High on the bull market: medicinal cannabis companies going public--what's next?

Spoilsports, curmudgeons, Cassandras and journalists are always on the lookout for signs that the IPO market may once again be overheating. Chastened by the good old New Paradigm Era, when preposterous Internet start-ups massacred an entire generation of investors, a group I would call the New Paranoid are now keeping their eyes peeled for signs that the traditionally sane American economy may once again be veering into the dark abyss of fiscal comedy.

A case in point is Amigula Inc., an OTC listing that aims to become the first publicly traded company to market marijuana in the United States. Capitalizing on the relatively liberal laws governing the cultivation of marijuana in Canada, Amigula founder Warren B. Eugene seeks to make the semi-hallucinogenic substance available to Americans for medicinal purposes by shipping prescription-ordered quantities of dope from Canada to the U.S. Or rather, he intends to do this as soon as marijuana use is legally sanctioned in the U.S., an event the Bush Administration has tentatively scheduled for the first Tuesday after Armageddon. In the meantime, Eugene is moving forward with plans to market the substance in Canada, where it can legally be used for purely non-Cheech & Chong purposes.

According to AM New York, Eugene hopes to raise $7 million on Wall Street to finance his admittedly unusual operation, adding that to the small fortune he has already amassed through his adventures in the online gambling industry. The entrepreneur also told USA Today that if his venture with marijuana works, he will move on to opium next. Meanwhile, Eugene is considering recruiting celebrities like Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, and Montel Williams, who is afflicted with multiple sclerosis, to appear in infomercials trumpeting the miraculous therapeutic powers of marijuana. It's worth noting that Eugene himself is Canadian and he plans to grow some of his products in Vancouver, a city renowned for its phantasmagoric stock market offerings over the years.

Whether Amigula will achieve liftoff or will simply take the tried-and-true OTC route and morph into another enterprise altogether is impossible to say. But if the operation is a success, we are almost certain to see others of its ilk. Here are a few IPOs we might see in the headlines should the market continue its recently bullish path:

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* Air Botox. A fleet of two-seater jets that flies to inaccessible rural areas inhabited by people who would like to look more like Cher. Manned by talented plastic surgeons with pilot licenses, Air Botox services the vast demographic group of prematurely hideous or disproportionately unattractive Americans who live far from the big cities, where more conventional routes to de-uglification are widely available. This peppy little company will almost certainly be based in Boca Raton or Calgary, Alberta.

* Feline of the Month Club. Pet owners frequently buy exotic cats and then immediately get sick of them. This ingenious start-up will eliminate this problem by shipping a new freeze-dried cat to your home every month, giving pet lovers a chance to sample various breeds without forming excessively close personal attachments to them. Used or "pre-owned" cats can be stuffed into handy containers and shipped back to the distributor or forwarded to the next owner. A similar service will be offered to lovers of ferrets, toucans and rattlesnakes. A Cayman Islands offering, to be sure.

* Overnight Kalashnikov. How many times have you found yourself sitting on the front porch sipping a mint julep 'round about midnight when you suddenly feel an overwhelming desire to handle an automatic rifle or even a siege weapon, only to realize that the gun shop is closed for the weekend? Overnight Kalashnikov seeks to take the guesswork out of amateur gunnery by providing free overnight shipments of high-end weaponry to even the least accessible regions of the country. A pink-sheets listing from the Chechen Republic.

* The New Paradigm Shoppe. An online auction center that specializes in memorabilia culled from the Internet Bubble Era. Furnish your home with Aeron chairs, adorn your walls with photos of the Sock Puppet, or sit back and relax as a loop of William Shatner Priceline.com commercials plays endlessly. Hark back to those halcyon days when entrepreneurs could go public with online maid services, when people used terms like "content providers" as if they actually meant something. Look for this OTC offering under the symbol IRONY. And get in early; this could be bigger than online grocery stores. Honest.