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“Here’s an opportunity to transform, over the next decades, the image of Colombia — a country with illegal drugs, to a country with medicinal drugs,” CEO Patricio Stocker recalls telling skeptical officials.

“It’s a very sensitive issue in Colombia and that’s the reason that making the laws is taking some time. But they are clearly convinced that it makes total sense to do this in Colombia.”

President Juan Maneul Santos legalized medical marijuana in 2015. PharmaCielo was the first company in Colombia to be granted an extraction licence, but it is still awaiting a cultivation licence — it is ready to grow as soon as that goes through and plans to start selling mid-2018.

The privately-held company has about 500 shareholders but is interested in going public, most likely on a Canadian exchange.

PharmaCielo’s choice to call Canada home is an increasingly popular model for players looking to capitalize on a global wave of legalization that is positioning Canada as an international centre for the burgeoning industry.

There is already evidence of Canada’s emergent role as a cannabis capital hub, said Alan Brochstein, investment manager at Houston-based New Cannabis Ventures.

“It’s like the mining industry — mining companies are known to be able to raise capital in Canada and there’s a lot of evidence that’s the case for the cannabis industry as well, so it could be a global financing platform.”

Uruguay’s International Cannabis Corp. recently listed on the TSX Venture Exchange to gain exposure to Canadian markets. U.S.-focused pot companies such as CannaRoyalty Corp. and Canadian Bioceuticals Corp. are listed in Canada because marijuana companies are banned from public listings south of the border, where pot is still illegal at the federal level despite legalization in half of U.S. states.