Alberta: Cannabis Edibles Flying Off Store Shelves

It’s déjà vu in Canada’s cannabis capital.

The province of Alberta leads Canada in opening up cannabis stores, with now 406 stores licensed and approved by the provincial AGLC. Trying to keep cannabis edibles on store shelves is currently proving to be a nearly impossible task.
 

The province of Alberta opened more than 300 cannabis stores in the first year of full cannabis legalization. But even more stores would have been opened if not for a provincial moratorium.

Alberta froze new store licensing in mid-2019 because of shortages of the dried flower cannabis products that were initially available for sale in Phase 1 of cannabis legalization.  Now, with Cannabis 2.0, Alberta cannabis companies (and cannabis consumers) are experiencing a repeat of product shortages.
 

Too much demand. It’s a nice problem to have, assuming that supply bottlenecks don’t test the patience of consumers for too long.

It’s also another rebuttal to cannabis naysayers.

Alberta represents the potential of the legal cannabis industry in Canada. Just like states like Colorado and now Illinois demonstrate the potential of the legal industry in the United States – when done right.

Cannabis provides many health medicinal/benefits to users. It’s a benign recreational drug option in societies that want to reduce their use of toxic and dangerous drugs like alcohol and tobacco.

In Alberta, broad access to legal cannabis caused the cannabis consumption rate to rise by 25% in a single year, from 16% to 20%.

Roughly 80% of Canadians aged 15 and over consume alcohol. Alcohol is a toxic, addictive carcinogen that causes or contributes to numerous serious diseases. Alcohol use is responsible for more than 88,000 deaths per year in the U.S.

Cannabis use carries none of those risks. There is no reason why cannabis consumption rates cannot/will not parallel alcohol consumption rates over the long term. This means the potential for the consumer base in Alberta (and other Canadian provinces) to quadruple.

The picture is similar in the U.S.

Even in fully legal cannabis jurisdictions, current cannabis consumption and demand is just the tip of the iceberg. Internationally, most of the rest of the world is just starting the legalization process.

Global cannabis sales rose by 46% in 2019, in a year where uninformed cannabis bears continually referred to the sector as “a bubble that burst”.

There never was a bubble. The cannabis ‘balloon’ has barely begun to be inflated.

The annual 46% year-over-year revenue growth in 2019 can be repeated (or exceeded) not merely for many more years, but for many decades.

Meanwhile, marijuana stock valuations continue to hover around two-year lows. Opportunity knocks.