In our first column on mental health, we spoke to chief executive officer and co-founder Sherry Boodram, of CannDelta on being a racialized woman in an executive role, her journey to becoming an expert in the industry and the future of psychedelic medicine in Canada for treating mental health.
Boodram’s deep knowledge of the current regulatory landscape of the cannabis and psychedelics sector has allowed her a unique perspective as a leader in a male-dominated industry — a background that makes her one of the most qualified consultants and advisors internationally.
She holds a PhD in chemistry from York University, a BSc with Honours in biological chemistry from the University of Toronto, a certificate in cannabis law and regulation from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University and a graduate certificate with Honours in pharmaceutical regulatory affairs and quality operations from Seneca College.
Boodram has also worked as a senior compliance and enforcement officer for Health Canada during the infancy of cannabis legalization. As a visible minority, she represents the mere 7.4 per cent of racialized women in an executive role in Canada, according to The Zero Report from The Prosperity Project and KPMG Canada.
Within the Canadian cannabis industry, that percentage gets even smaller: Black and Indigenous people, and women, are underrepresented in leadership positions across the board, with two per cent being racialized women according to a policy brief from The Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation and the University of Toronto.
“As a racialized woman in the industry, in a C-suite role, it’s lonely. There are definitely few of us, and not just people who identify as women, but those with different pronouns.”
Sherry Boodram
Boodram’s career path to becoming an expert in regulatory and scientific consulting for CannDelta — where she is responsible for providing guidance and developing strategies to ensure regulatory compliance within Canada’s existing cannabis and psychedelics frameworks, as well as in international jurisdictions — has been an interesting one.
Her first job in 2012, after completing her undergrad, was as a tier 1 drug forensics lab chemist analyzing cannabis and other illicit drugs that were confiscated by the police for Health Canada — a role that required her to testify as an expert witness in court cases if needed. She went back to school to complete a PhD and found herself working again in that same lab on more complicated files.
“I always really enjoyed working there and thought I’d work there while I was writing my thesis, and while I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go next,” Boodram said.
Ready to exit the lab, she took a role in 2013 working on Federal major resources with the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency as a project manager. “That was a really great experience and it allowed me to interact with a lot of different departments at different levels of government, as well as the public, through consultation with Indigenous communities,” Boodram said.
As the cannabis industry was ramping up in 2015, Boodram left that role to go back into controlled substances for Health Canada as a senior compliance and enforcement officer — a job where she reviewed applications for dealer’s licensing and conducted on-site inspections for licensed cannabis producers.
“It was really interesting. The industry was much younger then, so there were a lot fewer licensed producers, and they would have fairly frequent inspections. It was a pretty awesome experience,” Boodram said.
In 2017 Boodram pivoted to the private pharmaceutical industry, working in brand name development for new drug products to ensure medicines could be easily dispensed by pharmacists and health care practitioners to patients.
With the relationships she had built with licensed cannabis suppliers as an inspector for Health Canada, Boodram started helping some of those same producers on the side with applications, compliance and regulatory work, to the point where she could leave her day job.
“I partnered with another colleague of mine that worked at Health Canada, also a chemist, who I knew in grad school and we started CannDelta. It was just the two of us almost four years ago, and now we’re a team of 20,” Boodram said.
CannDelta provides regulatory and scientific consulting for the cannabis and psychedelics industry by helping companies, licensed producers, micro licence holders, universities and retail stores with licensing, business strategy, operational support and ongoing compliance. “A lot of the clients we work with are at the stage where they either want to do manufacturing, to some extent or clinical trials,” Boodram said.
It’s been four years since Canada became the second country to legalize the recreational use of cannabis on Oct. 17, 2018, and since then, a lot has happened. Last year, Canada saw significant growth in the psychedelics industry and has come a long way since the war on drugs started in the 1970s — a war that has disproportionately affected racialized communities, according to Harm Reduction Toronto and scholars like Robyn Maynard, who wrote Policing Black Lives.
“Obviously, the war on drugs has created social marginalization, but I think there are other constructs too that have caused systemic racism and discrimination that discourage and limit the professional success of racialized people in general.”
Sherry Boodram
Boodram has also been actively involved in advocacy and mentorship for other women in the industry. She serves as an independent board advisor for Nextleaf Solutions and as a board member for the Canadian Association of Professionals in Regulatory Affairs (CAPRA).
“One of the great things about the industry is that it’s so progressive and based on things like advocacy, so a lot of people are in tune and sensitive to other issues where there is a lot of discrimination. I think that’s great because they are having those conversations, they’re noticing it and calling it out,” Boodram said.
Advocacy organizations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) have been waiting for years to see policy changes go through for psychedelics. This year, on January 5, 2022, Health Canada amended the Special Access Program (SAP), based on evidence that MDMA and Psilocybin have therapeutic potential. The program allows medical practitioners to request access to certain psychedelics for eligible patients.
“In terms of the new psychedelics landscape, last year saw a big rush for new psychedelics licenses and a lot of clinical trial work,” Boodram said. According to her, the Canadian government is looking to make decisions based on the lessons learned from the process of legalizing cannabis and applying that regulatory framework for the future of psychedelics.
Canadian researchers are finally being allowed to perform limited clinical trials as they attempt to prove the validity of psychedelics as a treatment for PTSD, depression, anxiety, eating disorders and addiction. For example, The Psychedelic Studies Research Program (PSRP), at the University of Toronto, is currently conducting a double-blinded, randomized control trial to test the benefits and drawbacks of microdosing Psilocybin for mental health disorders.
“It’s really important because the real driver for the psychedelic industry and the science behind it is the fact that there is a therapeutic potential. There’s so much diversity in the different compounds, but they really need to understand and quantify what that is in a very consistent, accurate, reliable and repeatable way,” Boodram said.
Psychedelics have been used traditionally by Indigenous people as sacred plant medicines in Canada and around the world. With the Canadian psychedelics industry exploring the pharmacological and economic benefits of these compounds, there are those who believe more needs to be done to honour the Indigenous roots of the psychedelic movement. The Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines is trying to create bridges between the ceremonial and traditional use of sacred plants and psychedelic science, and promote inclusion and diversity in the field.
“A lot of companies are hoping to achieve consistent data through clinical trials and to prove that the science is sound, the plant source is safe and efficacious and there are real therapeutic benefits,” Boodram said. “There’s really no reason at that point to doubt what’s coming out of the Indigenous roots movement and the psychedelic movement that goes along with that.”
Boodram thinks that right now, the psychedelic industry in Canada is at a stage where we are in “the long play” — that it’s clear there is value to be unlocked in potential medicines for useful mental health therapies, but it will take a lot of time to compile the data to substantiate these claims.
She also believes it’s important for folks to continue advocating while being patient during the clinical trial and data stage.“Advocacy paired with sound evidence is really crucial for influencing the government and encouraging policy changes, because they do really, at the end of the day, act on evidence-based and risk-based decisions,” Boodram said.
“I think the increase in interest in the psychedelics industry is really encouraging and inspiring.”
Sherry Boodram
For anyone looking to find more info on the future of the psychedelics industry, Boodram recommends attending the Lift&Co. Expo happening at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre from May. 12 to 15, 2022.
