investor1964 wrote: Now, turning to our leading position in the cannabis market through our investment in Canopy Growth. We are seeing strong consumer demand in the Canadian recreational cannabis market. According to the Canadian government, as of the third quarter of calendar 2018, Canadians spent at a run rate of almost $6 billion on cannabis products, the majority of which were purchased illegally for non-medical use.
As we've discussed, we believe the emerging cannabis space represents one of the most significant global growth opportunities of the next decade and frankly, our life time, an opportunity that is opening up much more rapidly than originally anticipated.
And on that point, the 2018 U.S. Farm Bill was recently passed with one of the key components of the legislation legalizing production of industrial hemp, including CBD, a non-psychoactive cannabis compound that is believed to have significant medical benefits.
It also emends the U.S. Controlled Substances Act by removing hemp-derived CBD products from schedule one and allow states to regulate the production and sale of hemp.
Canopy Growth provides a single platform for Constellation to address all global markets and product formats including both CBD and THC. They announced in a press release earlier this week their position and advantages relating to the U.S. market entry for CBD products and they are currently awaiting FDA guidelines pertaining to the sale of these products in the United States.
Since our investment in August, Canopy has used the proceeds to bolster their global leadership position in the cannabis industry with strategic partnerships and acquisitions including Ebbu, a leading hemp research and innovation firm; Storz & Bickel, a profitable global leader in vaporizer, design and manufacturing; and Battelle who is the world's largest non-profit R&D organization. Canopy and Battelle will work together to advance cannabis medical research and product development.
In addition Canopy continues to focus on intellectual property development across medical and recreational opportunities, while also preparing and creating brands and products for new legal recreational cannabis markets across various product formats that will be sold through new and existing channels. It is these initiatives that give me confidence that Canopy can and will achieve their CAD1 billion revenue run rate target within the next 18 months.
In closing, as the growth leader in the total U.S. beverage alcohol space, Constellation has a stable, core consumer franchise market with growth prospects that exceed those of our competitors in this sector. And our investment in Canopy Growth provides an even greater long-duration growth play which we believe is being valued as our free call option today with significant value in the future.
Combine this with our powerful cash generation capability and our desire to quickly delever and return $4.5 billion in cash to shareholders through a combination of share repurchases and dividends, those in combination make Constellation a compelling investment for the future.