A $10 million Series A funding round is a milestone many startups never hit — but for a weed startup, it’s almost unheard of.

BOULDER, Colo., April 13, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Sage Analytics (www.sageanalytics.com), the developers of a new suite of advanced systems for the testing of marijuana potency, announced today that they have contracted with Evolve Manufacturing Technologies for the production of the Luminary™ Beacon.

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- Military veterans in North Carolina, especially around Fayetteville, a center of both active military personnel and vets, are now organizing to put marijuana legalization on the state's GOP platform.

Marijuana legalization may not be a top priority of Congress or President Obama, but the American public is certainly doing its best to make it apparent that marijuana is an important issue.

We've seen a complete transformation of the American public's opinion of marijuana and even individual state law over the past two decades. What once was an illegal substance in all 50 states is now legal from the aspect of medical purposes in 23 states, and legal from a recreational, adult-use standpoint in four states.

Despite the headline, I’m a proponent of crowdfunding and believe it can bring innovative ideas to market. Fundamentally, I feel that new forms of financing provide additional access to much-needed capital and bring healthy competition to the lender market, benefits that all entrepreneurs and inventors can appreciate.

Every industry is only as strong as the connection between the capital needed to grow and maintain it, and the companies themselves, who allocate that capital to expand new markets, lower costs, add services and improve product offerings. In most industries, this flow has had decades to form distinct, reliable channels. Not so in cannabis, which is still forced to fumble its way through muddy waters in this stage of its life cycle. Companies that touch the plant cannot get corporate bank accounts, let alone pitch themselves to the mainline Wall Street set.

RICHMOND, Va. — When people think of hemp, marijuana often comes to mind — because the two plants are varieties of cannabis.

But hemp has a variety of uses, from making textiles and building materials to feeding livestock. The settlers at Jamestown grew hemp. So did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. In the 1940s, Henry Ford reportedly built a car body of hemp fiber and ran it on hemp oil.

In the 1950s, however, the United States banned hemp because of its association with marijuana. That prohibition has remained in effect — until now.

Virginia soon will legalize the growing of industrial hemp under legislation passed by the General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

A recent report by The Arcview Group showed that legalized marijuana is now the fastest growing industry in the U.S., posting a whopping 74% growth rate in 2014. Despite a widespread movement to legalize marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes across the country, though, the industry still faces some serious challenges on the legal front that investors need to understand. 

So, to give investors a deeper look at some of the more pressing legal issues, I spoke with a leading expert on medical marijuana, Aaron Lachant -- an attorney with the healthcare specialist law firm Nelson Hardiman LLP.

Weed has gone public.

A social network platform for cannabis users, MassRoots, on April 9 secured the first initial public offering for any company with ties to the marijuana industry. The 2-year-old Denver-based startup is valued at $45 million, with stock now traded publicly through the OTC Markets Group marketplace at 10 cents per share.

DENVER — While federal law makes their entire industry illegal, many marijuana store owners, growers and retailers fear something completely different: Big Tobacco.

Today, most legal recreational marijuana operations are small, limited to a single state and barred from ever getting large by regulators who want to keep a close eye on the fast-growing industry. But those small operators struggle to get bank loans for expansion, often produce an inconsistent product and sometimes have no idea how to balance supply and demand for their crops.