 I moved to expand its hemp business. It's buying Agra Next USA. Agra Next is led by Jeff Whaley, who is the chairman of the U.S. Hemp Association. With us now we have Bruce Linton, the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Canopy Growth. More details on this acquisition. Welcome back to the program, Bruce. Good to be back. So obviously the push into the United States, things are changing down there. What made this attractive at this point? Well, you know, roll back a little bit. A couple of months ago there was this thing called the Farm Bill. It passed. It said you can grow hemp and you can process hemp, but it gave room for each state to decide would they govern it versus leaving it to the feds. New York state said they would. Jeff has been very keen pushing a bunch of states, including New York, to step up and say this is what CBD is about versus leaving it a couple years for the, you know, the feds. And so we've been working with Jeff since 2013, I think. And it just made sense now that he get completely on the bus and we try to get a bunch more states to do the right thing. Now CBD obviously is separated from the pack from THC in terms of how we're told of the benefits and the effects on our minds and such. But the fact that the Americans are willing to move on CBD, do you think further down the line, they're just, they're easing their way right to the, to the end game of the federal level? Yeah, I think mostly. So the federal level, when you govern CBD, there's no, don't think of that as the fun party agent. It's the non-psychoactive part. So I think they'll be comfortable with that. And I think it's not going to be federally state by state, whether or not they're comfortable with THC. And so you're going to have a bit of a patchwork, but our processing equipment, the channels we sell through the products, all of the containerization, all that stuff can actually be pretty easily expanded to handle THC, if and when we can sort of step into that. Now, am I right that I read earlier that this was actually a cash transaction? Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a rare bird in the business, isn't it? Well, you know, we, we have a bit of cash now. And so we do like to do cash transactions, especially with parties. You know, we literally, Jeff has been around our shop since there was maybe one grow room, and it was just an early thing. And so we really know who we're dealing with here. And so it's not a huge cash transaction, but it's also some, How big was it? We haven't announced it, but you think of it as a small company with a lot of cloud, whose, you know, leader has been kind of the key voice on him for better part of a decade. And so when he came over, you know, using cash and making sure that we have him on 100% alignment with us was kind of the key thing. Now, when I think about a lot of the discussions I had last year about expanding Canadian, the marijuana business, and there was a lot of talk about Europe, Europe, Europe, all the opportunity in Europe. Has the Farm Bill changed the game then that you want to shift your focus and maybe take your eye off of Europe? I'd say add. It's not really shift. The Farm Bill allows you to get into the US before we could. But Europe is busy, right? I don't mind if you wanted to have another whole segment on what's going on between Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and England. All of those are federally governed jurisdictions, all growing at different rates, all places were active. And so I kind of hope, you know, maybe everybody else takes a right off of Europe because it's a great market, but the US is pretty close and pretty tantalizing, so you got to do both. Now, in terms of the Canadian market, how it's been unfolding, you know, it was only last fall. We're into the spring now. We're going to get into the edibles space in full force this year. The budget actually spoke about the edibles, the excise tax. Are you happy with what you saw in the budget on this space? Yeah, it would have been appropriate to manage to get rid of the tax on medical patients, but I think you're going to see that as we get some of these trials completed. They'll have to drop it. But as far as restructuring the tax on the oils and per milligram makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because the excise tax, I believe it goes for the, it's sort of measured in THC content and we're in the budget lockup and I sort of laugh when I was looking through something else. So one of my colleagues wrote and said, basically the higher you get, the more you pay. That seems to be the structure right now. You know, it's not too different to alcohol, is it? So I think it's a more logical model. And you know, at the end of the day, if I was on your show last year at this time, you're still asking, do you think the feds are going to pass anything to allow this to start, right? We were in debating, is the Senate going to be effective? Now here we are, not too long after it's gone live, we're talking about this full spectrum of new products coming out and a much more progressive tax scheme. So it feels like Canada's getting it right. The rest of the world's watching and we're pretty happy with where we sit. Now in this province, I know there's been different rollouts in terms of how people can access cannabis, legal, recreational cannabis, but the stores have lagged in the province of Ontario. That's going to change very quickly. How do you feel about how the government's been handling that in the initial role? It's not going to be a lot of actual bricks and mortar stores. You know, but it makes a lot of sense that the government runs the warehouse. So when I sell wholesale, I move it to the government warehouse. When they sell it out to retail, that's when the provincial stakeholders, you and me, see them make their profit. So why not let the private sector deploy those points of sale? And 25 in a short order will be quite good. I think you'll see they'll get to several hundred quite quickly. And what we found is provinces that have stores have better educated staff. They interact with people and they make the right decisions. And so it's actually just a great everything platform, education, sales, repeat customers. So I think this summer in Ontario might be a bit more interesting than probably last. Do you think the stigma is coming down? I mean, it's one thing to legalize marijuana, legalize the product, but I'm in my late 40s now. And for my entire life, it was the no-go zone. And I don't know if people my age are all that comfortable still with the idea that they would just probably carry it down the street. Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack there, right? You look a lot younger. Okay, thank you. But no, the stigma is there. And the stigma will keep wearing off, because right now what we're talking about, we see in the news all the time is about where can you smoke it? When we start talking about where can you pour it? That'll be a different discussion. What, you know, is it better with a big block of a cube of ice or a small one? Those start to change the what's it smell like. And so I think there's the formats change, the stigmas change. But, you know, frankly, for canopy, if I woke up tomorrow and there was no bias, no stigma, no friction, I'd be terrified because what we live on is being early and pushing. And whenever you interface with something that's new, you get stigma, you get bias, you get pushback. And so when we're back a year from now, we're talking about the types of beverages and which venues are going to now quit having liquor maybe, or add this as an alternate to just liquor as a restaurant or bar. And that'll be just another wave. So you want to be early, you want to be the contrarian pushing back against the social norms? How do you continue to grow canopy? What's the strategy going forward? Organic or acquisitions? Mainly organic. Really, when you look at Canada, we don't have anything to buy. Nothing left to buy. So we can always hear about consolidation in this space. You should change the word a little bit. Disintegration. Because what's going to happen is if there's too much production the way they're producing, it isn't consistent with what we've learned. So we'll buy inventory. Now when you look at the rest of the world, there are some good things in the US, interesting players. There are some great properties and platforms in Europe. But there's no real production assets that we would seek in Europe. It's more like, how do we make a bigger medical play? And so I think you'll see a lot of organic and a few more focused acquisitions. We're in the past, we've done so many because of its small pieces to make a big company. Anything looking so attractive right now? You might pull the trigger in the coming weeks? I'd probably go to jail if I answer that truthfully. But no, when we look at the opportunity, we have cash in the bank, which gives us a really strong and winning balance sheet. Which means anybody who wants to do something, who do they call first? And so it's a nice spot to be in, but we don't take it for granted. We try to work hard and keep looking at, how do we keep doubling everything all the time? All right, Bruce, it's a pleasure to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Bruce Linds, the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Canopy Growth.