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When US President Joe Biden signed the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act on 2 December, senators who supported the move released a statement. It said:

Today’s edition of Inciting Incident is not about the Act but a company that convinced the Indian government to fund, support, and even promote research into the medical use of cannabis a few years ago. The company is called HempStreet Medicare Pvt. Ltd. 

In 2021, it became the first company to receive the Indian government’s Rs 50 lakh ($61,000) Biotechnology Ignition Grant (BIG) to work on cannabis-based medicinal solutions. Past winners of the grant given by the Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) include vaccine maker Bharat Biotech. 

The grant came after HempStreet raised $1 million in pre-Series A funding round led by Pharmacon Holdings, a US-based pharmatech company, and Romain Barberis, a private investor in the cannabis market in the US and Canada.

I interviewed the Delhi-based startup’s co-founder and chief executive (CEO), Abhishek Mohan, to find out his approach to storytelling. 

HempStreet’s recipe in India: To tackle the opioid crisis, use cannabis in Ayurveda

In India, patients suffering from incurable diseases like HIV or cancer are forced to live with pain without access to required painkillers, as we wrote in 2019. While India supplies the world with opioids—the cheapest, most effective painkillers out there—it’s equipped to provide opioids to only 40,000 patients—less than 1% of the national requirement.

While the World Health Organisation (WHO) has declared opioid-based painkillers, especially morphine, as the “gold standard” for pain relief for such patients, there is a stigma attached to the use of opium. For example, data from the US suggests that between 1999 and 2017, overdose deaths due to prescription opioids increased 5X. 

In India, another problem was the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act. The law, enacted in 1985 as a response to the global war on drugs, stipulated rigorous punishment for medical professionals if they didn’t produce proper documentation for storing and prescribing opioid medications. It dissuaded doctors from prescribing opioids altogether. 

Cannabis, used in Ayurveda to treat various ailments, emerged as a possible alternative to opioids in India.