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A huge greenhouse growing cannabis for medicinal use could be built in Wiltshire within two years by a company aiming to dominate a marketplace opened by a Government decision to allow prescribed use of the drug.

Its location will be on a 4,500-acre farm between Warminster and Salisbury.

Alongside the plan, sister company George Botanicals today reported a major growth in the production and sale of legal cannabis oil-based products - oils, balms and capsules - from the two companies’ headquarters in Beckington, near Frome.

(Image: Steve Roberts)

Taken from a variety of cannabis plant called industrial hemp - Cannabis Sativa L – the products contain less than 0.2 per cent of the mind-altering chemical called Tetrahydrocannabino (THC) which cannabis is best known for.

The legislation followed the high-profile case of mother Charlotte Caldwell being refused cannabis oil for her epileptic son Billy last year.

Geremy Thomas, chief executive of Sativa Investments, said: “In the 1970s the Nixon government made cannabis public enemy number one; that political decision held back much research into the positive side of cannabis, and only now are we seeing the medicinal benefits of it.

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Despite this, testing of growth conditions for the medicinal cannabis is being done on tomato plants by another sister company called PhytoVista Laboratories. And last week it was announced the group was teaming up with Kings College London for further research into the medical benefits of cannabis.

All the while, George Botanicals, led by Mr Thomas’s 29-year-old son George, is making and selling a line of 17 products based on a substance called cannabidiol (CBD) at the group’s 200-acre farm in Beckington.

(Image: Steve Roberts)

(Image: Sativa Investments)

CBD comes to the farm in the form of liquid extract or powder from hemp grown in eastern Europe.

“It will mean we will be able to source exactly where our products have come from and enable us to gain more control as a business and give the seed-to-consumer strategy we are longing for,” he said.

(Image: Steve Roberts) (Image: Steve Roberts)

The products are classified by the UK Government as a food supplement and so the company is unable to advertise them for well-being benefits, although research has found it helps people with sleeping problems, anxiety and pain management. It is also used by athletes.

Another sister company has been set up by the group – Goodbody & Blunt – which will create three shops in the West Country selling legal CBD-based products.

George Botanicals is currently offering a spring time 20 per cent discount offer for their cannabis oils using code WEST20. You can visit the website and view products by clicking here.

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