Weed Week: Which of you were forced to sell your beloved pot stocks last week?

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The biggest Australian news over the last fortnight, for those affected at least, was IG Markets forcing its users to sell out of 19 global pot stocks.

Investors had to sell by May 24 and the company told Stockhead it’d looked at almost 1000 companies and booted the 19 it thought had ties to recreational marijuana.

Which begs the question: what about all of the other listed companies openly dealing in legal recreational dope?

The Office of Drug Control (ODC) has sorted out its latest bout of constipation after squeezing out a batch of licence approvals.

Medical cannabis licences now total 26 for cultivation, 15 for research, and 20 for manufacturing. As a refresher, companies need a licence to get set up and then a permit to actually do anything.

The recent happy recipients of these include THC Global (ASX:THC) with an export licence; Tasmanian Botanics with permits to grow and export; MGC Pharma’s (ASX:MXC) partner RMIT got a research licence which the ASX company will get the sole benefit of; and IDT (ASX:IDT), LeafCann and Canadian Medipharm Labs all got manufacturing licences.

The ODC has had some problems getting licences out the door — not enough staff, too many applicants, and a stringent process — but companies going through the process are generally complimentary about how the government department is doing.

Industry researcher New Cannabis Ventures says GW Pharma was making the most revenue of the companies it tracks, closely followed by CuraLeaf Holdings, although at least one company’s reporting later could top both.

The researcher says a lack of revenue among North American companies is becoming a worry for investors and an issue they’re fielding more and more queries about.

New York City smokes the most marijuana in the world. New Yorkers consumed 77.4 metric tons of cannabis flower last year, followed by Karachi, Pakistan with 42 metric tons.

That’ll be welcome news for Elixinol Global (ASX:EXL) which is getting set in New York, albeit with hemp-based foods and nutraceuticals, not recreational pot.

And finally, someone is actually conducting research on pregnant women to fill a small part of the dearth of information currently available on almost every aspect of childbearing.

A 2018 survey found cannabis use by pregnant women increased over the prior 14 years for still-unsolved problems such as morning sickness, so University of Washington are looking at the effects of cannabis use among existing users rather than wrapping it in with alcohol and other substances.

Keeping up with the companies

The ASX has lost one more prospective pot stock as Cannindah Resources (ASX:CAE) bails out on the idea.

Cannindah told us in November last year it wanted to diversify away from resources (yet while still holding on to all of its resources assets) and were looking at pot and baby formula.

Last month it called its cannabis adventure off, saying it was too hard to reformulate the product it was looking at for the Australian market.

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Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH) harvested its first medical cannabis crop in Canada after receiving its growing licence in February. It did not say how much was harvested but did say they’d be making money from it soon.

Stemcell United (ASX:SCU) completed the acquisition of 51 per cent of Yunnan Huafang Industrial Hemp Co (HFIH) for RMB3.8m ($794,952), a company with a Chinese hemp license and which it hopes will provide the raw material for new traditional Chinese medicines.

Medlab Clinical (ASX:MDC) has secured a distributor for its 1:1 THC:CBD cannabis mouth spray for South America. The heads of agreement with Thai company Mega Lifesciences is a prelude to a formal commercial deal.

Croplogic (ASX:CLI) is going hard on hemp, trying to convince investors by weight of numbers and ASX releases that its first crop from the 150 acre Oregon trial farm could net it an extraordinary $64m worth in sales — this year.

Investors with long memories will know Croplogic is no stranger to making large promises, punishing investors since its disastrous 2017 IPO and scrapping a deal which was supposed to be its big entry into Australia.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Creso Pharma and MGC are Stockhead advertisers, they did not sponsor this article.

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