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While Rifici acknowledges that he is biased because his company — which exchanges financing for a right to buy a quantity of output from a producer — is ultimately “a bet on lack of supply,” he is not alone is his assessment.

Photo by AP Photo/John Locher, File

Mackie Research Capital, for example, recently pegged total demand for marijuana in 2018 at approximately 795,000 kilograms — but forecast that licensed producers will end 2017 with production capacity of a little over 100,000 kilograms annually. This “will not nearly be enough to fulfill near-term demand,” analyst Greg McLeish wrote in a Sept. 20 report.

The firm doesn’t foresee supply meeting demand until late 2020, McLeish said.

Even the finance minister of Ontario wasn’t sure of successfully stocking the province’s proposed e-commerce channel and approximately 80 retail outlets they expect to have ready in the first year of legalization, which is still slated to begin by July 2018.

“These numbers are contingent on getting enough supply from federal licensed producers,” Charles Sousa said last month, when announcing the program.

The prospect of empty shelves at government pot retailers poses problems not just for officials looking to curb the influence of the black market, but also for regulators tasked with keeping watch over a snowballing sector, producers hurrying to meet demand, and even for medical marijuana users, who could face competition for scarce product.

Some governments have tried to get out in front of the problem. New Brunswick announced in September that it had signed two supply deals with licensed producers, which were worth an estimated $40 million to $60 million apiece annually, and secured about nine million grams of recreational cannabis a year.