Marijuana will be legal in Canada in October and the CEO of the country’s largest publicly traded medical marijuana company has his sights set on products. Bruce Linton told CNBC that products are the future of the cannabis industry.
Linton says in regards to Canada that “by 2020 or 2021, there will be too much cannabis produced. If I’m still selling primarily an ingredient, I have completely dropped the ball. You want to transform it.”
He specifically wants to produce beverages, just like Constellation Brands, which owns Lagunitas Brewing. The California-based company announced earlier this week that they are launching an infused sparkling water, and Linton is taking notes. He told CNBC, “I find that people would like to have a beverage that makes them more positive, uplifted and has a feeling of having a beer or glass of wine. And the real kicker is — how would you like to have zero calories?”
“When I look at an opportunity to transform the ingredient into finished goods, the margins are way better, the format’s more acceptable,” said Linton. “And I think what it turns into is Canada, this really governed, boring place, is the world’s model.”
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When asked if he thinks beverages are becoming the preferred delivery [of cannabis] over vaping, edibles, and topicals, Linton said,
We’re going to do all of them and let people decide. But I fundamentally believe the reason we learned how to make pottery was so we’d have some place to put the wine. And so it goes back a long time, where we’ve been thinking about beverages as a way to mood modify and socialize. I don’t think it’s a big social jump. It’s for sure more normal than gummy bears.
Linton told CNBC that Canopy is also working on a sleep aid, which he describes a as a potential “disruptor to Ambien.”
