Welcome from Alessandro Sorbello - Managing Director
Welcome friends and patients alike.
Health, wellbeing and quality of life has been a central theme in my life and in recent years, much more so. When my father was in his 20’s he suffered from a major head trauma as a result of a motorcycle accident. This led to mental health issues late in his life. As one of his principal carers during the last ten years of his life, it was saddening to witness firsthand the deterioration of his memory and many other mental faculties.
It was not until after his passing in 2014, that I came to learn that the United States government had patented cannabis as a neuroprotectant in the 1980’s.
The patent claims:
“...cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia”.
“...cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia”.
My father's passing left me wondering how cannabis may have been able to help him and increase his quality of life, in particular, late in his life when his dignity began to suffer. I wondered why the medication that would have surely helped him was not available.
When the Australian Government announced in 2016 that it was changing legislation regarding cannabis, I started to delve into it much further. I learned that cannabis is an ancient medicine with well over 7000 years of history. In the 21st century, after a hiatus of over 70 years due to prohibition, it has once again become a recognised medicine, rapidly gaining in popularity around the world because of its effectiveness.
As a PhD candidate, I am used to conducting research and very early on I learned a key fact regarding cannabis. Something so startling, that it would set my destiny on a new and exciting path and I owe it all to an Israeli scientist named Raphael Meschulam.
Professor Meschulam discovered in 1990 that humans and almost all animals have an endocannabinoid system (ECS) that responds favourably to cannabis.. The ECS is considered among the most important systems in the human body and is responsible for maintaining and regulating health.
The importance of this information captured my attention so much that I dove into learning everything I could about the ECS and how cannabis functions as a medicine. Armed with this information and glimpsing what this would mean for humanity, my partner Emanuela and I committed to revolutionise our lives and our professional activities. We both recognised that this was the opportunity we were both looking for.
As company directors and founders, Emanuela and I both have a long history of building teams and organisations to set new boundaries on how ethical business is conducted.
Emanuela and I placed our focus entirely on the emerging medical cannabis industry. We undertook intensive learning and study to grasp the potential of the healing plant and the business opportunity it presented.
With our vision becoming clearer each week and month, and with the business world confirming the enormous and rapid growth of the cannabis market worldwide, we started assembling a larger team. To build our advisory board, we enlisted Dr Arno Hazekamp, one of the world's leading experts on medical cannabis research. Next, we engaged Dr Eliane Karsaklian to our advisory board, a senior professor at the Sorbonne University who is an expert of international business & negotiations for over 20 years.
This combination of scientific expertise and extensive international business experience formed the basis of our company, Medicinal Organic Cannabis Australia. We like to call it MOCA. We chose to incorporate the word organic into the name of the company because we believe that pesticides and herbicides have no place in medicine.
The cornerstone philosophy of MOCA is ‘People, Planet, Profit’ and one of MOCA’s key metrics for success is our ability to make cannabis medication affordable. We believe that a plant based medicine should be available to everyone.
Since MOCA was established, we have taken many important and exciting steps forward toward our vision and our goals.
Today, MOCA is an Australian Government licensed medical cannabis importer, exporter and wholesaler. The Company’s licenses were awarded by the Australian State and Federal Governments in 2018. These licences allow the Company to manufacture, import and supply by wholesale medical cannabis products. Our Government approved client base consists of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practitioners. The Company's complete product range is approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and is ready for practitioners to prescribe to patients in Australia. Our approved medical cannabis product range includes capsules, sublingual oils, isolates, vape pens and whole cannabis flowers. We currently hold all necessary permits from the Office of Drug Control (ODC) to import medical cannabis products into Australia.
Through our ‘hands on’ approach, we have created an innovative way to lower the product cost to patients by up to 30% of current retail prices. We have also been working directly with cultivators to positively influence and improve the methodology of the organic farming practices.
We are very proud of what we have achieved so far and are very excited about the journey that’s unfolding before us, that continually brings our vision to existence.
We are at a new beginning in plant based medicine.
- Alessandro Sorbello -
MOCA Managing Director