Californians overwhelmingly said yes to recreational marijuana on Election Day.

Those in favor of the decision owe a big thanks to billionaire Silicon Valley fixture Sean Parker.

The former Facebook president and founder of Napster contributed $8.5 million to the effort to legalize recreational marijuana in California.

Parker has been radio silent regarding Proposition 64, though his dollars said otherwise.

I’m a venture capitalist and a medical cannabis user.

The first time I tried medical cannabis, I had just tried to trigger a chronic condition that causes severe intestinal pain when I eat.

I was trying to force my doctor to prescribe painkillers for me. That night, I’d eaten an entire pizza to induce enough pain to get me on drugs. I wound up trying medical marijuana instead and it changed my perspective on the drug.

Growing up, I never imagined I would be here.

A “pottech” company called Wurk has raised $1 million in seed funding to help cannabis businesses such as dispensaries or growers to comply with all the different regulations coming into play around the burgeoning, legal cannabis industry.

The seed deal closed before various ballots are voted on today in the U.S., that could make the sale and use of marijuana legal for adults in a broad number of new markets.

Wurk CEO Keegan Peterson said his company’s software-as-a-service helps cannabis businesses do everything from background checks of potential new hires, to managing employees’ schedules, benefits, training, and making sure they get paid on time.

Eaze fulfills a simple function: Push button, get pot. 

The average order is around $10 and cannabis can be delivered in as little as 15 minutes, said Eaze CEO Keith McCarty. 

But unlike its customers — marijuana dispensaries — Eaze is a tech company and one of a growing number of cannabis tech start-ups using data to offer products and services to the pot industry. 

1620 Solutions, an initiative by Veronica Carpio and Edgar Hemm in Colorado educates hemp and Cannabis farmers about Bitcoin and its advantages.

Cannabis Science, a company specialized in the development of cannabis-based therapeutics, recently announced the development of two new medications for pain relief in people with fibromyalgia and diabetic neuropathy nerve pain.

The two new pharmaceutical pain relievers will be marketed as transdermal adhesive patches that deliver a certain dose of medication into the bloodstream by absorption through the patient’s skin.

This week, voters in five states, including California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, will consider whether to legalize recreational marijuana. Four other states will decide whether to allow medical use. But regardless of the outcome on November 8, marijuana will remain prohibited under US law. Despite being illegal at the federal level, the US marijuana industry is worth over $5 billion, and it’s becoming increasingly dependent on technology. Wherever there is technological innovation, inventors use patent law to protect what they create. Yet few people realize that marijuana-related inventions can be patented.

THCV is a cannabinoid that limits the effects of THC, resulting in a more clear-headed, energetic and euphoric high. It can reduce the negative anxiety inducing effects of THC. THCV also shows great potential in treating a variety of ailments like diabetes and symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

As cannabis wafts back into mainstream America on growing winds of legal change, a west coast company says it has reached a technological milestone that is quickly becoming crucial to the justice system: a device police can use to detect recent marijuana use—and the amount consumed—in the air a driver exhales.

But don’t hold your breath.

Welcome to Part Two of the main marketing lessons for dispensaries and cannabis businesses that I learned from MozCon 2016. In Part One of my three-part recap, I covered how cannabusinesses can use reputation marketing to their advantage. Today, I’ll go over some personalization marketing tips that can help improve people’s perception of companies operating within the adult use and medical marijuana industry.