James Quincey, the chief executive of Coca-Cola, said the company was not yet entering the market. “It needs to be legal, it needs to be safe and it needs to be consumable,” he said on CNBC on Tuesday. “It’s not there yet.”

But earlier in the year, Coca-Cola representatives acknowledged that the company was watching the industry closely. They’re not the only ones.

Diageo, the spirits conglomerate, was widely rumored to be on the verge of striking a deal with a Canadian cannabis company in August, but nothing has yet been announced. And Walmart Canada acknowledged that it too was looking into the industry, but had no plans to start selling products containing CBD or THC, marijuana’s psychoactive component.

Nonetheless, boosters say the cannabis industry will only attract more from big corporations from here.

“This is what legal cannabis looks like,” said F. Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group based in Washington. “You’ve got some of the larger players taking interest, and that’s a good thing. It’s going to create more economic vitality, more jobs.”

Altria, which is facing a global fall in tobacco sales as consumers abandon cigarettes, has perhaps the most to gain from entering the industry. “Tobacco has been experiencing year-over-year declines,” said Ms. Gomez. “They need something else to go into.”

And the company’s experience manufacturing and distributing cigarettes makes it well positioned to make these products on a mass-market scale.