How to Profit from Legal Marijuana

Americans spend roughly $42bn annually on legal and illegal marijuana. Their appetite is almost certain to increase as it becomes easier to legally access the drug and the industry continues to promote pot as compatible with a healthy adult life.In California alone, tens of thousands of farms grow the plant, which is increasingly processed into gorgeously packaged vape pens and edibles marketed to customers outside the core stoner demographic of young men. Today, seniors are the fastest-growing group of marijuana users in the US.The future looks very green indeed. But since New Year's Day 2014, when Colorado opened the world's first regulated recreational marijuana market, the business climate for weed companies has proven immensely difficult for a range of reasons, including high taxes, rapidly changing regulations and a still robust illicit market.Besides the business challenges, America's legal marijuana industry also has to reckon with an unavoidable moral dimension. The US has been engaged in a "war on drugs" since Richard Nixon declared it in 1971. While white Americans use marijuana and other drugs at roughly equal rates to African Americans and Latinos, in virtually every respect, racial minorities have been disproportionately incarcerated and otherwise punished for involvement with drugs, including selling marijuana.In addition, marginalized groups - Aids patients, disabled people, veterans - who championed legalization when it was far riskier to do so now find themselves ill-equipped to compete against well-capitalized corporate refugees looking to jump on the bandwagon.One company, Acreage Holdings, which closed on $119m in investment capital this summer, has enlisted the former Republican speaker of the House John Boehner to help it navigate the market. Boehner has never smoked pot - "he hasn't felt the need or inclination", according to a spokesperson - and he declared himself "unalterably opposed" to legalization when he was in office...