Grow Life 420

There are now over 1,000 licensed cannabis stores in Canada, as new stores in B.C. and Ontario push the store count into quadruple digits. Alberta continues to lead the country with nearly 500 cannabis stores in the province, although several analysts have said the market is saturated and that some stores recently had to close due to challenging conditions. There are also nearly 500 cannabis stores in Ontario waiting to be fully licensed by provincial regulators, with several industry observers expecting those stores to open as late as next year due to a backlog of authorization requests.

Members of a Victoria-based medical cannabis dispensary protested outside the B.C. legislature on Thursday after the its storefront was raided by the province’s safety unit, CTV News reports. The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club was raided on Wednesday, with authorities seizing all cannabis found on the property for the second time in the last eight months. The club was founded in 1996 and offers a wide range of medical cannabis products to its 8,000 members at a lower price than retailers. Ted Smith, the club’s founder, said the dispensary is trying to get an exemption from Health Canada in order to continue operating as a non-profit organization.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Canada pot market on track to hit $1.9B in sales, according to February retail figures

Canadians spent nearly $150 million on cannabis in February, down slightly from the prior month, according to Statistics Canada. StatsCan said $149.9 million of legal pot was bought in February, down 2.7 per cent from January. On a daily basis, Canadians bought $5.16 million of pot in February, up from the $4.97 million bought per day in January, and resulting in an annualized revenue rate of $1.9 billion. Only three provinces reported monthly sales advances in February, with Saskatchewan leading declines with a nearly-15-per-cent fall in activity, the data showed.

Tilray CEO compensation declines by 89% in 2019, filings show.

– Read the entire article at News.

Canadian officials are turning to the cannabis industry to see if laboratories typically used to check for cannabinoids can be also used to test for COVID-19.

In an email sent to licensed cannabis industry executives on Thursday obtained by BNN Bloomberg, Health Canada acting director general Joanne Garrah asked respondents if there was any spare lab capacity to assist the country with COVID-19 testing.

“Health Canada is working to identify lab capacity that might be available across the country in various sectors, including at licensed cannabis production sites, to assist with supporting COVID-19 testing,” the email stated.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

More than three-dozen Ontario government employees working in the cannabis space were named on the province’s annual Sunshine List, which tracks public-sector staffers that make more than $100,000 a year.

The majority of those listed represent The Ontario Cannabis Store, accounting for 36 of the 39 people associated with the cannabis sector on the list, which was released late Friday.

OCS chief commercial officer Cheri Mara was the top earner among her peers, making $241,284 in 2019. Nicole Stewart, who is the Department of Finance Canada’s lead on implementing cannabis retail in the province, was the top ministerial earner, with an annual salary of $190,702.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Holiday buying strength helps push pot sales to record highs in December.

Canadians bought about $146.2 million of legal cannabis in December, the biggest month of sales on record, according to Statistics Canada. Taken at an annualized run rate, those sales figures would see sales in Canada’s legal recreational cannabis industry hit $1.75 billion. Canadian retail store sales rose 8.1 per cent in December from the prior month with nine out of 10 provinces reporting monthly sales advances. Manitoba led all provincial gains with a surprising 53.9 per cent rise in sales, while British Columbia was the only province to report a decline in purchases.

Cannabis data added to Nasdaq platform in derivatives push

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Aurora Cannabis Inc.’s Terry Booth is stepping down from his role as chief executive officer after seven years in the top job, the company announced Thursday.

Booth will be replaced by the Edmonton-based company’s executive chairman, Michael Singer, on an interim basis. Booth will remain on the company’s board in a strategic advisory role and plans to stand for re-election.

The change at the top comes as the pot giant looks to press the reset button following several quarters of disappointing sales and mounting losses.

Aurora also confirmed it will reduce its workforce by 500 staff, including 25 per cent of all corporate positions, a decision aimed at driving down costs as it looks to end a string of quarterly losses.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Vapes, edibles expected to see sales hit $250M in first year of availability: analyst

Expectations ahead of the launch of Cannabis 2.0 products – those vapes and edibles that consumers were eagerly awaiting – were certainly lofty, so it’s no surprise that they are now coming back down to reality. RBC Capital Markets cannabis analyst Douglas Miehm said in a report to clients Tuesday he expects sales of vapes and edibles in Canada to reach about $250 million this year amid a lag in new cannabis retail openings across the country. Sales of vapes and edibles in Canada should grow to about $1.5 billion by 2022, still well below earlier projections. The RBC forecast is also well below analyst consensus figures that suggest total revenue from Cannabis 2.0 products for the top seven Canadian cannabis companies will reach $608 million.

Canopy Growth shares rise above $30 mark after analyst upgrades rating, target price

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

The Marijuana Business Conference and Expo (MJBizCon) is coming to the Las Vegas Convention Center from December 11-13, 2019, and it’s the largest gathering of cannabis business professionals in the world. With 35,000 attendees from over 75 countries and programming to benefit every sector, there is no other place like it to equip businesses for growth.

MJBizCon began in 2012 and after seven years of running this sought-after event, the 2019 event will be expanding, moving to two halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center to accommodate its continued increase in global recognition, the rapidly expanding attendance and its significant impact beyond the convention center walls.

Deemed MJBizConWEEK by the Board of Clark County Commissioner and the City of Las Vegas, MJBizDaily added The Investor Intelligence Conference as the kickoff event of MJBizCon this year, Dec 9-10 at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. This dedicated cannabis investing event comes at a critical time for the industry, as pressure on cannabis stocks and companies grow.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Aphria to ramp up newly-licensed facility to full capacity, relies on automation to drive down production costs: interim CEO

Aphria Inc. plans to bring its newly-licensed Diamond facility to full capacity in the coming weeks to meet demand for vaping and edible products, the company’s chairman and interim CEO said while shrugging off any concern about oversupplying the Canadian cannabis market. The Leamington, Ont.-based company announced Monday it received a cultivation licence from Health Canada for a cannabis greenhouse facility that will add 1.3 million square feet of production space and 140,000 kilograms in annual capacity to its operations. “Diamond, I would want to run at full capacity because it’s so automated from a low-cost production standpoint,” Aphria chairman and interim CEO Irwin Simon told BNN Bloomberg. “It will be one of the lowest-cost production facilities to run.”

New Brunswick’s cannabis retailer eyes profitability as new president looks to fight black market

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Ontario’s cannabis crown corporation loses $42M last fiscal year

Ontario’s government lost $42 million selling cannabis in its last fiscal year, according to provincial public accounts released on Friday. The losses come despite the Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation, a crown corporation that operates the Ontario Cannabis Store’s online retail business and sells wholesale cannabis to the province’s private retail stores, generating $64 million in the fiscal 2018-2019 year. An OCS spokesperson said the agency wasn’t able to book wholesale revenue from selling into the first wave of physical retail stores in the latest fiscal year, which hurt the crown corporation’s bottom line. Meanwhile, the Ontario government said Friday it generated $19 million in revenue from cannabis excise taxes in its last fiscal year, falling well short of the $35-million estimate presented in the most recent provincial budget.

Canopy Growth’s IP-focused deal for Ebbu highlights difficulty of filing patents for cannabis-related products

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

A Washington cannabis company has offered to collect and properly dispose of any waste from other marijuana stores.

KING-TV reported Thursday that Canna Culture Shop began the pot waste program early this week to help reduce the impact marijuana waste has on the environment.

Owner Maryam Mirnateghi says the program is meant to keep cannabis packaging from ending up on the street or in waterways.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.

Aphria to open pot shop in Jamaica – at a legit, real location

Aphria is opening a pot shop in Jamaica. The Leamington, Ont.-based cannabis producer said its Jamaican subsidiary Marigold Projects received a retail licence from the country’s Cannabis Licensing Authority to open its first store in Kingston this August. The company said it will open the doors to the Sensi Medical Cannabis House at Peter Tosh Square, Unit #51, noting that “yes, it is there” – a slight nod to a short seller report published in December that alleged the company’s Jamaican operations did not exist at that specific location. The retail store will include a smoking lounge for on-site consumption, accessories and proprietary cannabis strains for sale. Marigold plans to open another four retail stores in Jamaica, pending licensing approval.

Friendly Stranger gets a little (financing) help from its friends

Toronto-based cannabis accessory story Friendly Stranger Holdings landed a $5 million investment from several strategic partners, including Canadian licensed producers VIVO Cannabis and 48North.

– Read the entire article at BNN bloomberg.

Medical marijuana patients in Canada believe it’s getting harder to access their cannabis now that recreational pot is legal in the country. According to a recent survey jointly commissioned by Canadians for Fair Access to Medical Marijuana, the Arthritis Society and the Canadian Pharmacists Association, one in four medical cannabis users say supply issues are hindering their ability to access the medicine they need. As a result, 64 per cent of medical cannabis users are either under-dosing or stretching out their supply. One other key finding from the survey: just as many patients access their medical cannabis via mail order from a licensed producer (38 per cent) as they do via the illicit market (37 per cent).

Canada’s pot czar criticizes Ontario’s claims of undersupply in country’s pot market

Is Ontario making up excuses when it comes to capping the number of pot shops in the provinces? That’s what Bill Blair, Canada’s minister of border security and organized crime reduction, is saying after Ontario blamed the federal government for lingering cannabis supply issues for limiting the number pot retail stores.

– Read the entire article at BNN Bloomberg.