With a Year Before Legalization, Some Canadians Are Worried About Legal Marijuana’s Future

July 17, 2017
AggregatedNews
Canada
1 Comment

There’s one bummer question haunting all the marijuana businesses popping up between British Columbia and Newfoundland.

How much do Canucks like weed, eh?

A year before recreational cannabis is expected to become legal in Canada, there’s an explosion in companies cultivating the stuff. At least 10 marijuana outfits have new listings this year on the TSX Venture Exchange and Canada Securities Exchange. Some 51 enterprises have gotten the green light to grow pot, and 815 applicants are in the queue. All told, it could be enough to raise the country’s raw-weed output more than tenfold.

This is where skeptics see froth. “If you ask people today why they don’t use, it’s a small percentage who say ‘because it’s illegal,”’ said Neil Boyd, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. “In many respects there might be an overestimation of demand.”

Long-time users and growers insist he’s wrong, but investors aren’t so sure. Producer MedReleaf Corp. tumbled as much as 28 percent last month in the worst debut for a Canadian IPO in 16 years amid concern pot stocks are overvalued. Shares of Canopy Growth Corp., the country’s first billion dollar marijuana start-up, are down 21 percent in the past three months. [Read more at Bloomberg]

This Post Has One Comment

Chris Mccormick says:

July 17, 2017 at 11:11 am

the descrepency in numbers could stem from the fact these are corporations with a bottom line and it does not reflect the long time business model that is already in place without them. the small farmers that have been doing this all their lives will get much better results in numbers.

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