Want to invest in U.S. pot stocks? Here’s what you need to know

As a legal cannabis industry struggles to realize possibilities amid federal criminalization, investors will need to navigate a hazy minefield to pick potential winners 

Traditional vice sectors like tobacco and alcohol are investing heavily in the emerging legal cannabis industry, but commercial cannabis companies can't quite act like they're selling cigarettes or beer.

Maybe they should think more like ice-cream companies.

On a trip with his children to visit the Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory in Vermont, Bradford Sodowick, who teaches entrepreneurship at Drexel University, realized that the privately held operation is a perfect model for how to run a cannabis company. Ben & Jerry's produces a perishable product, delivered nationwide, of reliable quality, while complying with a complex set of rules that can shift from state to state.

If a company's leadership team can do that with ice cream — or beer, or tobacco, or health foods — it's reasonable to expect they should be able to do that with cannabis, Sodowick said.

Chris Roberts~MarketWatch

Click Here for the complete article.