Don't blink, because if you do, you might miss the next big deal, organic capacity expansion, or new product unveiling from the fast-paced marijuana industry.

It's not hard to see why Wall Street and investors are so excited about the potential for legal weed. Tens of billions of dollars in cannabis are sold annually on the black market around the world, and if legalization can move even half of these sales (if not more) into legal channels, the pot industry could easily surpass soda in terms of yearly global revenue.

Molson Coors Brewing Co.’s cannabis joint venture plan to start selling multiple types of pot beverages on Canadian shelves the first day they can legally be sold, though they won’t contain alcohol.

The maker of Coors Light has partnered with Gatineau, Quebec-based Hexo Corp. to make a variety of non-alcoholic, cannabis-infused drinks for the Canadian market. The joint venture, called Truss, will have “lots of different beverages” for sale on Dec. 16, when the beverages become legal in Canada, said Jay McMillan, Hexo’s vice president of strategic development.

While the conversation around which pot stock provides the best long-term potential often revolves around a few chosen ones, there are many other marijuana companies to consider. Case in point: OrganiGram Holdings Inc (TSXV:OGI)(NASDAQ:OGI) has performed better on the stock market year to date than many of the most popular marijuana stocks. Indeed, this doesn’t seem to be a fluke; the pot firm is an exciting prospect for a variety of reasons. Let’s consider three.

Efficient operations

One of the most important things marijuana companies can do to be competitive is to produce massive amounts of their products. That’s why much of the money spent by pot companies so far has gone into increasing their production capacity.

Water quality, marijuana laws and the opioid crisis will be topics of discussion among legislators gathering in Sioux Falls this week. 

Legislators from the Dakotas, Minnesota and Manitoba are meeting this week to hear from experts and discuss cross-border policy issues during the annual International Legislators Forum, which is being held in Sioux Falls this year. The forum, in which eight legislators from each jurisdiction meet, grew out of the 1997 Red River flood and is facilitated by the Consensus Committee, a public policy nonprofit based in Bismark, N.D.

"It's a way of trying to solve problems and try to minimize partisan politics," said Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, who helped organize this year's forum.

A recent court ruling out of Newfoundland and Labrador could have implications elsewhere in the country for those driving or having control of a vehicle in which cannabis is being transported, especially if not theirs and without their knowledge.

While the lower court ruling is not binding in Newfoundland and Labrador or other provinces, it may make it harder for prosecutors across Canada to obtain convictions for provincial cannabis transportation offences where the driver did not know there was cannabis in the vehicle. Canadians charged with such offences now have a persuasive case that their lawyers can point to in order to try to convince a judge to dismiss the charges or at least mitigate their sentence upon conviction.

A company trying to break into the marijuana-infused drinks business isn't happy with Health Canada's new regulations on packaging.

Last week, the federal government came out with its official rules and timetables on cannabis edibles. 

Among the new rules came strict edicts on packaging, including limitations on brand logos and descriptions of the product.

"If I was to come to your home and bring you a bottle of cannabis infused wine as a gift, do you want me to show up with that bottle of wine looking like toilet bowl cleanser or do you want it to look like a beautiful bottle of wine," said Terry Donnelly, CEO of the Vancouver-based Hill Street Beverage Company.

ParcelPal Technology Inc. ("ParcelPal" or the "Company"), (CSE: PKG) (FSE: PT0) (OTC: PTNYF) is pleased to announce the integration of ParcelPal's app on the Shopify's digital platform. The integration will be complete in the coming weeks.

Shopify is an eCommerce platform provider that gives retailers everything they need to build and operate a successful online store. Shopify is the leading eCommerce provider for merchants in North America in retail and specifically cannabis within Canada.

Craft cannabis growers have a lot to offer rural communities, but new Health Canada regulations may be a mixed blessing, experts say.

In May, Health Canada announced that those applying for licenses to grow cannabis must have a fully built site meeting all cannabis regulations. In the announcement, Health Canada cited the changes would address the wait time for licensing.

Why it matters: Developing an industry of small cannabis growers has the potential to create new economic opportunities for rural communities.

Cam Battley believes that in the not-too-distant future, his company — one of Canada’s largest licensed producers — will be exporting a “significant chunk” of the cannabis it is growing domestically.

“We have a massive market over in Europe, even in Latin America,” says Battley, chief corporate officer at Aurora Cannabis Inc. “These countries are legalizing medicinal cannabis one by one but they’re not growing as much as us. They’re going to need product, and we’ve already got the ball rolling on exporting.”

There are numerous ways to measure product uptake. Tens of thousands of books are sitting on business school library shelves across the world with documented techniques on how to assess the distance a product has traveled into its life journey. Sometimes, however, it's just obvious that something big has started and is on the precipice of being far bigger — no books required.

Cannabis is one such industry, with all the signs indicating that weed may play out to be one of the biggest investible megatrends of our lifetime.

In October 2018, Canada fully legalized the adult use of recreational cannabis, the first major western country to do so on a national scale. This is why many of the pure-play cannabis stocks we see today are only listed in Canada.