Yet another ASX-listed company is entering the cannabis business in a deal that brings up some of Australia’s weird marijuana corporate history.

Pearl farmer and skincare specialist Atlas Pearls and Perfumes (ASX:ATP) is joining forces, via its subsidiary Essential Oils of Tasmania, with LeafCann Group to get a medicinal cannabis licence in Tasmania.

Atlas’s shares rose 8 per cent to 2.8c following the news, valuing the company at $11.7 million.

They plan to buy “therapeutically proven” strains of cannabis from overseas, and use Essential Oils of Tasmania’s oil extraction expertise for the rest.

LeafCann is contributing the cannabis scientists.

The two companies plan to operate Atlas’s subsidiary Cannabinoid Extracts Australia as a 50-50 joint venture.

It’s a name that shows just how small the medical cannabis field is in Australia, and links Atlas to another odd adventure that Stockhead covered earlier this month, Capital Mining.

Atlas bought the Tasmanian essential oils venture in 2015, and tried to sell the cannabinoid subsidiary to gold miner, Capital Mining.

The miner’s brief foray into cannabis fell through — this time — leaving Atlas to carry Cannabinoid Extracts Australia.

Atlas has been contacted for comment.

Intriguingly, Tasmania is also a hotbed for another type of heavy medicinal drug: poppies.

It is the largest poppy producer in the world, according to the Tasmanian government, and produces about 50 per cent of the world’s legal poppies, which are used to make morphine, thebaine and codeine.