Cannabis sales in Canada expected to double next year to $3.16B: analyst 

At this time last year, marijuana stocks were practically unstoppable -- and for good reason. Just two weeks prior, on Oct. 17, 2018, Canada had officially become the first industrialized country to wave the green flag on recreational marijuana sales. Revenue and profit projections were lofty coming out of the gate, and with billions of dollars in annual sales being conducted in the black market, it only seemed logical that the legal market would scoop up this revenue with relative ease.

But absolutely nothing since Oct. 17, 2018 can be aptly described as "easy" for the Canadian cannabis industry.

With Statistics Canada reporting 578,000 new cannabis users in the last six months in its National Cannabis Survey, findings in a U.S. study are troublesome for those who buy CBD products online.

According to Statistics Canada, 28% of users claim they only purchase cannabis products from  government-sanctioned retailers. That means 72% of the more than 5 million Canadians, age 15 and up, who reported recently using marijuana are looking to illegal sources — online dispensaries, unlicensed dispensaries and dealers — for cannabis products.

Medical marijuana users and their advocates say steep price increases since legalization, coupled with obstacles to access, are forcing many patients to turn to the illegal market.  

According to a survey commissioned by the Arthritis Society, there are as many medical cannabis users getting their prescriptions from illegal sources as legal ones, while two-thirds say they're rationing their supply of the drug due to worries about both access and cost.

It's harder to get medical cannabis, which was legal first, than it is to get recreational marijuana.- Janet Yale, Arthritis Society

MediPharm Labs was just granted a tasty treat from Health Canada.

The Ontario-based company has received a cannabis research licence that will allow it to conduct controlled testing on humans to determine the best flavour profiles for its products.

The government has been wrestling with the underground market despite cannabis legalization expanding, but the newest numbers from Statistics Canada suggest that more users are looking to legal products.

The agency asked 5,452 Canadians where they got the cannabis they used in the past three months.

About half, 53 percent, of the respondents reported obtaining cannabis from legal sources in the second and third quarters of 2019 compared with corresponding estimates from the same period in 2018, in which only 23 percent used the legal market to purchase pot.

Over the next decade, investors would struggle to find a more attractive growth opportunity than legal marijuana. This is an industry that has the potential to see sales grow fivefold to 18-fold by 2030 from the $10.9 billion in worldwide sales recorded in 2018.

But it's also an industry that has a lot of growing up to do. Between supply issues in Canada, high tax rates in select U.S. states, and a persistent black market throughout North America, pot stocks have gone up in smoke in recent months.

While some of these cannabis stocks may look like genuine bargains, others should still be avoided for the immediate future. Here are three marijuana stocks that are best left on the shelf in November.

Province Brands of Canada, developers of the world’s first and only beers brewed from the cannabis plant, will join with Western University (WU) to study and develop innovative yeasts.

Health Canada is warning Canadians that the ingredients used to flavour some vaping products have not been tested to establish if they can be safely inhaled, although the federal department reports it’s working towards rectifying the issue.

“The inhalation of flavours — this happens with electronic cigarettes— it did not exist before this,” Mathieu Morissette, a researcher at the University Institute of Cardiology and Respirology of Quebec, and a professor at the Faculty of Medicine at l’Université Laval, told the Canadian Press.