By Thomas Carroll
It’s time to rethink everything you believe about cannabis.
If you’ve been attentive at all to the news for the past few years, you have undoubtedly heard something about the “biggest thing” to impact medicine, health and wellness, and happy hour. The cannabis plant is rapidly becoming deregulated, decriminalized, and much better understood by people across all walks of life. Entrepreneurs are taking their companies from startups to the real deal.
From our Canadian neighbors to the north, to Mexico in the south, to Europe and Asia, governments are rapidly recognizing the benefits of cannabis for medicinal and other purposes.
This will change the way many people live their lives. And importantly, it is also a huge new product market where we can invest.
Today, I’ll cover just how big that market could get… and the five major milestones that set the stage for a cannabis boom in 2019…
Imagine having new options to try for managing that nagging back pain. Or being able to get more than four hours of sleep a night. Or taking the edge off after a stressful week. And you can do all this without getting drunk or high.
The decriminalization and legalization of cannabis often draws comparison to the end of Prohibition of alcohol in the 1930s, which sanctioned an irreplaceable source of tax revenues and economic activity. But it’s much, much bigger.
The Prohibition analogy sells the cannabis revolution short of its true potential.
Cannabis lets users relax and unwind in different ways – ways that don’t leave you with a hangover or feeling groggy the next day. So the markets it will disrupt are much bigger than simply alcohol, which measures more than $100 billion annually.
For example, maybe you smoke a cigar, or pipe, or use cigarettes to take a break. Tobacco itself is another $100 billion annually.
How about health and wellness? In the U.S., it is estimated that we will spend $88 billion for “nutraceuticals” by 2021. This is the collective name for vitamins, lotions, creams, powder, and other products that are not specifically medicine.
And speaking of medicine, folks in the U.S. spent an estimated $360 billion in 2018 at retail pharmacies… filling the pockets of drug companies and pharmacy benefit managers. Cannabis will take a part of this market as well.
Humans have been using this plant no matter its legal status for more than 1,000 years.
I believe legalization will be a game-changer – both in our lives and for our wealth.
We are not late to the party. It is only getting started. Specifically, five major milestones occurred in 2018 that won’t be undone…
- First, Canada legalized cannabis for recreational adult use nationwide.
- Then the Farm Bill in the U.S. was signed into law. This legalized the hemp industry, a cousin of the cannabis plant, nationwide.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Epidiolex, a cannabinoid-derived medication, for use in people with two forms of rare epilepsy.
- Five cannabis companies listed their shares for trading on major U.S. exchanges: two on the Nasdaq and three on the New York Stock Exchange.
- And finally, adult-use cannabis sales exceeded medicinal sales for the first time.
All this took one year… and most of it happened toward the end of the year.
Now we are in 2019, and the cannabis market is ready to hit the gas pedal.
But there are still plenty of reasons to be cautious before investing in any cannabis companies. Many have been overly promoted by unknown managements with questionable backgrounds. In Canada, many began as mining companies turned cannabis companies.
So please, do your homework before buying in.
My team and I have combed through all kinds of information. We’ve interviewed management teams and other entrepreneurs in this new industry. The market is huge, the companies are becoming “real,” and support for full legalization in the U.S. is gaining traction.
To read more on the nitty gritty of what’s going on in the rising cannabis industry, click here.
