Earlier this month, an unremarkable sentence appeared in a quarterly report published by Alliance One International, a tobacco company headquartered in North Carolina. “In January, we successfully acquired majority stakes in two new joint ventures,” it reads. Further into the document, it is announced that an Alliance One subsidiary called Canadian Cultivated Products had secured a 75-percent equity position in Canada’s Island Garden Inc. and an 80-percent stake in Goldleaf Pharm Inc. Island Garden and Goldleaf Pharm are medicinal-cannabis companies. (See also: Big US tobacco company buys stakes in Canadian cannabis growers, American hemp firm)