And They’re Getting a Huge Head Start!
Big Corporate Cannabis is here already, and the government of Canada dragging their feet is simply providing a greater advantage to those already in the game.
Canopy Growth Corp. announced that they’ll be making all of their associated brands available through a single portal, to be dubbed Tweed Main Street. This is a very crafty way of getting around the government’s current rules regarding how medical cannabis patients access their medicine.
While good news for patients of any of the three affected brands, Bedrocan, Mettrum and Tweed, it seems somewhat unfair to allow the largest cannabis company in the world to put a store together with a multitude of brands and SKU’s, knowing that it will be at least 15 months until any viable competitor can do the same, if at all.
Here’s an incentive for the other licensed producers to do the same, and continue the concentration of the Canadian cannabis industry. As of today there are 41 LP’s, with the addition of Acreage Pharms Ltd., surprisingly only the second such producer licensed in Alberta. Canopy already controls six of the 41 licenses, and continued concentration will likely result. This always kills innovation, and competition in general, and should absolutely not be encouraged at this early stage of the industry. That a liberal government would fail to understand this is absolutely predictable.
There have been several recent studies indicating that both medicinal and adult-use (recreational) cannabis threaten some of Big Pharma’s cash flow. Promising evidence showing that in US states where adult-use is allowed, there has been a resulting drop in opioid addiction. Add this to the myriad uses for cannabis that threaten other Big Pharma cash cows signal that they will put a strong push to enter this industry to a greater degree than already. I’m in fact surprised to see they haven’t embraced the promise of cannabis… but then I didn’t see the end of the record industry coming either!
Hats off to Canopy though. A strategically brilliant move!