Cannabis retail stores are coming to Nunavut, the territorial government announced on Tuesday. 

They will begin accepting retail applications on June 1. 

The territory that nearly 40,000 people call home passed its Cannabis Act in June 2018, but only two companies — Canopy Growth and AgMedica Bioscience Inc — have been permitted to sell their products since then, with customers ordering online or over the phone.  

Before COVID-19 took over the headlines, one of the hottest topics was the cannabis 2.0 opportunity in Canada. Cannabis 2.0 refers to a change in the regulations in Canada that allows for the sale of cannabis derivative products (i.e. edibles, drinkables, vape pens, concentrates, salves, and more).

There are a number of reasons to be excited about cannabis 2.0 and we want to quickly highlight this. First, the margins that are associated with cannabis derivative products tend to be higher. Second, with excess inventory on hand, producers can use the additional input to develop new products. And finally, consumer demand for these types of products is high.

ESPs or extraction service providers are some of the most profitable marijuana stocks to watch in the cannabis industry. There are several reasons that make these marijuana stocks solid choices for all types of cannabis investors. One of the main reasons is that ESPs often are able to secure higher profitability than almost any other marijuana stock. This is due to two reasons. One, producing extractions is a much higher margin product than producing raw cannabis.

The surge in marijuana purchases ahead of the COVID-19 lockdown in Canada has helped Aurora Cannabis’s fiscal third-quarter earnings, but has since come to pass, according to the company’s interim CEO Michael Singer.

Aurora posted better-than-expected results last week amid a slew of weaker company earnings across the cannabis sector. 

For the quarter ending March 31, Aurora revealed a 35% jump in net sales at CAD$75.5 million. The increase in revenue was supported by adult-use marijuana sales in Canada climbing 24%, according to the update, while the company sold 12,729 kilograms of cannabis during the same period – a 39% increase on the year. 

Meanwhile, Aurora also said that it is well-positioned to turn a profit in the next fiscal year, starting July 2020. 

The coronavirus pandemic is like a hurricane that’s upended the cannabis world. It’s changing the way the industry operates, as owners are forced to optimize all aspects of their business. 

In many cases, marketing campaigns dreamed up before the pandemic are now totally irrelevant. And companies — large and small — have been rolling out donation programs or using social media to highlight charities on the front lines of fighting COVID-19.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has taken center stage. The crisis has shone a spotlight on how the marijuana industry is in a unique position to be of service. But it’s also highlighted unexpected challenges that come with trying to expand a brand’s social mission.

Canada’s Cannabis Act, which came into force in October 2018, allows adults to grow up to four plants at home. In theory, it seems great.

In 2015, Leandro Pasztor found a pound of misplaced marijuana. He’d set it aside two years prior, and one day it appeared like an unpaid parking ticket, demanding attention. 

As a marijuana grower, Pasztor wasn’t in the habit of losing product. And at the time of his discovery, he was planning to launch a line of medicinal oils extracted from cannabis plants. Out of curiosity, he threw the old weed in with a batch of plants he’d prepared for a local testing lab in Irvine, California, and a month later, his phone rang. 

“Do you know what you have here?” the technician asked. Pasztor was stumped. “THC oil?” he guessed. In fact, the full answer was more interesting.

In 2019, the U.S. saw a steady surge in legal cannabis sales, reaching $12.4 billion—a 37 percent increase year-over-year from 2018, where sales amounted to roughly $9.1 billion.

But this healthy trend was quickly curbed with the onset of the global pandemic this year, and the strict shelter-at-home directives that followed soon after. With little time to adjust, cannabis producers and retailers were left to scramble as their operations came to a near halt.

While many businesses have laid off staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, one local cannabis company is in a period of growth.

Delta 9 has increased their staffing by 76 since March 26 while also in turn raising the hourly wage for those on their frontlines. Stats Canada’s Labour Force report showed an increase of unemployment of from 5% to 11.4% in Manitoba for the month of March.

“We consider ourselves very fortunate to be an employer that is adding jobs right now in light of the economic and health crisis,” said John Arbuthnot, CEO of Delta 9.

The top U.S. cannabis companies are notably outperforming their struggling Canadian counterparts, yet valuations are still held back by their inability to list on the big American exchanges.

The divergence was well illustrated by two large companies that reported earnings Thursday night.

Green Thumb Industries Inc. became the first U.S. pot company to generate revenue above $100 million and beat Ebitda expectations for the fifth consecutive quarter. Shares climbed 17% Friday. Meanwhile, Canada’s Aurora Cannabis Inc., which is struggling to turn a profit before it runs out of cash, said it is on track to meet previously disclosed cost-cutting targets. Shares skyrocketed 54%.