Canopy received a Health Canada license to grow outdoors and began planting in a 160-acre site in Saskatchewan—despite a longstanding opposition by the company and its CEO Bruce Linton to outdoor cultivation. In May of last year, Linton joined Allan Rewak of the Cannabis Council of Canada in asking the Senate to ban outdoor cultivation. Linton said then growing outdoors “may have a future sometime, but I don’t think it’s today.”
Bloomberg, iPolitics
In May of last year, Linton joined Allan Rewak of the Cannabis Council of Canada in asking the Senate to ban outdoor cultivation. Linton said then, growing outdoors “may have a future sometime, but I don’t think it’s today.”
Bloomberg, iPolitics
- Following news they had received an outdoor license from Health Canada, Linton told Bloomberg, “We’ll take a licence for anything we can get, but we’re cautious enough to call it a pilot because there’s a possibility these things don’t work out as much as some people would like. We’re not sure this is going to be a long-term business for us but we need to try everything.”
- The move may potentially allow Canopy to produce lower quality bud for extraction, leaving its indoor product for the dry-flower market—though Linton himself expressed doubts about how easy it is to grow outdoors: “I suspect a lot of people are going to find out in the next three to four months it’s not a straightforward process to grow quality cannabis in Canada in an outdoor environment.”
- After absorbing 12 companies in a year, Canopy is finished buying smaller producers, and is focused on developing beverages. The company will also begin producing infused chocolates at their Smith Falls headquarters (the former Smiths Falls Hershey Chocolate factory that I and many other children in the Ottawa area visited on field trips in the 1980s). Financial Post, Ottawa Business Journal
- The Globe‘s Jameson Berkow noted Linton told him explicitly that regardless of federal legalization in the US, passage of the STATES Act (recognizing and protecting state legalization) would trigger the closure of the $3.4B Acreage deal.
Twitter - A number of Canopy insiders sold stock.
Twitter—WeedStreet 420
Quick Hits
- At the Cannabis Europa conference, Aurora CCO Cam Battley called on UK doctors to hurry up and start prescribing MED. “What was the point of creating a medical cannabis system if patients can’t access it?” he asked.
The Guardian - Tilray made its first shipment of MED to the UK.
Yahoo Finance - Lift offered advice for new MED users getting used to the medical system. Lift also produced a very handy infographic to help break down the final regulations on new cannabis products, plus comparisons for all with dried flower.
Lift
