According to Cannabis Now Magazine CEO Eugenio Garcia, who spoke to Forbes, beer and marijuana mergers are good for business.
Recently beer giant Constellation Brands made a huge multi-billion dollar investment into Canadian marijuana company Canopy Growth.
Garcia said, “It is giving a cannabis company access to hundreds of millions [or even billions] of dollars in working capital from which they can make light years faster expressions than any other competitors.”
According to Garcia, these investments would allow the cannabis plant to be properly researched and “expressed in a way that it never could with mom and pop operations.”
“If the people at the heads of these companies have access to good education, good media content, then they’ll make better decisions on how to use their resources,” he explained.
Garcia noted that micro-players in the marijuana industry are not interested in becoming the size of Canopy. He said, “You’re going to see more of this smaller business model. Much like in the agricultural, farm to table movement around the U.S people will start producing cannabis legally for their immediate geographic locations. You go to any city in the U.S. and you’re going to find a microbrewer that is only putting out enough quantity to support a couple thousand people in their neighborhood. People love that. And that’s going to be very similar, I believe, with cannabis.”
“There will be people who have no problem walking into a liquor store type of dispensary and grabbing a pack of pre-rolled cannabis cigarettes, and that’s what they want,” he explained. “But there’s going to be equal, if not more consumers that will want to know where the cannabis came from. They will want to know that it’s organic. They will want to know the grower. They will want to know where the genetics are from. And they want to consume it in a more ritualistic way than a party, liquor kind of expression.
“That’s what I see at these trade shows,” Garcia continued. “I see companies that are getting involved — worth billions — that will help with the science and growth of the cannabis plant. I also see the micro players becoming more powerful in their geographic location. And they’re very happy with that.”
