 FSD Pharma is a cannabis company that operates more like a traditional biotech company. I'm joined by the CEO, Raza Bakhari. Raza, congratulations on listing at the Nasdaq. That's something that not a lot of cannabis companies have been able to do. How were you able to accomplish this? Thank you, Deborah, for having me back on your program. And a happy new year to you. Indeed, we are now in a group of select 12 companies which are Canadian, Domiciled and in a cannabis related business. There are some stringent criteria which primarily besides the financial health and some operating history also requires a very stringent requirement that there is no direct or indirect business, a plant-based cannabis related business that the company does in the United States. So we religiously complied to that right from the outset. We continue to comply to that and that is what our intent is for ever and ever and ever, that we as a company started off as a licensed producer of medicinal-grade cannabis in Canada. Also, we had an interest and also believed that the real potential to unlock the potential of cannabinoid molecule, these molecules should run through clinical trials and produce FDA approved prescription drugs in the same fashion that GW Pharma has been able to do. And in that quest, we have just, we acquired a US-based specialty biotech company at the end of Q2 that transformed us essentially into a specialty biotech pharmaceutical company with a growth facility in Canada. Market conditions also have changed. There is a supply glut of cannabis in Canada. So we have responded to that also, which also fits into our overall strategic intent where we have hunkered down on our growth facility and have doubled down on our biosciences effort by opening a biosciences division which is led by a world-class executive, Dr. Edward Brennan, who has 30 plus a year of history and we just announced strengthening of that biosciences division by additional team members. So I believe that we were able to do this because we have an independent board, predominantly also board members which are mostly Americans and we have a clear cut vision that we are a biotech specialty firm as opposed to a cannabis firm and I think perhaps that is how we crystallize to this level. And what is unique about your company is, as you mentioned, you focus on pharmaceutical grade cannabis but you're also looking at synthetic compounds and most companies do one or the other. So why did you pursue both of those avenues? Well, we are in the leadership of FSD Pharma. Besides myself, which I think I am dwarfed in company of folks like Dr. Sarah May that runs our growth facility. It has a PhD and a plan geneticist and Dr. Edward Brennan who is a pharmacologist and also a physician, a recovering physician like myself but nonetheless very qualified pharmaceutical executive that has done drug development at Glexosmith Klein and Johnson & Johnson and has taken at least a dozen or so compounds through a clinical trial process and I think a few of those drugs became blockbuster drugs. The reason we are focused on both is that the real potential, as I said at the risk of being repetitive is to really look at how you unlock this potential through clinical trials and more importantly as clinicians we have an appreciation that the CBD molecule targets the CB2 receptor of the endocannabinoid system. There are other compounds like the naturally occurring endorphins that target the CB2 receptor. We acquired a licensing rights to prismic acquisition to a micronized formulation of PEA or a fatty acid called palmetol ethylamide which targets the CB2 receptor of the endocannabinoid system and has properties that minimizes inflammation and it is those effort which really drive us. We still as a company believe that medicinal cannabis has a role. It is meant for our Canadian prescription based users but we are very mindful that there is a supply glut so we had actually identified the supply glut back in February when there was my first executive action as the CEO that I had shut down our accelerated growth efforts. Otherwise today we would have been, our financial health would have been very weak. We do not carry any long term debt on our books other than the debt that we acquired through the prismic acquisition. Our 12 competitors which are our 12 peers rather and competitors too in some ways that are either on New York Stock Exchange or on NASDAQ all have massive debts on their books. So in some ways we think that while we are in a peer group of 12 we are a class of one of our own but we have to demonstrate that through effort and through tangible results over time. Now you are doing trials. These study trials are very expensive. So do you expect that you have the cash on hand to get through phase one or two? Will you have to go back to the capital markets to get to stage three? A public company is always raising capital. So like any good public company we are always perpetually either thinking about raising capital or will initiate another round of raise. We started with $53 million of raise how we went public on the Canadian Stock Exchange and then we just closed a private placement which I personally led by a $1.6 million investment at a premium of $20.10 and the management and board members and founders also contributed another million dollars and we raised another $2 million or so from high net worth individuals and institutional grade investors. That raise, the $4.5 million raise that we did is sufficient for us to which we have announced that we are about to begin a safety and tolerability study a phase one in human safety and tolerability study in Q1 of this year which would be at a cost of about $2 million and we are in addition going to do some toxicology studies so that enables us to go towards the end of this year hopefully with positive results then do an IND application with FDA and subsequently then come back and start some phase two trials that Dr. Brennan has some thoughts of application of this micro PEA, our lead asset it has application in alleviating and trying to address the opioid crisis by creating some opioid sparing prescription medications also osteoarthritis and women health particularly endometriosis each of those phase two trial are rather probably would be in the neighborhood of $10 million each by the time we get there we will hopefully would have raised more capital we also have non-cash assets of our company which are over $60 million or so the board of directors of FSD Pharma authorized for us to begin to monetize some of those non-cash assets some of them are marketable securities investments in other companies so our hope and aim is in one of our objectives for this year is to get our cash on hand which currently is as of Q3 of 2019 is $7.3 million on hand plus we raised an additional $4.5 million to get in the neighborhood of somewhere of $50 million cash on hand hopefully we will be able to achieve this because of now enhanced and elevated visibility being in the Aztec listed company and so I have to ask you that symbol huge HUGE whose decision was that what was behind that name the credit of that choice goes to the founders the S and the D of the FSD Pharma I think they both had picked that symbol that is how we listed on Canadian Stock Exchange we were also fortunate that that same ticker was available for NASDAQ and our securities firm Paul Wise they did a remarkable job to secure that for us and for NASDAQ to accept that as a symbol so we are very excited and we see that hopefully our better days are just ahead of us well I can't help but say it but things are not going to be big for you this year they're going to be huge well we certainly hope so but I will refrain from making a forward-looking statement of course but clearly it's a huge opportunity with huge responsibility and we hope that we can continue to deliver sustainable value for our 50,000 or plus shareholders that have been very patient and gracious with their support for us and we were able to deliver their mandate which we had received on January 22nd of last year so before the end of one year we were actually able to deliver on their mandate and up-list the company on NASDAQ great that is Raza Bahari and I am Deborah Borchart reporting for the Green Market Report from the NASDAQ Market site