Trulieve Becomes First U.S. Cannabis Company on the NYSE Tomorrow — But Only Half the Business Made the Cut

TALLAHASSEE, FL — For the first time in the history of American cannabis, a U.S. company that actually grows and sells the plant on domestic soil will ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Trulieve Cannabis begins trading Tuesday morning under the ticker TRLV, ending a decade-plus freeze that kept every American operator stuck on the pink sheets or Canadian exchanges while the industry burned through billions in investor capital.

The milestone is real. So is the asterisk.

To qualify for listing, Trulieve did not bring its whole operation to New York. It split its recreational marijuana business into a separate entity — Harvest Enterprises — and sold a 10% voting stake to outside investor Whitley Holding for approximately $14.8 million. That move made the separation real under accounting rules and left a medical-only Trulieve standing at the exchange door. The adult-use dispensaries, the recreational revenue, the half of the business that operates in a Schedule I world — all of it stays outside, in a holding structure that converts back to Trulieve only if federal law changes to allow it.

To be clear about what this means: the NYSE is admitting a medical cannabis company. The weed company Wall Street has been waiting for is still sitting in the parking lot.

Why Now

None of this was legally possible twelve months ago. The path opened in April when the Justice Department finalized a reclassification order moving state-licensed medical cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III — acting on an executive order President Trump signed last December. That single regulatory shift unlocked two doors simultaneously: exchange listing eligibility for the medical business, and relief from the punishing IRS 280E rule that has been strapping cannabis companies with effective tax rates as high as 70%.

The recreational side stays at Schedule I for now. The DEA has scheduled a hearing on June 29 to consider whether recreational cannabis should follow medical into Schedule III. That hearing is the industry’s next major inflection point, and every major operator is watching it like a referendum on the sector’s future.

Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers, who spent years lobbying the Trump administration for the reclassification change after the company sank $150 million into Florida’s failed 2024 legalization ballot measure, did not miss the moment. “Common sense action by President Trump to reclassify medical marijuana to Schedule III paved the way for this historic milestone,” she said in a June 5 statement announcing the uplist.

Why Trulieve Could Pull It Off

Trulieve controls an estimated 40% of Florida’s medical cannabis market and operates 206 medical dispensaries — a footprint large enough that the medical business alone can stand up as an independent investment even stripped of recreational revenue. Most multistate operators couldn’t make that math work. Trulieve could, which is why it got there first.

The market noticed. Over-the-counter shares under TCNNF jumped roughly 20% on the June 5 announcement and are up approximately 42% on the year. Retail investors on WallStreetBets have already pushed the stock to trending status. Robinhood added Trulieve, Green Thumb, and Curaleaf to its platform this week.

The Herd Is Right Behind

The rest of the MSO sector is moving fast. Curaleaf and Verano both announced reverse stock splits this week to clear the NYSE’s minimum share-price threshold. TerrAscend CEO Jason Wild called a shareholder meeting and said uplisting is “no longer a question of if. It’s a question of when.”

What happens June 29 determines the tempo. If the DEA hearing goes the industry’s way and recreational cannabis lands in Schedule III alongside medical, the structural barrier that forced Trulieve’s split disappears, and the door to major exchanges swings open wider. If it doesn’t, companies will keep doing what Trulieve just did: threading the needle between medical eligibility and recreational revenue, deal by deal, split by split.

The First Green Rush Is a Reference Point, Not a Guarantee

For investors tempted to call this the beginning of a second cannabis boom, one data point is worth holding onto: Canada’s Tilray was the poster child of the 2018 green rush when it debuted on the Nasdaq at a valuation that made it briefly worth more than Delta Air Lines. It has since fallen more than 99% from its all-time high.

Trulieve listing on the NYSE tomorrow is a structural milestone — the first crack in a wall that has been keeping American cannabis off American exchanges since the industry began. Whether it’s the start of a durable run or the opening act of a repeat bubble depends almost entirely on what the DEA does on June 29, and what Congress does about the recreational market after that.

The bell rings Tuesday. The real question gets answered later this month.

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