Cannabis Executives, Investors See Asia Saying ‘Yes’ to Pot

The cannabis investor conference in Hong Kong this week started with some stern warnings against smoking pot in the city, which can land you in prison. Then folks got down to talking business.

The Hong Kong Cannabis Investor Symposium on Thursday drew executives from some of the world’s hottest cannabis firms together with more than 200 attendees to talk about the plant’s misconceptions and its investment opportunities. Pot stocks have returned 73 percent in the last 12 months, outpacing Bitcoin, gold and any major equity index. And, despite the prohibition in Hong Kong, many of the forum’s participants said they see attitudes in Asia changing.

Sumit Mehta, chief executive of Mazakali, a cannabis investment-banking platform based in San Francisco, said legalization in states across America would trigger changes in Asia because “it was the U.S. that exported propaganda against cannabis around the world.”

Some pot entrepreneurs said they were already making forays into China, seizing opportunities in medical cannabis, which is cultivated in the country under government control. CannAcubed, a grower with its main offices in Singapore (where drug trafficking can carry the death penalty), is working with China’s state-owned health fund to build an industrial hemp park in Yunnan province, with 100,000 hectares of land, according to the firm’s chief executive, Glenn Davies. [Read More @ Bloomberg]