What happened
Another day, another rally for marijuana stocks! After taking a short breather on Monday, cannabis stocks including Canopy Growth (CGC -0.66%), Tilray (TLRY), and Aurora Cannabis (ACB -2.96%) are off to the races once more Tuesday morning, rising 2.9%, 4.5%, and 5.3%, respectively, through 10:20 a.m. EST. And action in Congress is the reason.
So what
As cannabis news source Marijuana Moment reports, now that the midterm elections are over and it's (almost) time to get back to work, both Democrats and Republicans in an almost evenly divided House of Representatives have prepared a joint memo to guide their work in an upcoming hearing on marijuana legalization.
In general, the memo takes a tone favorable to legalization, addressing decriminalization and expunging convictions for low-level cannabis offenses, while advocating government regulation of marijuana sales over the current outright federal ban.
Of particular interest to investors, the joint memo urges legislators to set competitive tax rates on marijuana sales, to ensure that the drug doesn't end up costing more on the legal market than on the illegal market. The memo even goes a step further than President Joe Biden's recent move to change the schedule on marijuana (i.e., downgrade the risk the drug is believed to pose, currently set at the highest risk level of schedule I).
As Marijuana Moment notes, the memo argues that marijuana "does not meet the criteria of a Schedule I drug, nor Schedule II through V, for that matter" -- in essence urging legislators to legalize it fully.
Now what
On top of all that, this morning Gallup released poll results showing that voter support for fully legalizing marijuana has reached an all-time high (if you'll pardon the pun) of 68%. Moreover, this level of voter support appears quite firm, having held steady at 68% -- more than two in three voters -- for the past three years.
And here's the best news of all for fans of marijuana stocks: Gallup's poll shows large majorities support legalization across most voting-age demographics in the country.
So there you have it, folks: Voters support marijuana legalization. Congress is gearing up to hold hearings on the issue and then vote on it. And a bipartisan report suggests that both parties are now pretty much in favor of legalizing the stuff -- at favorable tax rates that should help bolster sales. This all argues strongly in favor of the idea that legalization will happen, and perhaps sooner than we think, which should result in a large increase in marijuana revenue for companies like Canopy Growth, Tilray, and Aurora Cannabis.
Granted, there's still the question of whether these companies can translate strong revenue into positive profits. (They still haven't managed to do that in Canada, where marijuana has been legal for years.) But now that eventual legalization seems a foregone conclusion, at least we know that the companies will have a chance to try. For marijuana investors today, that seems good enough news for a stock price rally.
