Canadian Cannabis Stocks Rally

Workers and business owners alike have new insight into the salary ranges and hiring trends for legal marijuana businesses with the release of a new guide from cannabis industry professional recruiting firm Vangst. Now in its third year of publication, the Vangst Cannabis Industry Salary Guide was released on Monday and is available via a free download.

Americans purchased $17.9 billion in cannabis products over the past calendar year. That’s $7.2 billion more than the $10.7 billion in sales from 2019!

The pandemic helped vice businesses surge, or at least stave off the catastrophic downturns that other markets experienced.

With so many consumers staying home in accordance with social-distancing measures, they turned to new and familiar vices to cope. As a result, 2020’s market projections were thrown for a loop — setting the stage for a prosperous 2021.

Cronos Group Inc. plans to release the first lab-grown cannabis products to the Canadian recreational market later this year, a move that could usher in a new wave of cheap pot that isn't derived from the plant at all. 

While Cronos Executive Chairman Mike Gorenstein didn't provide specifics, he said this year the company will commercially release products containing cannabinoids created using biosynthesis, an engineering process similar to brewing beer that can make THC and CBD for pennies on the dollar. 

CBD is a nonintoxicating cannabinoid found in cannabis and hemp. This is how the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines CBD.  

Nathan Seppa claims that more than a dozen medical trials in the past decade have shown that treatments containing THC (and some that combine THC with another derivative called cannabidiol, or CBD) not only ease pain in MS patients but also alleviate other problems associated with the disease. 

The legal cannabis industry is booming virtually anywhere sales are allowed.

For most legal cannabis countries, the industry is limited to just medical cannabis. After all, only Uruguay and Canada allow adult-use sales at the national level so far.

Of course, some areas in the United States also allow legal adult-use cannabis sales, but not the entire country.

New Zealand almost became the third country to legalize cannabis for adult use in 2020 with a legalization measure on the ballot. Unfortunately, the measure was turned down by voters.

This year a handful of countries may legalize cannabis. Mexico and Israel seem to be all but certain to get legalization to the finish line in 2021, with a few other countries also pursuing legalization.

What happened

Good news for cannabis investors: Sometime within the next couple of years, marijuana is going to be legal across all of America -- or so says the CEO of Tilray (NASDAQ:TLRY).

CannTrust Holdings Inc. said Wednesday it will put $50 million into a trust that will be earmarked for investors who filed class-action lawsuits against the company after it received a non-compliance order from Health Canada.

The move is to cover claims stemming from a production scandal that led federal regulators to suspend its ability to grow and produce legal pot.

The company said that the "restructuring support agreement" it entered into with plaintiffs still needs to be negotiated to finalize "in good faith."