💸 The Tape

Two press releases landed this week that read like housekeeping and are anything but. On Monday, Trulieve (NYSE: TRLV) announced it had been added to the S&P Total Market Index and the S&P Completion Index, along with their health care sub-indices. On Wednesday, Curaleaf (TSX: CURA) said it had joined the FTSE Canada All Cap Index, its second major Canadian benchmark after entering the S&P/TSX Composite a year ago. Neither headline will move a stock 20% in a day. Both change who is allowed to own it, and in a sector that has spent a decade locked out of institutional portfolios, that is the whole game.

Why it matters

Roughly a third of U.S. equity assets sit in passive vehicles that don't pick stocks — they buy whatever the index says to buy, in the weight the index says to hold it. A company outside every index is, for that pool of capital, invisible. It can be profitable, growing and cheap, and Vanguard's Extended Market fund will still never own a share because the rulebook doesn't allow it.

Index inclusion flips that switch. Once a stock is in the S&P Completion Index, funds tracking it are obligated to buy, at reconstitution, in proportion to float-adjusted market cap. That creates a permanent bid that doesn't care about rescheduling rumors, ALJ timelines or 280E. It buys on inflows and sells on outflows, mechanically, every day. For a stock that has traded on retail sentiment and OTC liquidity for its entire life, replacing a slice of that shareholder base with index money reduces volatility, tightens spreads and lowers the cost of capital.

It also unlocks the active money that sits downstream. Most institutional mandates are benchmarked; a portfolio manager can't take a position in a name that isn't in her benchmark universe without a compliance conversation. Once Trulieve is in the TMI, it's in the opportunity set for every U.S. all-cap and small-cap manager measured against S&P. Kim Rivers' line about "attracting new institutional investors" is not aspirational — it's a description of how mandates work.

How it happens

Index inclusion isn't something a company applies for. It's the mechanical output of meeting eligibility rules that, for U.S. cannabis, were impossible to satisfy until this year.

The S&P Total Market Index is designed to capture essentially every investable U.S. stock. To get in, a company needs to be U.S.-domiciled, listed on a major U.S. exchange (NYSE, Nasdaq or Cboe), meet a minimum float and liquidity threshold, and pass S&P's screens on financial viability. The Completion Index is the TMI minus the S&P 500 — the 3,000-plus mid, small and micro caps that fill out the market — and it's the direct benchmark for Vanguard's Extended Market ETF and a range of institutional completion strategies.

Trulieve checked every box in sequence. It restructured to medical-only under Schedule III, which eliminated the federal-illegality problem that kept the NYSE's door shut. It redomiciled to the United States, which cleared the domicile requirement. It listed on the NYSE in June. Three months later S&P's quarterly rebalance picked it up, because the rules said it should. The entire path took roughly a year and required the DEA's April rule to make the medical-only entity legally distinct from the adult-use business. That wasn't an accident of timing. It was the plan.

Curaleaf's route ran through Toronto. The TSX accepted its listing in 2023, the S&P/TSX Composite added it in September 2025, and the FTSE Canada All Cap — the benchmark behind Vanguard's Canadian all-cap ETF and a slate of pension mandates — followed this month. The mechanics are the same: exchange listing first, then eligibility, then a rules-based provider adds you at the next review. Boris Jordan's framing is the right one: every index brings the shares in front of a new set of passive and active funds, and the effect compounds.

What comes next for Trulieve

S&P was the first domino, not the last. The Russell reconstitution is the bigger prize — the Russell 2000 and 3000 are the dominant small-cap benchmarks in the U.S., with far more passive money tracking them than the S&P Completion Index. FTSE Russell has moved to a semiannual schedule, which means Trulieve's next window comes later this year rather than next June. CRSP, the index family behind Vanguard's Total Stock Market ETF, rebalances quarterly. MSCI's U.S. small-cap indices review on their own cycle. Each one adds another layer of structural demand, and each one applies the same test Trulieve just passed.

Who follows, and how

The template is now public, and every operator with U.S. exchange ambitions is working through the same checklist.

Green Thumb has said for years it would list on a U.S. exchange the moment the rules permit. It's a British Columbia company, so domestication would be required for S&P eligibility, and its adult-use exposure means it likely needs the ALJ's decision to extend Schedule III before the NYSE or Nasdaq will accept it. It has the balance sheet, the buyback discipline and the governance already in place; what it's waiting on is the DEA.

Verano did a 1-for-5 reverse split in June specifically to meet minimum share price requirements for a U.S. listing application, and amended its buyback to match the new count. That's a company that's already filled out the paperwork.

Cresco disclosed one-time costs for "preparations for a potential U.S. exchange listing" in its last quarter. TerrAscend has been a TSX issuer since 2023 and has the compliance infrastructure. Glass House is already on the NYSE alongside Trulieve, though as a Canadian-domiciled issuer its path into U.S. indices is more complicated.

The fork in the road for all of them is the one Trulieve chose: ring-fence medical operations and list now, or wait for full rescheduling and list whole. If the ALJ recommends Schedule III for all cannabis and the DEA administrator adopts it, the second path opens for everyone at once, and the exchanges will process a wave of applications in early 2027. Every one of those listings triggers the same sequence Trulieve just completed — S&P, then Russell, then CRSP — and each one brings the sector's float-adjusted market cap further inside the passive universe.

The bottom line

Cannabis has spent years arguing it deserves institutional capital. Index inclusion is the mechanism by which that capital actually arrives. Trulieve's S&P addition is the first proof that a plant-touching U.S. operator can clear every gate, and Curaleaf's FTSE inclusion shows the same logic working on the TSX. The rest of the sector now has a map. What it doesn't have yet is the rescheduling decision that lets everyone follow it.

📈 Dog Walkers

NuggMD Poll: Who at work knows you use cannabis?

The latest Dales Report x NuggMD Check-In Poll asked 535 cannabis consumers a simple question: who at work knows? The answer, four months after medical cannabis moved to Schedule III, is mostly nobody who signs the paychecks.

Strip out the 26% who are self-employed and the picture sharpens. Among consumers with an employer, roughly four in ten say no one at work knows, another quarter have told a coworker or two, and only about a third say their manager, leadership or the whole office is aware. Put differently, about two-thirds of employed cannabis consumers are keeping it from anyone with authority over their job.

That's stigma with a cost. NuggMD's earlier polling found 87% of consumers are less interested in working for a company that runs pre-employment drug screens, and 54% say cannabis has had a positive impact on their career. Outside research NuggMD cites puts medical cannabis use alongside a 7% reduction in sick days, while alcohol accounts for an estimated 232 million missed workdays a year — the drinkers, as NuggMD notes, having the added advantage of happy hour with the boss.

The company's takeaway is a recruiting argument: the first employers to drop cannabis screening and cover medical cannabis under benefits will attract a motivated, underserved talent pool that competitors are still filtering out. Rescheduling changed the law. It hasn't yet changed the HR handbook.

Poll fielded September 3–8, 2026, margin of error ±4.24%. Full data at newsroom.nuggmd.com.

$CGC ( ▲ 4.7% ) Beefs Up EU Supply Chain

Canopy Growth (TSX: WEED) (Nasdaq: CGC) is sending Canadian-grown flower to the United Kingdom for the first time. The company announced Monday it will supply four medical cannabis strains to GROW Group U.K., a British pharmaceutical importer and distributor, which will commercialize them under Canopy's global Spectrum Therapeutics brand.

It's a modest deal in tonnage terms and a meaningful one strategically. The UK is one of the fastest-growing private-pay medical cannabis markets in Europe, with patient counts that have compounded for five straight years and a prescriber base that overwhelmingly favors imported, EU GMP-certified flower. Canopy has watched Aurora, Organigram, Cannara, Village Farms and a roster of smaller Canadian LPs build UK volume while its own international book stayed anchored in Germany, Australia and Poland. This closes that gap.

The enabling piece was the EU GMP recertification at Kincardine last month, which the release explicitly ties to the UK launch. Without that stamp, Canadian flower doesn't clear European customs, and Canopy spent a stretch of 2025 without a valid certificate as it consolidated cultivation. With it, Kincardine becomes an export engine for whichever European market is buying, and the UK's structure — prescriptions through private clinics, product sourced through licensed importers like GROW — means Canopy can enter with no local infrastructure beyond a distribution partner.

CEO Luc Mongeau's language is the same as it's been all year: "disciplined expansion into attractive markets." That's the right posture for a company that has spent five years unwinding the last strategy. The UK, Australia and the international medical channel are the parts of Canopy that actually grow, and they're now getting the product flow to prove it.

Whether that's enough to get a third of shareholders to vote by Friday is a separate question.

📺 Trade To Black

Cannabis Stocks: What It Would Take to Gap Up | TTB Presented by Flowhub

• Jerry Haymon IV tells his story: Commuted by President Trump on September 3 after serving a 10-year mandatory minimum for marijuana distribution, Jerry describes home confinement, being barred from legal cannabis work, and the moment he felt "reborn again."

• The advocacy behind it: His case drew support from 36 members of Congress and a personal letter from Mike Tyson, who credited attorney Erik Luna and Mission Green; Kevin Harden, serving 30 years, received clemency the same day.

• Weldon Angelos on the inside game: The Weldon Project and Mission Green founder breaks down how cannabis clemency cases actually get in front of the Trump administration and how much work remains for those still serving time.

• The rescheduling read: Weldon gives his honest take on whether Schedule III actually happens and the realistic timeline he expects.