When legal recreational cannabis sales began in Canada on Oct 17, 2018, marijuana companies and investors were brimming with confidence...
A large industrialized country had finally legalized marijuana. And with an adult population of nearly 30 million people, Canada would finally show the world just how big and lucrative the recreational marijuana industry could be...
Aurora Cannabis. Canopy Growth. Aphria. Tilray. They’re all Canadian. And they’re among the biggest marijuana companies in the world...
Their stocks were soaring. They were going to take over the world. First Canada. Then the USA. And then the rest of the globe...
But what no one had counted on was an inept Canadian bureaucracy...
Canada put Health Canada, the countries department of public health, in charge of regulating the Canadian marijuana industry...
...and Health Canada hasn’t been up to the task.
Entering 2019, health Canada had more than 800 pending applications for processing, sales, and cultivation licenses. On average, it’s taking 341 days to approve licenses to sell marijuana...
And the time it takes to approve cultivation licenses is anywhere from 6 months to a few years. It took Aphria almost 2 years just to get its upgrade of an existing facility approved...
The failure to approve retail locations has depressed sales. And the failure to approve grow facilities has made it difficult to keep up with demand... It’s almost as if Health Canada wants the legal marijuana industry to go away...
Canada’s marketing and advertising restrictions for marijuana aren’t helping matters either...
Canada bans the use of mass advertising, sponsorships, endorsements, testimonials and promotions for Marijuana...
It also prohibits communicating information about marijuana’s price or distribution...
Canada also artificially restricted the size of the market by allowing only the sale of the flower and oils...
These structural flaws have made it difficult for the legal, regulated cannabis industry to take off...
In the 3rd quarter of last year the average price (to consumers) of legal marijuana was CA$10.23 per gram, according to Statistics Canada (which is run by the Canadian Government). Statistics Canada reports that the average price of black market marijuana was only CA$5.59...
It’s no wonder the big legal marijuana companies in Canada are struggling...
Health Canada’s bureaucrat quicksand, combined with its limits on products and marketing, has slowed growth and created a thriving black market...
It’s also infected the larger marijuana industry. Every time a Canadian marijuana giant misses earnings or revenue estimates, stock prices for the entire sector plummet. And because pot stocks are dominated by retail investors (institutional investors are largely unable to invest in pot companies because pot is still illegal at the federal level in the US), prices can drop rapidly. Retail investors typically hold on to their investments for less time - and have a lower risk tolerance - than institutional investors...
Canada’s approach is fundamentally unacceptable. Fortunately there are sign of progress. Health Canada is trying to speed up the review process for licenses. And the sale of edibles and other cannabis derivatives is expected to begin this month...
But it’s going to take some time before the promise of the Canadian market becomes a reality...
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest in the big Canadian pot companies. It simply means you have to adjust your timeline for success...
Now is a good time to buy because pot stocks are a bargain, especially considering how much the industry is going to grow...
Over the course of the next few years, the cannabis market will reach incredible new heights. It won’t happen as quickly as you’d like. It will be a slow and steady March instead of a meteoric rise...
But it will happen!!!
And that means if you’re going to invest in pot stocks, you have to be in it for the long haul. There’s no shortcut to success. Buy now while you can still get bargain prices. And then hold. You’re investing in what could be a $66 billion global marijuana market by 2025...
And these companies, and a few others I’ve picked, represent your best chance to capture a hit from that cone!!!
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