Molson Coors Brewing's (TAP) cannabis joint venture plans 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(HEXO) 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.

Over the past couple of years, few, if any, industries have beaten the returns offered by marijuana stocks. Some of the most popular pot stocks in the industry have delivered returns that, in some instances, have topped 2,000% since the beginning of 2016.

It's not hard to understand why investors are so bullish on the weed industry. After logging $12.2 billion in worldwide sales in 2018, according to Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics, global sales are set to soar to between $50 billion and $75 billion by end of the next decade, based on various Wall Street estimates. This should, presumably, yield quite a few winners in the cannabis space.

Shoppers to leverage blockchain tech to get doctors on board with medical marijuana prescriptions

There's arguably no industry creating more metaphorical and literal buzz than marijuana. What had once been a taboo industry is no longer, with worldwide sales expected to grow four to six times the $12.2 billion generated (legally) in 2018 by the end of the next decade.

It was a mixed bag in the cannabis-related news world this week.

It’s not often you get to witness the opening of a whole new market sector. After last year’s move by the Canadian Parliament to fully legalize marijuana and cannabis products throughout the country, and the increasing numbers of American states south of the border pursuing similar legalization policies, we are seeing just that. As Giadha Aquirre de Carcer, CEO of New Frontier Data, put it in a report on the worldwide cannabis market, “The legal cannabis industry has truly gone global; even in the face of extensive prohibition, cannabis consumption grows, and attitudes and challenging perceptions about the typical cannabis user continue to shift.”

Eastern Cape premier Oscar Mabuyane wants to make the province home to South Africa’s first cannabis industry – already reading proposals from interested international parties, and working on feasibility studies to register farms.

Speaking to the City Press, Mabuyane said that people had been growing cannabis in the province for years, but now the opportunity exists to formalise it, and turn it into a lucrative industry.

He said that the stigma attached to cannabis is that of smoking and getting high, but in markets in Europe and Canada, there is a large industry built around the plant, which includes medicines, bio-fuels and other products.

Cannabis stocks have encountered choppy conditions in the spring, which should come as no surprise after a hot start to the year. The largest cannabis company in Canada by market cap is Canopy Growth (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC). Shares of Canopy Growth had dropped 10.4% month over month as of close on June 12. The stock was still up 55.8% in 2019 so far.

If you've never heard Canadian cannabis producer Aurora Cannabis (NYSE: ACB) and big biotech Gilead Sciences(NASDAQ: GILD) mentioned in the same sentence, this will be a first for you. You might not think that Aurora and Gilead have anything in common, but they do. Both companies are currently conducting clinical trials. And both companies have skeptics who doubt how well their stocks will perform over the long run.

Over the last couple of years, Aurora has been the clear winner when it comes to stock performance. It's a different story over the lifetimes of these two companies, though, with Gilead delivering much larger gains (albeit over a much longer period of time).

Call it the gummy conundrum.

Canada released its regulations Friday for new cannabis formats that will become legal this fall, including edibles, beverages and vape cartridges. The government crafted rules aimed at keeping the drug out of the hands of minors, so it wasn't surprising to see producers will be prohibited from selling products "that can reasonably be considered appealing to a young person."

But the vagueness of that phrase has led to some head-scratching.

"A cookie is appealing to a kid, so can I make a cookie? Can I make a brownie? What do you mean by appealing to kids?" said cannabis lawyer Trina Fraser, a partner at Brazeau Seller Law in Ottawa.