Just the other day, on Saturday, I ran down a pot stock “triple play” that offers investors a low-risk, easy-to-buy entry point into the fantastically lucrative world of weed investing.

These “pick-and-shovel” companies consist of some of my earliest, most prescient pot stock recommendations ever.

Some of them are even included in the massive Roadmap to Marijuana Millions model portfolio my paid-up subscribers can access.

So it should come as no surprise that I hold these picks pretty close to the vest, watching them constantly.

One of the cornerstone picks there, a cannabis biotech that’s returned high double- and triple-digit gains for folks following along, got some incredible news earlier this week.

It’s a development so fresh it didn’t make it into my roundup, so let me fill you in now…

The Company That Moved First… and Never Looked Back

I’ve talked a lot about “first-mover advantage” in my investing research, and it works just as well for entire companies as it does for regular investors.

Case in point: Cambridge, UK-based GW Pharmaceuticals Inc. was the first biotech to be awarded a license to grow cannabis for legal, medical research from the UK’s Home Office, back in the nineties.

That’s one of the reasons why GW was the first biotech to bring a cannabis-derived medicine, Sativex, to market as a U.S.- and EU-approved treatment for chronic pain, spasticity, overactive bladder, and multiple sclerosis.

Sativex’s approval helped put GW Pharmaceuticals and the entire medical cannabis nexus “on the map,” as it were, for the nascent weed-investing niche. The peak gains have been terrific, more than 241% since my very first recommendation in early 2014.

Now the company sports a $3.3 billion market cap, a wildly successful ADR listing on the Nasdaq, and, as far as I can tell, ceiling-less potential.

It just received “orphan drug” designation from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to use its cannabidiol (CBD) drug, Epidiolex, for the treatment of tuberous sclerosis (TS).

Now, to be clear, this isn’t the first orphan drug designation GW has under its belt. Epidiolex already has been tested on people with rare or hard-to-treat forms of epilepsy, like Lennox-Gastault and Dravet syndromes, with promising results. CBD targets the brain’s receptors that control mood and brain seizures.

But this latest designation opens GW to a host of bottom-line-boosting financial incentives through the European Union.

But more importantly, TS could be another “indication” – another use – for Epidiolex. That would broaden the market – and the already impressive revenue potential.

GW has been at the head of the pack in the race to build drug franchises around the healing powers of cannabis. It’s been working for years to cultivate strains that build up concentrations of CBD and tetrahydrocannabinol.

The orphan drug designation is good news for the firm, but there have been a few bumps on the road as well in recent days. On Feb. 21, GW announced it flunked its Phase 2a proof-of-concept study evaluating cannabidivarin in adult patients with focal seizures.

But the bigger news we’re tracking about GW will be the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s decision on whether to approve Epidiolex for use in the United States. European regulators will decide on a similar approval early next year. The FDA has given itself a June 28 deadline to make that decision.

If approved, it would be the first marijuana plant-based prescription medicine approved for use in the United States. People with conditions ranging from epilepsy, to severe pain, to nausea have been waiting years – decades – for the FDA to make this move.

If permission is granted and the company obtains the exclusive rights to sell the drug for seven years domestically and 10 years in Europe, it could turn into a blockbuster for the company – and its shareholders

So you know I’ve got June 28 circled on my calendar.

— Michael A. Robinson

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Source: Money Morning