The survival of the southern Western Australia town of Collie is inextricably linked to the fortunes of the coal mines it was built on. But with the dire situation in coal escalating for the tiny town, cannabis could be its saving grace.
Collie, which lies 200km south of Perth, could have up 200 new jobs in 2021 as private company Cannaponics builds a 65 hectare hemp operation.
“There’s a lot happening in the cannabis space, it’s quickly replacing the automobile industry by three times,” founder Rod Zakostelsky said.
“Obviously with the story around the mining industry on the downward slope and all the focus on diversification to sustain and build upon the town, this was a big driving force for our vision in Collie.”
In the last 12 months the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has granted 25,182 applications from doctors to prescribe cannabis-based drugs. This is 10 times more than in 2018.
Of these, the majority were for chronic pain and nearly half of them (10,000) were prescribed in the last three months.
That does not include people using medical cannabis illegally to self-medicate, which FreshLeaf Analytics placed at around 150,000 Australians.
Small cap spotlight
Below is *’s latest summary of weekly and annual price performance for ASX-listed cannabis stocks.
Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort.
Roto-Gro International (ASX:RGI) harvested the first large scale cannabis crops from its rotational garden systems. It climbed 18 per cent this week.
Creso Pharma (ASX:CPH)was another winner after telling shareholders it made 700 per cent sales growth and had administered more than 3 million anibidiol hemp oil pet doses since it was launched in 2017.
