Month: May 2019

More than half a year in, Canada’s relaxed cannabis laws appear to be earning a clean bill of health from major medical organizations.

While many hard numbers on health shifts are not yet available, some of the country’s largest mental health and emergency centres say the new laws have dumped no discernible increase in cannabis-related cases on their doorsteps.

“It’s certainly something that we’re very concerned about and want to be watching for,” says Robert Mann, a senior scientist and impairment expert at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. “But I’ve heard nothing — no indication that there’s all of a sudden a large increase.”

– Read the entire article at The Star.

Although the legal marijuana industry is still very much an emerging niche for stock market participants, the market for investing in cannabis is maturing.

In a recent sign of how far the legal cannabis sector has come, BlackRock Funds has made substantial investments in dispensary operator Curaleaf Holdings, the same company that also announced it will sell products infused with a non-psychoactive hemp component in CVS Health Corp (NYSE: CVS) stores.

Institutional Investment, Industrialized Processes

The CVS deal indicates that cannabis products are becoming more mainstream. The BlackRock investment is a high-profile example of institutional money entering a space that has been called the Wild West of investing. “We expect to see a floodgate [open]of more institutional investment,” said Matt Karnes, founder and managing partner with GreenWave Advisors.

– Read the entire article at YahooNews.