Born in Malaysia to a Chinese dad and Irish mother, Tan, 50, wanted to become a vet, but after graduating from university in 1998, ended up developing software for Citibank. He was making good money, but his heart wasn’t in finance. What really interested him was growing weed. “I loved the science of it, the genetics, the seeds, the smells,” Tan says.
The early 2000s were the perfect time for an inquisitive young business grad to get into the cannabis business. Across the world, governments were legalizing medical marijuana and moving towards decriminalization over draconian sentencing.
Tan began bouncing around jurisdictions that were relaxing laws on cannabis, working as a consultant in California, the Netherlands, and Canada. “I started to see these legal frameworks opening up. The minute they existed, I went there,” he says.
Jersey has a somewhat unique regulatory environment. As a Crown Dependency, it has close ties to Britain, but is not a part of the UK. Crucially, it is self-governing: It can make its own laws. Jersey’s main reputation today is as a tax haven, attracting some of the world’s wealthiest individuals and companies, thanks to its lack of capital gains tax and 0 percent corporation tax for most companies. Along its coastline, next to twee beachside cafes and Nazi bunkers (the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by Hitler’s forces in World War II), you can find offices of international banks and wealth management firms catering to the super rich.
Although traditionally culturally conservative, Jersey has become something of a trailblazer on cannabis. The island legalized medical cannabis in 2019. Today, five private clinics operate on the island. The latest figures suggest that 6 percent of the population is prescribed cannabis, compared to an estimated 0.4 percent in Germany and 0.1 percent in the UK. Upon legalization, the island’s chief minister, Lyndon Farnham, laid out ambitious plans for the island to become a hub of the medical cannabis trade, repurposing the horticultural facilities and know-how from its tomato-growing glory days for this new endeavor.
Tan joined Northern Leaf as CEO in 2024, when the company was in dire straits after a failed IPO. That year, it was valued at just £3.7 million, despite having spent as much as £30 million on its weed-growing facility.
Tan nevertheless saw a lot of potential, and over the last two years has seen capacity at the site increase from 25 percent to 75 percent. He believes the £8.4 million of product the company exported last year is just the beginning.
