Canada's marijuana producers are growing anxious over the seemingly standstill status of the legalization promises heavily advocated by newly-inaugurated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The looming change from being strictly medicinal to recreational use brought in a lot more aspiring growers and producers of the said drug opening its largest market growing fast-paced even before the said law has been passed.
Predictions suggest that the recreational drug would attract an estimated seven million customers and a market value of $5 billion annually becoming the biggest of its kind in the planet.
In addition to the small-scale growers who obtained license through the Marihuana Medical Access Regulations or MMAR in 2000 for their own cultivation and use, there are now 26 government-sanctioned companies who have taken over as the official growers of the controversial drug.
"The Liberal government's election takes what's a substantial, rapidly growing business, and makes it - well, you just look at it and go, 'Oh boy. We really need to get more done,'" says Bruce Linton, the CEO and co-founder of Tweed Marijuana.
There are awaiting 1,300 companies that are ready to apply for the license to cultivate marijuana according to Paul Rosen, the CEO of PharmaCan Capital, a Toronto-based financing company that funds medical marijuana cultivators.
As promising as it sounds, the aspirant sellers are taking risks with the competition of who gets license first as the police force are still active in raiding marijuana dispensaries with the legalization only existing in words at the present. Law enforcers still continue to charge marijuana-related crimes.
The large sums of money invested for the building of expensive facilities and growing cannabis in various places in Canada would have gone to waste should Trudeau fail to legalize marijuana in the end. With this thought, some of the producers are threatening to organize an uprising against the prime minister and the government if they procrastinate or reject the passing of the marijuana law.
