Amid federal delays, can marijuana companies break their slump?

Is pot in a ‘regulatory recession’?

More U.S. states are headed toward allowing the sale of recreational cannabis, including New Jersey this month, giving some analysts hope that the swoon hitting publicly traded pot companies may come to an end. 

It’s been quite a rut. The shares of Curaleaf Holdings, Green Thumb Industries and Trulieve Cannabis have plummeted more than 30% this year — much worse than the declines posted by benchmark indexes such as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average. Much of cannabis companies’ slide is due to the failure of reforms that investors had hoped for to materialize so far under U.S. President Joe Biden.