims to be chief research officer for other companies.

Exactly right, and we tend to fully respect this dynamic and those who herald it, we will help to be a megaphone for it. And those who choose to just keep it as a private outsourced research facility, we’ll keep it that way.

Pole

How can you develop psilocybin delivery methods like vape pens? Can these offer short designer-style trips?

We are currently acquiring the company (CBDv). From there we work with Dr. Markus and his team worked together to build a range of IP developments that benefit from his world-class knowledge of vaporization, delivery methods and standardization of processes. So we’re going to be bringing out a few things in the next four to six months.

We look at shorter trips, meaning people who don’t want to have a psychedelic experience for six to eight hours and may only want to be there for an hour and a half. So just try to create a shorter duration for people like that – who might only want to be there for an hour or two.

Pole

Delic intends to receive data on many fronts, from the consumer on your website to private businesses. How do you protect all of this data and your digital footprint?

We worked with a digital security team to make sure everything was up to the highest standards. All scientific data are in their home country and are not related to consumer data. All patient data live for themselves and are not related to the scientific data or the consumer data. Part of that is just having silos with different levels of security for different parts of the ecosystem because we want to make sure we are meeting the highest security standards.

Pole

At this point, did you have any events planned that are more related to your digital culture center in Delic’s psychedelic ecosystem?

We have digital events going on. We have a digital event for Bike Day (April 19th) which is a celebration of the day LSD was discovered by its inventor. He rode his bike home from the lab after taking it. We have this digital event next, we will have more digital events online, and we will have in-person events sometime later this year that will be announced soon.

Pole

Photo courtesy of the Ketamine Clinics Los Angeles.

There are many other therapeutics under the psychedelics umbrella. Delic believes the FDA will approve MDMA (Ecstasy) within a year.

There is currently a lot of work going on around MDMA. MAPS employees have conducted third phase clinical trials for breakthrough therapies. We built this platform of clinics by purchasing this chain of ketamine clinics and will be opening more in six to eight months.

We believe MDMA will not be state legal like psilocybin, but will encompass psilocybin compliance. Both (MDMA and psilocybin) will be submitted for approval next year. And then of course the FDA needs some time to review their data. But I think there will be huge sales of these two substances, these two novel compounds going online … I just see this as an incredible opportunity for people with a huge clinical footprint to help patients with their wellbeing.

Pole

Ketamine itself is always controversial in the field of ethnobotanists and the herbal medicine world in general.

I think there is a great opportunity in the more traditional world of plant medicine. So we’ll see some states create initiatives that include not just things like psilocybin, but things like auyhascua, igobain, and other herbal medicines as well.

Pole

End of the call.

The path to a legal psychedelic ecosystem seems to be shorter for Delic’s founder Matt Stang than for cannabis. He noted that the cannabis industry had hacked through a jungle. This created a clear path to not only decriminalization, but also legalization and regulation of psychedelics.

Delic and soon many people will have tons of cannabis activists to thank for a newly discovered therapeutic and legal psychedelic ecosystem. Look forward to the rest of our chat with Delic’s Matt Stang to learn more about the effectiveness of ketamine and other psychedelic-assisted therapies for anxiety and depression.