Canopy Growth and Spectrum Therapeutics: one company, two names on the package

• Scale. 13 strains in the list, in 16 pharmacy positions.
• What you won’t buy elsewhere. 12 of them are supplied exclusively by this manufacturer, so a break in their supply means no versions of these strains, not another version.
• Portfolio profile. Myrcene leads, in 6 out of 13 strains, alongside limonene, terpinolene, pinene.
• What’s missing. For 5 out of 13 strains, the pedigree remains unknown and we do not add it based on name similarity.

Who is Canopy Growth and where does its raw material come from?

A Canadian company based in Smiths Falls, Ontario. In the Polish market, it operates through Canopy Growth Polska sp. z o.o. from Toruń, and this company is responsible for the pharmacy positions. However, the product is sold under the Spectrum Therapeutics brand, and the producer describes its own crops as Canadian.

The Polish company has a longer history than the brand it carries today. It has been listed in the business register since July 2013, initially under the name Tibon Central Europe, renamed to Spektrum Polska in autumn 2017, to Spektrum Cannabis Polska in spring 2018, and has been operating under the current name since the end of April 2019. The address has remained the same all this time, on Grudziądzka Street in Toruń. The same company today operates two Polish websites: a store under the brand address and an educational one aimed at doctors and pharmacists.

We have not established the cultivation location of a specific series. In materials for the Canadian market, the producer lists facilities in Smiths Falls, Kincardine, and Kelowna, and the brand 7ACRES is described as cultivated in Canada; however, the pharmacy product card in Poland only provides the responsible entity. The cultivation in Denmark, which was mentioned with this company a few years ago, was closed in 2021 and sold to another company, so referencing it today would be misleading.

Why does the same manufacturer appear under two names?

Because one of them is a registered name, and the other is a trade designation. On the pharmacy position, the name Cannabis flos Canopy Growth appears, while the brand website and the educational service run by the same company refer to Spectrum Therapeutics. Until August 2026, our list counted them as two separate entities, thus reporting seventeen manufacturers instead of sixteen.

This is determined by the records in the data, not by declaration. In two Polish strain databases we use, there are twenty-four records concerning this raw material; the producer field in each of them is filled with Spectrum Therapeutics, while the registered name in twenty of them is Canopy Growth. In the list of pharmacy positions, fifteen entries are distributed across eight signed with the brand and seven signed with the company, with Kush Mints appearing there twice: once under one name, once under the other, and with two different terpenes listed first.

The direction of consolidation is not arbitrary. The official designation of the product indicates the manufacturer, so Canopy Growth remains in the list, while Spectrum remains a trade label that can be mentioned in the text. In fact, there are more than two brands: the Polish educational service of this company lists twelve, including Tweed and 7ACRES, which is the label under which the pedigrees of several strains from the list below come. The German subsidiary went a step further and in 2023 changed Spectrum Therapeutics to Canopy Medical, so that the medical brand would be named the same as the company.

Which Canopy Growth strains reach Polish pharmacies?

Thirteen cultivars in the list on which this cluster stands. Twelve of them have no other supplier in our market, and Hindu Kush shares a shelf with one competitor. Together they account for fifteen pharmacy positions, as two strains are listed in the source under two name records.

The distribution of leading terpenes in this thirteen is narrow. Six strains are based on myrcene, three on limonene and terpinolene, and one on pinene. There is not a single entry with caryophyllene leading, although it leads in thirty strains out of eighty-five in our entire pharmacy list, meaning more often than any other. Therefore, this manufacturer does not provide a cross-section of the market, only its segment. There are several layers of nomenclature, and it is easy to get lost in them: the registered name from the pharmacy goes separately, the trade designation of the brand like Red No 2 goes separately, the name given by the breeder, for example, Bakerstreet, goes separately, and finally the cultivar name used by strain databases. The last one is listed in the table above, as it is the only one that can be compared with positions from other suppliers.

The current availability status is maintained separately, in the list of strains available in pharmacies, where positions from all manufacturers are listed at once. Our store category for raw material contains hemp products issued without a prescription and is not equivalent to the raw material described here; a similar name often confuses these two things more than one might think.

Why does the list of strains from this manufacturer change over time?

Because positions enter and exit the market, and the trade name may be assigned to subsequent cultivars. The manufacturer’s website currently lists eight positions for Poland, our list has gathered thirteen, and this difference is not an error of either list, but a time gap between one and the other listing.

The history of this brand on the Vistula consists of interruptions. The position sold as Red No 2 was registered as a pharmaceutical raw material earlier than any other, then disappeared from pharmacies in December 2019 and returned only in May the following year. Even earlier, the supply waited for months for release for circulation because laboratory testing showed a different content of active substances than declared by the manufacturer.

Two later events are visible in our list as separate rows. In June 2024, the manufacturer announced that the cultivar Jack Haze enters under the name Red No 2 and that it will replace the previous Lemon Skunk, so one trade designation carries two different plants for us. In September of the same year, the company itself withdrew Penelope, explaining the decision by the aging genetics’ susceptibility to quality fluctuations. At that time, it was its only Polish position with a balanced composition, and among the eight listed today by the manufacturer, there is no equivalent with such characteristics.

How does Canopy Growth’s raw material differ from that of other manufacturers?

By three things that can be verified outside of advertising materials: the method of preservation, the structure of the registered name, and the fact that part of the pedigrees is provided by the manufacturer itself. Other differences mentioned in its own materials are assurances without published results, so we do not treat them as data about the series.

The manufacturer openly admits to preservation by radiation. Its Polish educational service lists gamma radiation and electron beam and explains the procedure as removing microbiological contaminants. It also states that the content of active substances remains unchanged, and the aroma changes by less than five percent. The first half of this sentence describes the technology, and we read it as such; the second is a number without a given measurement, so it remains in the promise column.

The registered name describes potency, not the plant. In our data, fifteen descriptions of this manufacturer’s strains fit into eight registered names, and under one of them, there are as many as five cultivars at once. Kush Mints goes the other way and appears under two records. Anyone looking for a specific strain by the pharmacy label will not find it this way, as the label carries the declared content, not the designation of the plant.

Eight out of thirteen strains have documented origins, and for four, the source is the manufacturer’s own page or the brand 7ACRES owned by it. Compared to the market, this is quite a lot, as most suppliers in our list do not provide pedigrees at all. On the other hand, there is a gap that the manufacturer does not fill: the Polish website does not provide downloadable certificates of analysis for the series, and its research tab refers to forty years of work on hemp in general, without indicating a single position concerning its own raw material.

What is known, and what is not known about this manufacturer’s raw material?

It is known how many positions and under what names stand in pharmacies and what composition two Polish strain databases declare. It is not known how this composition relates to the actual series, as the shares reported by the databases do not sum up to a whole, and the manufacturer does not publish results of tests of its own raw material.

We counted this on fourteen descriptions of this manufacturer, for which the database provides shares of terpenes. The lowest sum is sixty, the highest is one hundred sixteen, the median lies halfway between eighty-five and ninety, ten descriptions do not reach one hundred, three hit it exactly, and one exceeds it. Since the same measure sometimes does not reach the whole and sometimes exceeds it, the denominator is different and unknown in each description. Therefore, we do not provide the profile composition here in percentages anywhere, even where the numbers are ready.

Documentation is uneven in this thirteen. The composition matches in both databases only for one strain, for two the databases provide differing sets of terpenes, nine describe only one source, and for White Widow X we found no profile in any. For the content of active substances, it is even tighter: the deviation from the value declared by the manufacturer is reported by sources for only four positions, so for the others, we do not provide it at all.

These gaps must be named. It is not known in which facility the series lying in the pharmacy today grew, as the pharmacy card does not reveal this. It is also not known how this company’s raw material compares to that of competitors, as no comparative brand studies have been published, and patient reports circulating on forums describe a single batch, not the manufacturing process.

How quickly does this manufacturer’s raw material work and for how long?

Just like the raw material of any other manufacturer, as the course is determined by the route of administration, not the label on the package. For none of its thirteen strains has the manufacturer published pharmacokinetic studies, so the ranges below describe the method of raw material intake, not the property of this specific brand.

The route of administration determines the course more than the strain itself. After vaporization, the substance passes from the lungs to the blood almost immediately, so the first sensations appear after a few minutes, the intensity increases for another ten to thirty minutes, and the whole effect lasts for two to four hours. After ingestion, the raw material first passes through the intestine and liver, so the first sensations are waited for from half an hour to two, and the episode lasts six, sometimes eight hours. This is where the most common mistake in oral administration comes from: those who think that nothing is happening after thirty minutes and take another dose will receive both doses at once. The above ranges describe the route of administration, not this strain; pharmacokinetic studies for a single cultivar have not been published.

With this manufacturer, there is one more caveat. Its raw material is sometimes preserved by radiation, and the company itself admits that this procedure affects the aroma. The impact of such processing on the course of action has not been measured, so it cannot be determined whether a preserved batch behaves over time the same as an unpreserved one.

What adverse effects have been reported after using this manufacturer’s raw material?

None that could be attributed specifically to it. Reports are collected in Poland for a compounded medication made from the raw material, not for the manufacturer’s name, so there is simply no breakdown by brands. The following pertains to hemp raw material as a group of substances.

Reports of adverse effects are collected for a medicinal product with a batch number, not for the strain name, so the following pertains to hemp raw material as a group of substances. The most commonly reported effects are dry mouth, red eyes, and increased heart rate. Less frequently described are dizziness upon rapid standing, daytime drowsiness, and temporary worsening of short-term memory, as well as anxiety that increases with dosage. A separate issue is medications taken concurrently, especially sedatives and those affecting coagulation: their assessment requires knowledge of the entire list of preparations, not just the description of the plant. We do not provide the frequency of these symptoms numerically, as public reports for hemp raw material in Poland do not separate them by individual products.

The limit of this knowledge arises from regulations, not from anyone’s negligence. The raw material itself is not subject to oversight by the registration office as a separate unit; oversight only applies to the compounded medication prepared on prescription. Entities distributing the raw material are also not required to report turnover to the monitoring system, which the administration has publicly indicated. As long as this remains the case, numbers for a single manufacturer will not arise, and we do not consider estimating them on our own to be fair.

Frequently asked questions about Canopy Growth raw material

Is Spectrum Therapeutics and Canopy Growth the same company?

Yes. Spectrum Therapeutics is the medical brand of Canopy Growth, and in Germany, the same brand was renamed Canopy Medical in 2023 precisely to align it with the company’s name. In Poland, the brand’s website is run by Canopy Growth Polska sp. z o.o. from Toruń.

How many strains from this manufacturer have reached Polish pharmacies?

Thirteen cultivars in the list on which this cluster stands, and fifteen pharmacy positions, as Krypton and Kush Mints appear in the source twice. The manufacturer’s website currently lists eight positions for Poland, which is less than our list has gathered.

Why does the pharmacy label not indicate which strain it is?

Because the registered name describes the declared potency of the raw material, not the plant. In our data, fifteen descriptions of this manufacturer’s strains fit into eight registered names, and under one of them, there are five different cultivars.

Does this manufacturer preserve raw material by radiation?

Yes, and it states this explicitly. Its Polish educational service lists gamma radiation and electron beam, citing the removal of microbiological contaminants as the reason. The assurance of minimal impact on aroma comes from the manufacturer and has no published measurement accompanying it.

What happened to the Penelope strain?

It was withdrawn by the manufacturer itself in September 2024, explaining the decision by the aging genetics’ susceptibility to quality fluctuations. At that time, it was its only Polish position with a balanced composition, and among the eight listed today by the manufacturer, there is no equivalent with such characteristics.

Can this raw material be purchased without a prescription?

No. The raw material is issued only by a doctor’s prescription, in category Rpw, and the pharmacy position lists Canopy Growth Polska as the responsible entity. The store category for raw material includes hemp products issued without a prescription and is not equivalent to this raw material.

Hemp raw material is a pharmaceutical raw material issued by a doctor’s prescription in category Rpw. The material is for informational purposes only, does not replace medical advice, and is not an encouragement to use.

Editorial text: editorial team ubucha.pl.