Stavola is staying on at iAnthus. She and her co-workers are now part of an organization that’s among about a half-dozen contestants racing to establish multistate marijuana chains, hoping for a chunk of what some claim could be more than $50 billion in annual sales of legal cannabis products. How long that takes and what it ultimately will look like are among the questions the young, fragmented marketplace must answer.
Investors interested in U.S. cannabis companies face a less frightful challenge than Stavola did—but still a daunting one. Just finding the stocks is hard. Although marijuana is legal for recreational or medical use in many states, it remains illegal under federal law. As a result, the companies can’t list on the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange, so they’ve gone to the Canadian Securities Exchange in Toronto (and the OTC Markets Group in the U.S.). Companies that sell only in Canada, like Canopy Growth (CGC), can list in the U.S. and tap deeper-pocketed investors.