Entrepreneur, Tom Whettem, set up British Cannabis™ in a bid to make his daughter proud. Seven years later the firm recently secured its position as the largest manufacturer of legal cannabis in the UK. The CEO shares his journey and where it all began.
When successful entrepreneur Tom Whettem heard the words of Jason David, father of epileptic child Jayden, in 2013, it dramatically changed the course of his career.
“My number one goal is to have my son say I love you. People take that for granted… that people talk and say I love you. That’s all I want to hear my son say.”
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Jason, father of epilepsy child Jayden, was describing weening his seven-year-old son off 22 prescription pills a day to be replaced by a small dose of cannabis oil, almost immediately putting an end to the constant seizures from which he had suffered since birth.
For Tom, a father himself, these words were powerful enough for him to begin a journey that propelled a small British start-up to become the largest manufacturer of legal cannabis supplements in the UK.
The journey
It’s a journey that has seen him play an instrumental role in influencing the regulatory direction of ‘Novel Food’ supplements, working with the EU and member states, supporting trade bodies and securing the position of an industry built around the once-controversial substance.
When Tom was growing up in Berkshire, UK, attending the same school as Dragons’ Den’s Peter Jones, Cannabis was just an illegal substance.
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But as of Thursday, 31 March 2022 Tom’s company British Cannabis™, now manufactures nine per cent of all CBD food supplements legal to sell in the UK, following successful inclusion on the Food Standard Agency’s Novel Foods public list.
“By chance, I saw that video of Jayden,” says Tom.
“Diagnosed with a rare and catastrophic form of epilepsy, his life was changed overnight by CBD. I saw an opportunity to start a business that could be based on principles I had never experienced before”, says Tom.
CBD as a Novel Food
There was no blueprint for the CBD industry in the UK when Tom started. He began from square one.
“We built the science, the technology and growing methods all from the ground up,” he says.
By far the most monumental challenge has been compliance with the regulatory environment around CBD as a ‘Novel Food’, the classification under which CBD products are now listed in the UK.
As the lead author of the 15 dossiers, British Cannabis™ has written about the safety of CBD products, (including 20 per cent of all applications through to the next stage), giving the company the highest number of applications covering the safety of products permitted for general sale in the UK.
Tom and his team went above and beyond to prove the safety and efficacy of CBD, a task that only a company like British Cannabis™ could have achieved.
“While other companies outsourced the completion of their dossiers to expert regulatory consultants, we didn’t have that option as they were all already contracted to other companies and couldn’t take on more work,” says Tom, who had no option but to undertake this monumental task himself.
“I headed up a team of five, including two of our scientists, my father who has been my lifelong mentor and our compliance lead. We then spent countless days and long nights leveraging all the knowledge we had built up over the years to complete them by the 11th hour.”
Tom’s vast autodidactic legal knowledge came through self-education in every legislation and regulatory compliance, identifying potential opportunities that have resulted in the creation of more than one emerging market he has pioneered.
As the founder of the first company in the UK to reclaim bank charges and PPI in 2006, he went on to take on some of the UK’s largest financial institutions in court, saving consumers £928 million a year from the subsequent fall in unauthorised overdraft charges. All of this experience gave him the knowledge to understand complex legal situations around cannabis products.
“I don’t read books, but I often read Acts of Parliament from cover-to-cover multiple times. Most people have a favourite book, I have my favourite regulations. I studied the Novel Foods regulations so many times until I became an expert,” he adds.
This also saw Tom become a founder of the UK’s first Cannabis trade body, holding the position of Regulatory and Compliance director and being instrumental in developing an industry enabling consumers to continue to access cannabis supplements in the UK.
Formed in 2016 after the Medicines and Health Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued notices to several CBD suppliers stating that cannabidiol (CBD) was being designated as a medicine and that sale of all CBD products must stop within 28 days, it saw Tom meet with the MHRA representatives at the agency’s headquarters in London.
This resulted in the MHRA updating its statement on its website softening its position by claiming that its notices to CBD suppliers were merely its “opinion”
Later in 2019 he was joined by Robert Jappie (ince) and Jonathan Kirk QC, of Gough Square Chambers, and travelled to Brussels to make representations to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) in respect of the decision to reclassify hemp extracts as ‘novel’. Again, being at the forefront of protecting the industry which he had pioneered, and which is now valued in the hundreds of millions.
While the efforts did not reverse the decision classifying CBD as being novel, Tom continued to engage with the UK’s FSA to ensure products could remain on sale while authorisation was obtained.
Novel foods are not just about the law
“Building our farm from the ground up and living and breathing cannabis every day all gave me the knowledge to demonstrate the safety of CBD as a Novel Food,” says Tom.
Today CBD products are available on supermarket shelves and also for certain medical usage. But it’s not been an easy road.
“I have sacrificed a lot,” says Tom. “When you operate a business for monetary gains it’s easy to take time off and enjoy yourself. But it’s so different when you know the work you do impacts the lives of other people so dramatically.”
He adds: “The business has not only enabled me to help so many of our customers but also it’s been instrumental in securing the future of the industry. If we hadn’t done what we did, many lives would be worse off as a result. My legacy before currency mantra is something that has driven every aspect of my life for the last 10 years.”
What sets British Cannabis™ apart from the competition in this emerging market is its dedication to regulatory compliance and professionalism.
“We are not just a CBD brand, we are a proper cannabis business. We do everything. We often get asked who our competition is, but in the UK, no one does what we do,” says Tom.
“We have achieved this by doing more than is necessary. Our revenues are just the result, not the reason we exist. We exist to continue to build on our knowledge. What we say is we know more because we do more. And that’s so true. No one is as well-positioned as us.
“Nearly all CBD in the UK is imported. As it’s much easier to profit from putting a label on an imported bottle than creating it yourself. But while our competition has invested in profits, we have invested in ourselves, driving all profits back into the company.”
A bright future
So where is this business heading?
Tom still has much more to give to this burgeoning industry. A natural next step for British Cannabis™ will see the launch of a Seedrs fundraise in the coming months as they prepare to list as a public company.
“After years of being self-funded, having no debt and operating a profitable business, we are now looking for investment. The next stage is to enable others to share this legacy with me and help further accelerate our growth,” says Tom.
“We are not so interested in selling out. We are just looking to open up ownership of the company to the public through seed funding to enable others to join us on this incredible journey.”
He adds: “Everything I do, whatever it is, is dedicated to continuing the legacy that is British Cannabis™.
“I aspire to a world in which we don’t just stand on the shoulders of giants, but we are standing shoulder to shoulder alongside them. I want British Cannabis™ to be a household name.”
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