Flickr / Jeremy Brooks / CC BY-NC 2.0
As more states voted to legalize some form of marijuana last year, pot sales have gone through the roof. An ArcView market research pegs 2016 sales for legal weed at $6.9 billion, a whopping 34% jump over the previous year.
And that’s where investors smell an opportunity. While it is still difficult to invest directly in legal pot through public equities, venture capital firms and private equity funds have raised hundreds of millions of investment dollars.
California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones has been on a mission to ensure state-legal cannabis businesses have commercial insurance coverage and with his announcement of the first California cannabis surety bond program on Feb. 21, 2018, he continues to make progress.
More strife is on the horizon for Ohio’s troubled medical cannabis program. On Feb. 20, 2018, a group of unsuccessful medical cannabis applicants, led by Jimmy Gould of CannAscend Ohio LLC, filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s medical cannabis licensing process.
While the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has its key policies in place for recreational legalization and has secured a supply agreement with Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX:WEED) to provide cannabis for the province, it is now ready to hear from prospective cannabis retailers.
