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News on cannabis stocks and on developments in the industry haven’t let up in today’s volatile markets. Here are this week’s stories that we believe will mean the most to you as a Canadian investor.

1. The head of a small cannabis company says the industry is being pushed into a bear market by the regulatory and organizational troubles of two of its leading producers.

“Now I get value investors calling me,” Hadley Ford, a former investment banker for Goldman Sachs and now CEO of iAnthus Capital Holdings Inc., told BNNBloomberg.

The whole sector is currently down, with the regulatory issues at CannTrust Holdings Inc., the firing of Canopy Growth Corp. Co-CEO Bruce Linton and antitrust reviews of several U.S. acquisitions all weighing on stocks, he said.

“If we were in a bull market you’d put a positive spin on all these things,” says Ford, “but unfortunately we’re in a bear market, so everyone gets painted with the same brush.”

Ford’s iAnthus reported second-quarter revenue of $25 million U.S., up 35% from previous quarter. Yet the stock, like many, has lost more than a third of its value this year. The contradiction speaks to investor concerns.

“The business of cannabis is doing fine, the stocks not at all; it’s two separate realities existing at the same time,” he said.

2. The maker of Marlboro cigarettes is in talks to merge with Altria Group Inc.—more than 10 years after the two firms split.

Altria shares surged on the news—the most since October 2008—rising as much as 11%. Philip Morris did the opposite, at points down 11% Tuesday.

The $200 billion deal would be the biggest since AT&T Inc. acquired Time Warner.

The companies broke apart more than a decade ago under pressure from U.S. investors who wanted higher dividends and more share buybacks. The move was also pitched as a way to free the then-company’s faster-growing overseas operations from a U.S. business mired in smoker lawsuits.

Altria, having recently diversified into vaping and cannabis, is well positioned to help Philip Morris make similar additions.

The merger would give Philip Morris roughly 58% ownership of the new company, with Altria holding the rest.

The companies aim to close any deal within six months, without the need for either company to divest itself of existing operations.

3. The U.S. Justice Department plans to increase the number of marijuana growers authorized to research cannabis.

The move is in response to a researcher court petition to force the Drug Enforcement Administration to process applications to grow research pot. The DEA began accepting applications to grow marijuana for federally approved research about three years ago, but the agency has yet to process them.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Congress have questioned why the Justice Department has taken so long to act.

Facing a deadline to respond to a court filing, the DEA signalled Monday it will process 33 applications with the goal of helping scientists develop “safe and effective drug products.”

4. The federal government has been in talks with First Nations leaders over how to ensure their communities have jurisdiction over the cannabis industry on their territories.

Ottawa excluded First Nations from the cannabis regulatory and revenue-sharing regime when it developed the Cannabis Act. It gives provinces and territories the right to license sellers, although Health Canada oversees the licensing of commercial production.

Under the act, Ottawa keeps 25% of excise tax revenue, with 75% going to the provinces and territories.

“They left us behind when they started going down that channel,” said Opaskwayak Cree Nation Onekanew (Chief) Christian Sinclair, who has been involved in the discussions.

Opaskwayak, about 520 kilometres northwest of Winnipeg, was an early investor in Canada’s cannabis industry, specifically in the firm National Access Cannabis (and its retail chain of Meta Cannabis stores).

Organized Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair has held several meetings with First Nations leaders to shape a cannabis plan for First Nations. It might, however, require a legislative component to give it force.

5. B.C.’s cannabis industry is pointing to a lack of Vancouver retail stores as the reason legal pot sales in the province have lagged the rest of the country.

“There is a lot of illegal product out there and a lot of people who have been doing things a certain way for generations, and they don’t want to switch overnight,” Mike Babbins, co-owner of Vancouver’s Evergreen Cannabis Society, told Global News. “We’re up to 11 licences in the city, but we need a lot more than that. Probably 10 times as much as that to feed the city because we love cannabis.”

In the approximately nine months since cannabis has been legal in the country, B.C. has seen just $19.5 million in recreational pot sales.

Alberta, on the other hand, has had more than $123 million in sales since last October, and Ontario has sold $121 million in that period. Quebec sales are just under that at  $119 million, with only P.E.I. selling less legal pot than B.C. Canada’s smallest province sold just $10.7 million in cannabis.

While cannabis sales went live online in B.C. the day pot was legalized, there was just one legal store open on Oct. 17, a government-run outlet in Kamloops.

Since then, the provincial government has issued 62 licences for legal retail outlets.

Vetting applicants is part of the reason for the slow pace, said Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth.

“Part of the challenge is ensuring that the legal cannabis market in B.C. doesn’t have links [to] organized crime or people engaged in criminal activity,” said Farnworth. “We are processing applications as fast as we can, we’ve looked at ways to improve the process.”