Serena O’Sullivan
Audio By Carbonatix
Wanna buy weed, but in a Wall Street way? You’re in luck. For the first time ever, consumers can purchase shares of a cannabis company on the New York Stock Exchange beginning Wednesday morning.
On Friday, Florida-based Trulieve, which has 21 dispensaries in Arizona, announced it would become the first U.S. weed company to be approved for an NYSE listing. Prior to Wednesday, when the company was officially listed under the ticker TRLV, the U.S.’s restrictive drug laws had made such a thing impossible. Instead, Trulieve had been traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange since 2018.
“We are excited for the opportunity to expand our shareholder base, increase liquidity and raise awareness for the benefits of medical marijuana,” said Trulieve founder and CEO Kim Rivers in a statement. “Uplisting to the NYSE is a major advancement for Trulieve and the industry.”
The move is possible because of the Trump administration’s April reclassification of state-licensed medical marijuana from a Schedule I substance to a Schedule III substance. That opened a pathway for cannabis companies — at least their medical sides — to be publicly traded in the U.S.
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Following the administration’s move, Trulieve completed a corporate restructuring and took on “investment by a third party,” effectively splitting the sides of the business that deal with recreational and medical use. While Trulieve serves both medical and adult-use customers, the recreational marijuana hasn’t been rescheduled. Additional rescheduling hearings will begin at the end of the month, which could result in broader cannabis rescheduling for recreational weed.
In a phone interview, Arizona Dispensaries Association executive director Ann Torrez called Trulieve’s uplisting a “defining moment in the cannabis industry.”
“It’s apparent to me that this is something that they’ve been thinking about and strategizing for a long time,” Torrez said.
Courtesy of Story Cannabis
Despite the company’s Grand Canyon State locations, Trulieve’s operations weren’t deconsolidated in Arizona. Instead, the company’s uplisting on the NYSE will be driven by medical marijuana operations in Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Still, Arizona business leaders and marijuana advocates are excited by Trulieve’s move. It’s “pretty darn great,” said Story Cannabis CEO Jason Vedadi, because “not a lot goes right for this industry” to the point that “we’re shocked when anything goes right on the federal level.” Vedadi has personally played a role in Trulieve’s growth, serving as executive chairman of Harvest, an Arizona-based cannabis company that Trulieve acquired in 2021 for $2.1 billion.
Demitri Downing, the founder and president of the Arizona Marijuana Industry Trade Association, was also excited. “There’s a lot of people who I have advised to buy Trulieve stock when it was Canadian at $3 to $6, who better be taking me to some nice steak dinners,” he quipped. Among those people is Downing’s mother.
Vedadi predicts that the cannabis company’s debut on the NYSE will likely bring “massive amounts” of money into the industry, as institutions and hedge funds will now see cannabis as a viable investment. When cannabis was on the junior exchange in Canada, it didn’t interest the heavyweights of the finance world.
“The framework of the entire industry changes with this, like overnight,” Vedadi said. “This kind of opens the world to investing in those businesses. It’s only a matter of time before banks are going to come in, no matter what.”
Before following in Trulieve’s footsteps, some cannabis companies are likely waiting until the next set of rescheduling hearings, which begin at the end of the month and continue until August. That could result in the rescheduling of recreational weed as well, which wouldn’t require so much corporate restructuring for cannabis companies hot after a stock exchange listing. Vedadi said that’s something Story Cannabis has considered, but because Story is a mid-sized company, he’d want to do it in conjunction with another company because “it’s going to require a certain level of scale.”
But Torrez said several major players are right on Trulieve’s heels. That includes Curaleaf, a dispensary with 16 locations in the Valley, and Verano, a product-based company that has eight dispensaries in Arizona through its ownership of Zen Leaf. Both are working to change their corporate structures to prepare for a potential uplist.
“It’s not a matter of ‘Are they going to do it?’” Torrez said. “They’re doing it.”
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Morgan Fischer joined Phoenix New Times as a staff writer in July 2024, covering all things Phoenix and Arizona news. Before joining New Times, Morgan has worked as a national politics intern at The Arizona Republic and as a reporter for News21, among other positions. She holds degrees in journalism and mass communication and political science from Arizona State University, where she also attended Barrett, The Honors College.
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