What happened
Marijuana stocks went on a tear Wednesday, with shares of Aurora Cannabis (NYSE:ACB) rising 9.7%, Aphria (NASDAQ:APHA) going up 9.4%, and industry giant Canopy Growth (NASDAQ:CGC) gaining 5.7% through 12:30 p.m. EST.
You can thank the United Nations for that.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Earlier this morning, by a vote of 27 to 25, the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs approved a decision to remove cannabis from Schedule IV of the U.N.’s 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. In effect, although cannabis remains “a banned drug for non-medical use under UN law,” reports Vice.com, it’s now been officially differentiated from more dangerous drugs such as heroin, and it can be legally used as a medical treatment in countries signatory to the treaty. Â
Experts are calling the decision “a giant step toward the normalization of cannabis in medicine above all.” As Marijuana Business Daily reported today, “countries that basically mirror the U.N. scheduling in their domestic legislation [can be expected to move toward] national descheduling and remove obstacles to use cannabis for medical and research purposes.”
Now what
The U.N.’s decision seems to promise an…
