Canada On the Verge of Becoming Global Kingpin with Cannabis Investors

The morning after Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau snuffed out Stephen Harper in the election, making him the new prime minister of Canada, marijuana stocks began to soar in anticipation that the country’s new governance would hold true their word to bring prohibition to a screeching halt.

Some of the larger Canadian medical marijuana firms didn’t waste any preparing to jump head first into the recreational sector, while some of the latest reports show that American investment firms have started weaseling across the border to get set for the possibility of the country freeing the leaf across the board.

According to The Canadian Press, a San-Francisco-based hedge fund operation called Poseidon Asset Management has been planning to expand on a major cannabis holding it has in Canada since it was announced that Trudeau was taking control. The company currently invests only in cannabis-related businesses in the United States that do not actually deal with marijuana. Instead, the firm throws money at companies that make equipment used in marijuana production facilities and other industrial concepts that allows them to profit from legal weed without risking prosecution under federal law.

It is that grey area between state and federal policy that has caused so many American investors to look towards Canada as a way of getting in on the full capacity of the marijuana trade without having to succumb to the perils of prohibitionary times. In going this route, people with capital to invest will have the ability to sink that money into the legal marijuana trade without there being any chance of their investment being knocked out of commission by the authority of the federal government.

Most recently, a federal judge in California ruled that it was illegal for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to use tax dollars to go after the medical marijuana community. The decision was based on the passing of a Congressional amendment, which was signed into law by President Obama, in 2014, that was intended to prevent the DEA from dipping into Uncle Sam’s wallet to prosecute the medical marijuana industry. Yet, despite the ruling being a major victory for medical marijuana in the U.S., there still remains nothing concrete on the books that actually protects cultivation sites or dispensaries from getting shut down by the feds or the proprietors of these establishments from being buried underneath a prison.

Because of this, the potential of a Canadian recreational market, which would set the country above all others in regards to the reform of national drug policy, is attracting a migration of southern money that comes without legal ramifications in the event the new market goes off without a hitch.

Despite the excitement surrounding Justin Trudeau’s mission to completely eliminate marijuana prohibition, there are some U.S. regulators who anticipate the new prime minister is going to experience some trouble seeing his plan to fruition.

Lewis Koski, director of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division, argues that doing in Canada what Colorado has done for nearly two years is not going to be an easy task.

“It’s going to be a lot harder to implement than you think. It’s going to take a lot longer to do it. And it’s going to cost more than you think,” Koski said.

Nevertheless, it is expected that American investors interested in the business of marijuana are going to look to the northern nation to bring them profitability with pot. There are already some U.S. companies offering shares on the Canadian market in hopes of generating addition investment funds. Experts say that more U.S. cannabis companies will begin listing their stock on the Canadian exchange.

The only problem is what will American investors do with all the money they make in Canada. Sending money back to the United States could be considered money laundering.

What do you think? Is legal cannabis coming to Canada? Tell us in the comments below.