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Driving past the gravel driveway that leads to an unremarkable rural bungalow just outside the Village of Cremona, most would never know the property is also home to the fastest growing manufacturer of medical marijuana in Canada.

Just beyond the rustic homestead, encircled by a stout, chain-link fence topped with barbed wire, sits a massive one-storey factory that this year is expected to produce 7,000 kg (about the weight of a full-grown African bull elephant) of cannabis for patients who’ve found relief for a wide range of symptoms thanks to a new frontier of medicine.

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Aurora Cannabis is Alberta’s only licensed producer of medical marijuana, and just seven months after it began selling dried marijuana through mail order, the company based in Mountain View County, about an hour’s drive north of Calgary, already boasts thousands of loyal customers.

Cam Battley is Aurora’s senior vice-president, and has also earned the nickname Captain Cannabis as the chair of the advocacy committee for the Canadian Medical Cannabis Industry Association, lobbying for a sector he argues is an important extension to the nation’s health-care system.