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If 2018 was the year of Canadian cannabis, 2019 will be America’s time in the marijuana spotlight.

Since Canada legalized recreational pot in October, investor interest has been rapidly shifting south of the border on the expectation that it won’t be long before the U.S. follows suit. Currently, recreational marijuana is legal in 10 states, plus Washington D.C., but remains banned at the federal level.

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“Investors’ imagination is being captured more by what’s possible in the U.S.,” said Alfred Avanessy, managing director of investment banking at Cormark Securities Inc., which counts cannabis as its biggest source of business in Canada. “The U.S. is a couple years behind us from a regulatory perspective and it’s also by definition 10 times larger than we are.”

U.S. consumer spending on legal cannabis is expected to reach US$20.9 billion by 2021 compared with US$4.5 billion in Canada, according to a June report from Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics.