OUR TEAM
DEA Expertise Applied to Cannabis Rescheduling
Nigel Boast
Nigel Boast is Co-Founder and Principal of Vatic Global Advisors and Boast Consult Inc., with over 20 years of quality assurance and regulatory experience across cannabis, pharmaceutical, medical, natural health product, and biotechnology sectors in Canada and the United States.
A Health Canada security-cleared Quality Assurance Person (QAP) with product release authority, Nigel has secured over 45 cannabis licenses and led multiple successful Health Canada processing facility inspections. At Vatic, he directs DEA Schedule III licensing readiness: SOP gap audits, physical security assessments, mock inspections, and quality systems aligned with EU GMP, GPP, GACP, and ISO. Nigel has prepared operators for export to the EU, Israel, and Australia, and now readies US facilities for EU GMP certification and DEA export permitting ahead of state law reform.
Nigel holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry, an LLB, and an MBA from AGSM (UNSW Sydney), and is a retired Attorney at Law specializing in regulatory, corporate, and intellectual property law, bringing a legal lens to DEA compliance strategy.
Justin Abril
Justin Abril is a Co-Founder and Principal of Vatic, federal compliance practice is built on direct, firsthand experience with one of the most demanding regulatory processes in U.S. controlled substance law. Over a six-year engagement with the DEA, Justin served as primary liaison in securing one of only seven Schedule I marihuana licences issued nationally for cultivation and manufacturing, developing every compliance system, procedure, and protocol from the ground up without established industry precedent.
As founding compliance and operations executive, Justin built a federally compliant Schedule I manufacturing facility, engineered its camera and access control infrastructure to DEA physical security standards, authored 60+ controlled substance standard operating procedures, and established the quality systems required to meet strict cGMP standards.
Following licensure, Justin managed all ongoing federal registration obligations including continuous ARCOS inventory reporting and annual DEA quota applications since 2022, maintaining a 100% success rate across seven consecutive DEA audits.
Justin previously served as a Police Sergeant with the Department of Defense at Camp Pendleton, commanding a 45-person federal law enforcement team for eight years.