If not Big Tobacco or Alcohol, then whom?
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer released a video on his Twitter account Thursday featuring a conversation with both Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Ron Wyden of Oregon about the ills of marijuana laws and announced that they would be introducing their legislation in the coming days. The interesting part of his comment written in the NY Post said this: “We don’t want the big tobacco companies and the big liquor companies to swoop in and take over,” Schumer said. “The legislation we have will make sure that smaller businesses, businesses in communities of color, get the advantage because communities of color have paid the price for decades. They should at least get something back.” “Big Liquor” introduced earlier this week a 15-page document showing why they should control the distribution of MJ. We have not heard from “big tobacco yet. I understand why part of the effort would be to ensure that Big Tobacco/Liquor doesn’t overpower smaller companies, but who will regulate interstate commerce, or does the FDA control it? The latter suggests a re-schedule, not a de-schedule which means MJ is still a drug controlled by the FDA: “I want to take it off the federal list that makes it as serious a drug as heroin or cocaine,” Schumer said. Schumer said the legislation was “long overdue” because when states decriminalized or legalized marijuana use, the crime rates that critics warned would shoot up never materialized.
Cannabis REIT merger (IIPR)
NewLake Capital Partners and GreenAcreage closed on a merger that will create a sizable cannabis real estate company. The merged company will have $325M in assets and $110M in cash to pursue additional deals. GreenAcreage Real Estate is a cannabis REIT created in 2019. The merged company will be called NewLake Capital Partners. The two REITs have specialized in sale-leaseback industrial and retail real estate transactions in the cannabis sector. It owns a portfolio of 24 properties across nine states. The portfolio includes 17 retail dispensaries and seven cultivation and processing facilities. Tenants include Columbia Care, Cresco, Curaleaf, and Trulieve. NewLake estimates that the industry will need $15B of real estate to support the growth of the cannabis industry over the next five years. Cannabis companies could absorb more than five million square feet of real estate in the coming years, which will create a growing number of participants and supporters of the industry in the future. With the growth ahead of the industry NewLake represents a small amount of competition for Innovative Industrial Properties.
TRSSF Well-positioned in NJ
TerrAscend Corp. (TRSSF) announced yesterday that TerrAscend NJ, LLC has been issued a permit to process cannabis by the New Jersey Department of Health (“NJ DOH”), which allows the Company to engage in the extraction, processing, and manufacturing of a wide range of branded form factors including, vaporizables, concentrates, topicals, tinctures and edibles under the Ilera Healthcare, Kind Tree, and Prism brands. "We are pleased to receive our processing permit from the NJ DOH, and we look forward to introducing TerrAscend’s house of brands and form factors to medical-use patients through our ATCs¹ and the wholesale channel - Jason Ackerman, CEO and Executive Chairman of TerrAscend. The medical cannabis business in New Jersey is booming; constructing a 140,000 sq. ft. production facility will position the company well for adult use in 2022.
