The past year has been another strong year in cannabis. Investors continued to pour money into the burgeoning industry — surpassing 2018 investment totals in just 40 weeks — and new markets opened up for recreational and medical cannabis. And following the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, CBD has proliferated and become one of the hottest health supplements in the country.
TORONTO -- Ontario is thinking about changing the lottery system being used to award cannabis retail licenses after the first year of legalization saw only 24 outlets open, with critics panning the lack of access for consumers.
Arguably the biggest legislative milestone to date related to the legalization of marijuana in the U.S. was achieved two weeks ago. The U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee voted 24 to 10 to pass the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, a bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level.
Canopy Growth Corp. said Monday it has named David Klein, currently chief financial officer at its biggest shareholder, Constellation Brands Inc., as its new chief executive, taking over from Mark Zekulin on January 14.
The news sent the U.S.-listed shares up about 13%.
Cannabis producers need not fret about hemp-based cannabidiol (CBD) products overshadowing demand for THC-oriented products, according to a leading cannabis industry think tank.
Despite the recent surge of CBD oil sales since hemp's legalization under the 2018 Farm Bill, its growth is expected to be limited compared with CBD products containing at least a small amount of THC.
There's little question that the legal cannabis industry could be a giant. Every year, tens of billions of dollars of marijuana is sold in the black market, so we know that consumer demand for the product is strong. Assuming cannabis legalization continues throughout North America, Wall Street's varied prognostications of $50 billion to $200 billion in worldwide weed sales by 2030 could very well prove accurate.
It's been quite the year for marijuana stocks.
When the year began, it looked as if it would be another green year for the green rush. At the end of the first quarter, more than a dozen pot stocks had risen by at least 70%, and the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, the first cannabis-focused exchange-traded fund, galloped higher by over 50%.
Marijuana legalization is picking up the pace again. The 2020 elections are drawing closer. More states are working to pass bills to get medical, recreational, or both cannabis forms legalized. On Wednesday, I discussed how Virginia is pushing for marijuana decriminalization and legalization in 2020. Read Marijuana Legalization: Can Virginia Expect it in 2020? to learn more. Now, we’ll discuss what’s happening with marijuana legalization in Utah.
The cannabis sector has seen a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde situation this year. In the first half, from January 1 to June 30, the Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences Index ETF (HMMJ) and the ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ) rose 27.3% and 27%, respectively. Both ETFs outperformed the S&P 500 Index, which returned 17.3% during the period.
Take the hemp money and run. Expect litigation to rise as the 2019 hemp crop comes in during the first harvest since legal hurdles were lowered in the 2018 farm bill. In many cases, as growers, seed dealers and processors point fingers or hurl accusations of fraud, failure, theft and breach of contract, one lesson is increasingly clear: Hemp is a crop unto itself and a solid contract is crucial from the get-go.
As disagreements related to CBD and seed spill into court rooms, the timing is in sync with hemp’s rollicking rise, says Jesse Mondry, attorney with Harris Bricken.
