Connecticut is encouraging its hospitals, universities and licensed marijuana producers to embark on research that could improve understanding of marijuana's medicinal qualities, something officials hope will also boost the state's biotech industry.

While there's some research already underway in Connecticut and elsewhere, officials here hope the state's initiative, which began Oct. 1, will lead to much greater exploration of medical cannabis. The proposals will be vetted by an institutional review board, approved by the Department of Consumer Protection commissioner and theoretically protected under the legal umbrella of the state's 4-year-old medical marijuana law.

U.S. News Updates

Alaska

Alaska’s first commercial cannabis harvests are underway. The first official legal crop comes from Greatland Ganja, a small cultivator on the Kenai Peninsula. Greatland has harvested about 75 pounds of cannabis so far, of an expected total of about 100 pounds consisting of 10 different strains. Unfortunately, however, the first harvest may not have anywhere to go. Distribution and sales are stalled until state-licensed testing laboratories are up and running. At the moment two labs are nearing completion in Anchorage: CannTest hopes to open by mid-October and AK Green Labs aims to be online by early November.

Arkansas

The U.S. cannabis market is very promising. It's so exciting that thousands of industry movers and observers descended upon theCannabis World Congress and Business Exposition on Sept. 7 in Los Angeles, to share their ideas and developments in the cannabis space.

The slick website offers many ways to get high. Three pre-rolled joints will cost you $30. A gram of hash is $45. Blueberry, pineapple or brownie-flavored cannabis treats go for about $12 a bag. (“Caution,” the label says, they are “very strong.”)

It takes just few taps on a smart phone to place an order, and then the goods arrive.

“I’ve had it where a patient who doesn’t have a medical card gets it through our partner service… in less than 15 minutes, and we have marijuana to their door in 45,” said Nick Ocampo of Sacramento, who owns mynugrun.com, one of many companies in California that sell weed online and deliver it on demand.

It didn’t take long for Simone Cimiluca-Radzins to learn that breaking into the cannabis industry was a task easier said than done.

Incidentally, it was this very realization that opened the door.

Cimiluca-Radzins founded Kalogia – a LinkedIn-esque platform that connects cannabis professionals around the world – in late 2014 after she herself experienced the challenges of networking in a growing yet still stigmatized industry.

There’s nothing like federal law to make even the most legitimate business operators in the cannabis industry feel like a bunch of drug dealers.

While the nearly $7 billion weed industry is growing, the conflict between federal marijuana prohibition and state laws authorizing medical and recreational pot use makes it almost impossible for many cannabis businesses to have bank accounts or accept credit cards. Federally regulated banks usually refuse to work with clients who make their money from a Schedule I drug that is still in the same category as heroin. 

Forget about electric vehicles; pot is driving new energy peaks in the states where it is legal.

Data centers may be more ubiquitous than indoor grow operations for marijuana, but the latter are as energy-intensive as the former, according to a new report by EQ Research.

Indoor grows can have an energy intensity of about 2,000 watts per meter, according to the report, A Chronic Problem. A 2012 study from Berkeley Lab found that indoor marijuana production could account for as much as 1 percent of U.S. electricity use, about half the energy consumed by data centers.

Agrinnovation puts money into Cannabi-Tech, developer of an analysis device for medical marijuana flowers.

Hebrew University’s Agrinnovation investment fund has agreed to invest in the Rehovot-based medical cannabis firm Cannabi-Tech Ltd, which is developing a device for the automated sorting and analysis of medical cannabis flowers.

Agrinnovation, set up in 2015 to focus on agricultural innovation, is the agritech investment fund of the Yissum research and development company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the university’s technology transfer company.

As the cannabis industry continues to gain legal status around the world more and more cannabis growers are learning about commercial scale horticultural production techniques, and of course, that means greenhouse growing. Anxious to grab a piece of the hottest industry of our generation, many consultants have jumped into the picture claiming to be manufacturers and greenhouse experts. Unfortunately these groups are not always well informed and often perpetuate wrong thinking.

Here are the 10 most frequent misconceptions we hear being told to cannabis growers looking to move to greenhouse growing.