Listed!
Cannabis Finally Cracks America’s Major Exchanges.
Cannabis stocks have, for the last five years or so, represented one of, if not the worst-performing, niche categories on any exchange.
Ever since the heady ‘Green’ IPO rush of the late 2010s and early 2020s, MSOS’ stocks tracked by New Cannabis Ventures have plummeted -87.1% in value, while the wider Global Index fell by -85.2% over the same period.
Effectively banned from listing on US blue chip exchanges like Nasdaq, any US operators willing to fight their way onto the public markets have been limited to smaller platforms, offering limited access to institutional capital, poor liquidity, and leaving these stocks exposed to the volatility of sentiment-driven retail investors.
Access to these top-tier exchanges has long been the holy grail for investment-starved cannabis operators. Yet, with almost every layer of the US financial regulatory system operating under federal law, it has remained just out of reach.
Ever the disruptor, the Trump administration’s order to move medical cannabis to Schedule III has, for the first time in US history, cleared a path for domestic cannabis operators.
With more than half a dozen leading MSOS now positioning themselves to uplist their stock onto major exchanges, the long-coveted institutional capital will finally be available.
The question now is, will any of them want to buy cannabis stocks?
Trulieve makes history
On June 10, 2026, Trulieve Cannabis Corp (TRLV) listed on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming the first US ‘plant-touching’ cannabis company in history to do so.
So what exactly has changed?
While cannabis remained in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), a company whose primary business is growing and selling cannabis could not accurately state that it complied with federal law, and thus couldn’t meet the listing requirements for both NYSE and Nasdaq.
Schedule I determines that a substance has ‘no accepted medical use’, and as such, no lawful commercial framework could be built around it.
Attorney General Todd Blanche’s order on April 22, 2026, which moved cannabis under a state medical license, and any FDA-approved cannabis drugs, to Schedule III, reversed that finding, formally recognizing medical value and unlocking DEA registration for commercial operators for the first time.
However, with adult-use cannabis remaining under Schedule I, only operators willing to bifurcate their operations, wall off their medical business, and register their medical facilities with the DEA have a legitimate route to listing their stock.
This is exactly what Trulieve did.
On June 3, one week before trading began, Trulieve transferred its operations in states with both medical and adult-use programmes into a newly created entity, Harvest Enterprises LLC.
A new investor, Whitley Holding 05192026 LLC, then acquired a 10% Class A voting stake in Harvest for $14.8 million, taking control of two of its three board seats, with Trulieve’s subsidiary holding the remaining seat, occupied by Rivers, and retaining non-voting, non-participating exchangeable units in Harvest.
The company that was listed under TRLV on June 10 is effectively the company’s medical cannabis arm, which now consists exclusively of 206 state-licensed medical cannabis dispensaries and 3.5m sq ft of DEA-registered production capacity.
Todd Harrison, Founder of CB1 Capital, told Business of Cannabis: “Kim (Rivers, founder and CEO of Trulieve Cannabis Corp) was very clear, she wanted to be first.”
He believes that if rescheduling is extended to adult-use operations in the coming months, Trulieve will fold the deconsolidated operations back into a single entity. For most operators, however, that ring-fencing is not an attractive option to replicate.
“The optics of having to separate your medical business from your adult business is a little bit of brain damage,” Harrison explained.
TRLV opened at $11.50 on June 10, briefly rising to $11.75 the following day, before retreating to $10.35 by June 14, a decline of roughly 10% from the listing price in the first four days of trading.
Analyst consensus has rated the stock a Strong Buy, with an average 12-month target of $21.00, implying more than 100% upside from current levels.
Trulieve’s board appears to share that confidence, having authorized a $50m share repurchase program the day before listing.
A ‘wave’ of uplistings
Trulieve was not alone in preparing to move. In the weeks around the listing, six other operators have taken concrete steps toward a US exchange uplisting.
Curaleaf Holdings executed a 1-for-3 reverse stock split on June 5, a prerequisite for meeting the NYSE’s minimum share price threshold.
“Boris said it was more important to be right than to be first,” Harrison continued.
Verano Holdings completed a 1-for-5 split on June 1, having already redomiciled from British Columbia to Nevada in November 2025, one of the few major operators to have already shed the Canadian corporate structure common across the sector.
Jushi Holdings announced its own BC-to-Nevada redomicile in April.
TerrAscend has scheduled a shareholder meeting for August 24 to vote on a share consolidation, with Executive Chairman Jason Wild stating the question ‘is no longer a question of if; it is a question of when.’
One company Harrison thinks the market has been overlooking is Vireo Growth, which executed a 30-for-1 share consolidation effective June 5. “That’s going to be another tier one that a lot of people haven’t been focusing on.”
At the other end of the scale, Veri Medtech, parent of cannabis telehealth platform Veriheal, set terms in May for a $15 million IPO on Nasdaq at $4.00 per share, four times its most recent OTC price.
One company Harrison thinks could move faster than most is Glass House. “The way California treats its cannabis, it goes out the door as medical, so they could actually uplist right now if they wanted to.”
He names it as the likely second US cannabis operator to list on a major exchange, and floats the possibility of a Glass House–Curaleaf joint venture. “Boris made a couple of comments about wanting to get out of cultivation.”
Green Thumb Industries presents a different opportunity. “Green Thumb already has a public vehicle,” Harrison notes. “Whether or not they want to split Green Thumb Medical into that, or just wait and move the whole of Green Thumb, remains to be seen. But they’ve already got the vehicle there.”
Positioning, not arrival
While the string of redomiciles and reverse stock splits are clear signals that major US cannabis operators are preparing to follow the path Trulieve cleared, none have shown signs that they are preparing to bifurcate their operations.
The majority of operators Harrison speaks to are actively waiting for the adult-use rescheduling outcome before committing to listings of their own, precisely because it would allow them to list unified businesses rather than carving themselves in two.
That waiting game sits alongside a broader shift in how Wall Street is beginning to look at the sector.
Sean McLean, a financial markets veteran and CEO of cannabis technology group PPS, told Business of Cannabis: “Investment bankers don’t like missing out on opportunity. I believe they’re preparing to compete for capital raises that have been absent from the industry, other than debt. The door has been opened.”
The institutional picture is shifting too, he argues, but unevenly: “The US institutional investor is underweight. The category will require exposure. Some will pause and wait, whereas others will begin to dip a toe in and gain exposure before the herd arrives.”
Harrison is more cautious. The question, he suggests, is less about whether these uplistings will take place than whether they will have any meaningful impact on the stock’s performance.
“Does the market begin to price this in before it actually happens — or does it end up like Canopy and Aurora? They’re uplisted, but that doesn’t mean anything. It just means if you want to buy them, they’re there. Then the question becomes: do we want to buy them?”
Despite these as-yet unanswered questions, both agree on the direction of travel. “US listings pressure different stakeholders to evaluate their positions,” McLean says. “This is the beginning.”
In Part 2 of this series on cannabis uplistings, we’ll examine the adult-use rescheduling pipeline, what a positive ruling would mean for the sector’s capital markets ambitions, and whether institutional investors will follow.
This is Third-Party content and does not reflect (or not not reflect) the views of Cannabis Confidential or CB1 Capital.
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