Flevoland provincial council is investing €1.5m in a company which aims to register medicinal marijuana as a medicine against chronic pain, the Financieele Dagblad says on Thursday.

A full meeting of the council voted in favour of the capital injection on Wednesday night, the paper says.

The company, Spirocan, is working on a vapourisation system involving cannabis-impregnated pads. That process should be completed next year, when the company will move on to clinical trials on patients, company spokesman Pieter Andre de la Porte told the paper.

‘Cannabis is already widely used and it is known to work, including via a vapouriser,’ De la Porte said. ‘We are improving something that already exists and that makes the process relatively cheaper and easier.’

Many other companies have tried to have cannabis registered as an official medicine and failed, the FD points out. ‘They have tried it with pills and sprays,’ De la Porte said. ‘But that involves more processing and you lose some of the effect. Vapourising is a much more pure form.’

The Netherlands first approved medicinal marijuana several years ago and licenced producer Bedrocan is part owner of Spirocan.

The company says it needs total investment of €10m to develop the vapouriser.

According to local broadcaster Omroep Flevoland, the investment will lead to the creation of several dozen jobs. However, it is not yet clear in which part of the province Spirocan will locate.

The province earlier gave the company an investment of €150,000.