When Erica Gilmour and her husband, Drew, started Hummingbird Chocolate in 2011 they had no idea their multi-award-winning chocolates would become one of Canada’s most anticipated edibles. What began as a hobby in the basement of the couple’s home near Ottawa has turned into a massive partnership that will see their bean-to-bar chocolate turned into high-end edibles for the next stage of Canada’s rollout of legal cannabis.

It's been a very good year so far for Canopy Rivers(NASDAQOTH:CNPOF), the cannabis investment spinoff of Canopy Growth (NYSE:CGC). It was the hottest marijuana stock on the market in January. Even after giving up some of those gains, Canopy Rivers is still up close to 45% year to date.

But 2019 has been a great year for Aphria (NYSE:APHA).

Cannabis stocks were mixed on Monday as new data emerged about the state of Canada’s legal market and Aurora Cannabis Inc. completed its acquisition of a British Columbia–based medical weed company.

Data from the Canadian government shows that the black market for cannabis remained strong in the fourth quarter of 2018, accounting for C$1.17 billion ($878.7 million) of sales, compared with $307 million in legal sales.

Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she's majoring in marijuana.

"My friends make good-natured jokes about getting a degree in weed," said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University. "I say, 'No, it's a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and foremost. It's hard work. Organic chemistry is a bear.'"

As a green gold rush in legal marijuana and its non-drug cousin hemp spreads across North America, a growing number of colleges are adding cannabis to the curriculum to prepare graduates for careers cultivating, researching, analyzing and marketing the herb.

A new cultivation facility in Stellarton has received the green light to begin producing up to 18,500 kilograms of dried cannabis per year.

Vancouver-based company Zenabis Global Inc. received its cultivation licence from the federal government on Friday, and CEO Andrew Grieve said the work had already started on production of the first crop, which will be ready in a few months. Zenabis is the sixth company to be licensed to produce recreational cannabis in Nova Scotia.

Grieve said that the indoor, 255,000-square-foot Stellarton facility is expected to support 200 full-time jobs at full capacity.

The marijuana producer Cronos Group on Monday announced that it has sold all its entire 19% stake in Whistler Medical Marijuana to rival Aurora Cannabis. 

In the lead-up to the October 2018 legalization of recreational marijuana in Canada, cannabis stocks were on a tear. So much so, it was difficult to find a marijuana stock trading at seemingly fair valuations. None of the weed companies had even started to generate revenues from recreational marijuana sales, but investors were optimistic.

We’re now into earnings season, and pot stocks have been reporting their first round of quarterly results that include sales from recreational marijuana. It’s time for cannabis players to justify their lofty valuations with equally frothy revenue growth.

While the biggest players are garnering all of the attention, there are a number of marijuana penny stocks reporting impressive numbers.

The legal sale of cannabis has vaporized more than $6 million worth of provincial beer sales, Manitoba's finance minister claimed as he continued to predict no net revenue from recreational weed.

Almost six months after Canada legalized the sale of recreational cannabis, Manitoba is not expecting to make a profit off the new industry, Finance Minister Scott Fielding said Monday.

Expenditures related to legal cannabis will outpace revenue from its sale for years, said Fielding, who declined to say whether the province will make any cannabis revenue projections in the provincial budget expected on Thursday.

He also suggested any cannabis profits could be offset by reduced beer sales, based on Colorado's experience following legalization.

While many view the Canadian marijuana market as only focused on the companies who grow marijuana, there is a large amount of potential beyond this smaller scope. Many businesses have been able to see success by providing more than just raw cannabis to the consumers, albeit as well as plain old cannabis.

One thing that investors should keep in mind, however, is the high amount of volatility in the market overall. This has been one of the biggest barriers to entry for many institutional investors. Despite this notion, however, many companies have seen their fluctuations decline in the past few months as the market begins to stabilize.

There's been no industry hotter to start the new year than marijuana. Now a legitimate business model following the legalization of adult-use cannabis in Canada this past October, the highly followed Horizons Marijuana Life Sciences ETF, which holds around four dozen pot stocks, is up 60% year to date through the end of February.