For years now, Canada's cannabis companies have grown in size, soared in value and existed in a sort of ethereal middle ground waiting for that distant future when pot was legal. Now as legalization looms, one of the country's biggest licensed producers is bracing for life on the other side of that legal divide — where promise and reality will finally meet.

"There will be failures. There will be shortcomings. There will be short shipments," said Vic Neufeld, CEO of Aphria, one of the largest and highest-valued cannabis companies in the world.

Founded in 2014, Aphria has expanded and grown at breakneck speeds, making investors rich in the process.

Canadian licensed marijuana producer Tilray Inc. has received the green light from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agency to export a medical cannabis product south of the border for use in a clinical trial.

The Nanaimo, B.C.-based company and a researcher at the University of California San Diego believe it is the first export of a cannabis study drug from a Canadian company to the U.S., where marijuana is still illegal at the federal level.

Tilray will be exporting capsules containing a cannabinoid formulation with the active ingredients cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol, better known as CBD and THC, for a study examining the drug as a potential treatment for adults with essential tremor.

B.C. government employees who work in provincially-run legal cannabis stores could find themselves barred from entering the United States. 

Mike Farnworth said Monday he’s aware of a threat by U.S. border officials to deny entry to anyone involved in Canada’s marijuana industry, which will become legal Oct. 17.

That’s raised the risk that hundreds of B.C. government employees could find themselves unable to travel to the United States because they staff the new public cannabis retail stores and distribution branch, including front-line workers, managers and even ministry officials. The first B.C. government store, in Kamloops, will open on the day of federal legalization.

Let the countdown begin: The end of pot prohibition – which has been in place since 1923 – is less than one month away.

Come Oct. 17, adults will be able to legally possess 30 grams of dried cannabis, or the equivalent in oil. But many details need to be worked out before then.

Like many other things in Canada (access to health care, for example), access to recreational cannabis will very much be a postal-code lottery.

In Ontario, for example, there will be no bricks-and-mortar cannabis stores until April, 2019, after the new Conservative government scrapped plans for 150 government-run stores in favour of private retailers.

The growth potential for this type of destination tourism, especially with Americans, is huge, says Trina Fraser, partner and head of the CannaLaw group at Ottawa-based Brazeau Seller Law.

Fraser sees a bright future for pot-friendly hotels and B & Bs, curated tours and private chef experiences.

“If you’re close to the U.S. border, if you’re close to production facilities, if you’re in a jurisdiction that provides more leeway for sales—all those factors will combine to create clusters for cannabis-tourism-type businesses,” she says. “There’s so much interest in the concept of cannabis tourism that it’s going to happen, and people will find a way to do it.”

As recreational cannabis becomes legal in Canada starting next month, Shopify Inc. is emerging as the place to get it. For investors, that means there’s potential for the e-commerce company to smoke expectations.

Several Canadian provinces have picked Shopify to run their e-commerce websites and the company has also signed deals with marijuana companies including Canopy Growth Corp., KeyBanc says. Cannabis is an “opportunity no one is talking about,” analyst Monika Garg writes.

The Canadian marijuana stocks we’ve weeded out bucked the trend this past Thursday, finishing the day higher within a broad-based cannabis sector sell off

A Metro Vancouver cannabis producer has launched a virtual tour of its growing facility in the hopes of increasing transparency and easing some of the social tensions around legalization, according to the company’s chief executive officer.

Dan Sutton, CEO of Tantalus Labs in Maple Ridge, said opening Tantalus’ SunLab facility to the public eye was meant as a gesture of good faith, intended to assuage the fear of the unknown which may inhabit some corners of the Canadian psyche as Oct. 17 draws closer. “It's like extending an open door to your neighbour,” Sutton said in an interview, adding his hope was to demonstrate to people unfamiliar with cannabis that it’s production is like any other form of agriculture.

With recreational cannabis sales slated to begin on Oct. 17, many Canadians are understandably still hazy when it comes to essential weed words like “sativa” and “CBD.” To help you navigate the lingo of the new legalized landscape, here’s an easy guide.

What’s the difference between ‘cannabis,’ ‘marijuana’ and ‘hemp’?

“Cannabis,” the word used in current government literature, refers to a genus of Asian flowering plants in the Cannabaceae family -- a family that also includes hops and hackberries -- that have been cultivated for millennia for their medicinal and psychoactive properties.

Consumer Staples

According to Investopedia, a consumer staple is defined thus:
"...Consumer staples are goods that people are unable or unwilling to cut out of their budgets regardless of their financial situation... People tend to demand consumer staples at a relatively constant level, regardless of their price."

Essentially, a consumer staple has low elasticity of demand (a change in price has very little effect on the demand for the product), is non-cyclical (demand is effected very little by the state of the economy) and is used by both the rich and the poor. Common consumer staples include food, alcohol, tobacco and now, cannabis.