Across North America, medical marijuana or cannabis is increasing becoming a legal investment enterprise. Cannabis or weed has been smoked for many generations even if the President says I did not inhale, the issue is cannabis is easily available. For many concert goers, not smelling cannabis meant there was something wrong with the concert. If you go back a few years, most of the cannabis was imported from Mexico because it was higher quality. Over the years, the California or west coast varieties developed and it became possible to grow it indoors. This is when there is a problem – the growing of plants indoors, unless there is great ventilation leads to mould, however if there is great ventilation the smell of the product can be detected by the neighbours. If you are doing something illegal, do you really want your neighbours to know? Grown ops have been found in apartments, houses and work best in industrial buildings where there is some activity to mask what is going on. One of the many ways the police find grow ops is the electricity usage – to mask summer growing the lights have to be on for 18 hours a day. Mark Coakley wrote a book called Hidden Harvest – the rise and fall of North America’s Biggest Cannabis Grow Op, ECW Press, Toronto, 2014. In this case the industrial facility was a former brewery in a town of about 150,000. The large brewery was off the main highway where thousands of cars went by everyday, but inside the brewery more than 20,000 plants were grown with most of the crop exported to the US. The street value of 10,000 plants was over $10 million. The grow op was in production for about 4 years. In addition there was a few other types of businesses in the space.

In reading the book it seemed for the individuals although the product was illegal, the work paid good money which went to pay mortgages, higher education for children and everyday living. The owners were making millions, but those that worked learned their skills to plant efficiently, to trim the plants, to maintain the buildings as if the plant was a legal operation. Even after the grow op was shut down, the skilled workers were eager to work on the next project.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, in the drug trade, the money is often short term lucrative and then someone goes to jail or dies an early death. Moving about, trying to stay below the radar of the police and blending in are the keys to a longer existence. If you choose the legal methods, the outlook is for a longer life and that is were dividend paying stocks help. The dividends that pay consistently over the years plus the capital appreciation of the stocks will give you a healthy return, it usually takes a longer time frame, but it is legal.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions