Tom Schultz, CEO and co-founder of Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions Inc. (CTPharma), one of the state’s four licensed medical marijuana growers, died last week from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident. He was 70 years old.
On Aug. 22, Schultz, a New Canaan resident and New Britain native, during his weekly bike ride in Pound Ridge, N.Y., was struck by a 2014 Ford Econoline van that was traveling in the same direction, according to New York State Police.
Pound Ridge emergency medical personnel pronounced Schultz dead after life-saving efforts were unsuccessful, Police said.
In a statement Thursday, CTPharma Chief Operations Officer Rino Ferrarese said Schultz was a great advocate for Connecticut’s medical marijuana industry.
“Tom was an inspirational leader who believed that the study of the medical benefits of marijuana and its compounds was truly in its infancy and that the long-term potential to address a multitude of health issues was unlimited,” Ferrarese said.
Prior to his death, Schultz was in the midst of launching CTPharma’s new 216,500-square-foot warehouse/distribution center in Rocky Hill. CTPharma is currently scaling down operations at its original 15,000-square-foot headquarters in Portland.
CTPharma is investing some $30 million to renovate the former McKesson Corp. space it acquired for $7.5 million in February.
Upon completion of the renovation and move in December, the company will have more than doubled the size of the state’s medical marijuana growing capacity. The Rocky Hill facility will also become one of the largest marijuana growing operations in the nation.
On a recent tour of the new site, at 280 Dividend Road, Schultz told HBJ the new Rocky Hill facility would meet a growing need for products after the state authorized the program to treat individuals suffering from chronic pain.
A Yale graduate and former Wall Street lawyer
Schultz, a graduate of Yale University, New York University School of Law and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, started his professional career as a lawyer for Mudge Rose Guthrie Alexander & Ferdon. He later joined a Wall Street investment banking firm that was acquired by National Westminster Bank.
In the mid-1990s, Schultz assumed the leadership of Dickinson Brands Inc. after completing a merger of one of the major producers of witch hazel plants.
He would later go on to co-found CTPharma in 2013 soon after Connecticut’s legislature established a medical marijuana program.
Michael Fedele, chair of CTPharma’s board, said Schultz helped make the company a leader in the bioscience industry.
“Over the next years and decades, I believe we will discover the full medical potential of marijuana and we will remember that Tom Schultz was on the leading edge of that discovery,” Fedele said.