Others searched for an explanation.
“I was driving home and it was dark, and I noticed a very unusual and quite large pink glow,” said Anne Webster, a lawmaker representing the area in the Australian Parliament. “I thought that is very strange. My first thought was that there has to be a logical reason for this.”
In fact, the glow came from a medical cannabis facility on the outskirts of Mildura which inadvertently revealed its previously undisclosed location while testing the LED lights, reflecting off the cloudy night sky to create a spooky, supernatural scene. that scared and delighted the city of 56,000.
As the facility’s security investigation kept an eye on the source of the hot pink light, they realized it was drawing attention around Mildura, which is about 340 miles northwest of Melbourne.
“He went out at night and noticed a glow and noticed some vehicles stopping to see where it was coming from,” Peter Crock, CEO of Cann Group, the cannabis research and production company behind the facility. saying the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
The company often uses blackout curtains to hide the red-spectrum LED lights used to stimulate plant growth. But on Wednesday the curtains were left open for a while, sending out a Bat-Signal that was visible miles away from the facility, located in the southeastern state of Victoria.
In 2016, Australia legalized the cultivation, research and manufacture of medical marijuana. Currently, some 70,000 Australians turn to medical marijuana for relief, generating an estimated $160 million in revenue in 2021. according to to Fresh Leaf Analytics, a cannabis market research company. Australians use medical marijuana primarily for pain, anxiety and sleep problems, 2022 study finds to study published in the journal Frontiers of Pharmacology.
Prescriptions have skyrocketed in the past two years, which the study attributed in part to the “mental health burden” of Australia’s coronavirus containment restrictions. The country imposed one of the strictest lockdowns in the world before vaccinating 95 percent of its adult population.
Cann Group was Australia’s first licensed company to conduct cannabis research. It received a $1.4 million grant from the Victorian state government, part of which was used to develop a commercial medical cannabis facility at a location not revealed until this week’s lighting incident. The Mildura plant, which was built on the site of a former juice factory, harvested its first batch earlier this month.
Mildura is known as a major grape producer, supplying wineries throughout the region. But his foray into cannabis production is new.
“It’s providing jobs, and this is just the tip of the iceberg because it has a great growth future,” said Webster, the lawmaker, who toured the Cann facility.
“We’ve resumed normal broadcasting, but it definitely got everyone’s attention in the meantime,” Crock, Cann’s chief executive, said of Wednesday’s incident. “Any publicity is good publicity.”
