What happened
The stocks of several Canadian marijuana companies on the market didn't produce much of a high for investors on Thursday. Shares of Sundial Growers (SNDL -4.00%), Canopy Growth (CGC -10.51%), OrganiGram Holdings (OGI -3.09%), Hexo (HEXO), and Aurora Cannabis (ACB -4.85%) all ended the day in negative territory.
Those declines ranged from Sundial's 6% drop to Aurora's 11%-plus stumble. Fresh comments about legalization from would-be pot law reformers in the U.S. Congress seemed to be behind the drops.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Politicians associated with marijuana legalization on both sides of the aisle gave interviews on the topic. The most recent interviewee was Republican Representative Nancy Mace, who on Monday introduced a bill called The States Reform Act to decriminalize marijuana at the Federal level.
Mace stumped for the bill in an interview on Fox Business, and she made some good points about the absurdity of the current situation in which legalization has occurred on a haphazard, state-by-state basis.
Yet it's clear that her bill isn't radically different from the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act proposed earlier this year by far more powerful Democrat lawmakers, such as Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer.
And so far, no prominent Republican has taken up Mace's torch. In fact, several Republicans reiterated their opposition to marijuana law reform in general. This is discouraging for anyone hoping for a top-down legalization move to happen soon.
Mace's comments follow an interview Schumer gave, aired on Black Enterprise's YouTube channel, on the subject of his bill. One comment that stood out was that "We don't want the big boys to come in," apparently referring to large businesses that might seek to dominate the marijuana industry when and if Federal decriminalization occurs.
Now what
Schumer didn't elaborate on who those "big boys" might be. Regardless, it's hardly a reassuring comment given that the marijuana industry continues to be in a seemingly endless state of consolidation in which acquisitions are the rule rather than the exception.
If enacted, strict anti-competitive measures would badly affect Canadian weedies like Sundial, Canopy Growth, etc. At the moment they cannot sell directly to the lucrative U.S. market. Even if that situation changed with legislative reform, they would likely still have to acquire American assets to gain proper access to consumers in this country.
