Source: clintonnews.com
Registered pharmacist Marco Moran of Clinton, chief executive officer of
Dewmar International Brand Management Co. Inc., is planning on expanding
his brands. / Greg Jenson/The Clarion-Ledger
Marco Moran can’t keep from chuckling about what he says is an old, tired stereotype — that hemp and marijuana are one and the same.
They each come from the Cannabis plant, but their uses are much different. Hemp is an ingredient in a slew of everyday products easily found everywhere from grocery stores to specialty shops. Marijuana, on the other hand, can be fairly easily found on the street and land you in prison should you be caught with it.
Moran, a licensed pharmacist and president of Clinton’s Dewmar International, sees a world of potential for his business to grow by testing and developing products utilizing hemp, for both general commercial use and as part of the burgeoning medical-marijuana industry.
“It’s a tough road to climb,” Moran admits, as neither hemp cultivation nor medical-marijuana use are allowed in Mississippi. But he says attitudes are changing enough on both to raise great potential for his five-year-old company, which specializes in “relaxation drinks,” to grow.
Hemp typically is derived from higher-growing varieties of the Cannabis plant that have lower concentration of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, than the low-growing version of the plant that marijuana is commonly derived from. Hemp is used in non-dairy milk, shelled seed, soaps, lotions and many other goods.
Hemp products are legal, but growing hemp often isn’t, depending on a state’s laws. Hemp supporters tout its health qualities, such as its amino acids and Omega fatty acids, suggesting hemp could play a significant role in medical-marijuana treatment.
The 2014 federal Farm Bill allows farmers to grow hemp for research purposes in conjunction with universities or other research institutions, but only in states where the general practice is legal. This could open up further opportunities for a hemp-products industry that notched $581 million in retail sales in 2013, a figure 24 percent higher than in 2012, according to the Hemp Industries Association.
Moran says he’s assembling an advisory group of local physicians to brainstorm possible products to be used for hemp or medical-marijuana purposes.
Twenty states have passed legislation aimed at developing hemp cultivation and research.
Mississippi isn’t one of them. A bill in the state Legislature to allow hemp farming under the auspices of the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce died in committee this year after carrying over from last year.
In the meantime, Dewmar, a publicly traded company, is furthering its reach in its original specialty — providing drinks and other items designed to help their users relax.
The company will soon introduce Kush Cakes, chocolate brownies including hemp, other natural herbs and nutritional supplements. They will be jointly marketed with Hemp Inc. A brand of Cannabis-based chewing gum is in the works, too. Dewmar will nationally distribute C+Swiss, a hemp-based iced tea created by Miami’s Chill Drinks LLC that is sold at large retailers and specialty shops alike.
Chill Drinks CEO Marc Lewin said in a news release that Dewmar “allows us to rapidly and strategically roll out C+Swiss into new markets and onto shelves for mainstream consumers, so that they can all enjoy the benefits of hemp and a great-tasting beverage.”
Dewmar began in 2009, its signature product the Lean Slow Motion Potion, a beverage designed, Moran says, to help its users get a proper amount of sleep after a long day of working, partying or other physical activity. The drink essentially has the opposite aim of an energy drink, and its cans carry warning labels about potential side effects, such as drowsiness, and appropriate consumption.
The drink is sold not only at independent stores but at several dozen Wal-mart locations, including all of them in central Mississippi. Its success led to Dewmar becoming a publicly traded firm in 2011. The company also has offices in Houston and Las Vegas.
Lean’s concept was hatched via a research paper Moran wrote while a pharmacy student at the University of Louisiana-Monroe. Noticing rap artists he’d listen to extol the virtues of combining cough syrup and soda, he decided to explore the links between mixing the two fluids and hip-hop culture. He found many users were drinking the concoction to help them sleep.
“Was it for fun, partying? Or was it a therapeutic issue?” Moran recalled of the problem he was hoping to solve in his research. He found that, “when you wake up, there’s not a drug effect.”
A growing national hemp industry didn’t guarantee success, though, and Dewmar has endured some rough times since its launch, driven mainly by a complicated distribution network and trying to sell its goods in too many places at once. Moran says he’s now focusing on a select number of larger retailers to carry his products and that the distribution system has been pared back to achieve greater efficiency.
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