DENVER – It turns out selling weed is pretty hard. Contrary to popular belief, selling it legally, at least, isn’t all THC-infused lollipops and rainbows. Just ask David Schwartz.

The six-year cannabis-industry veteran came to Colorado in the '90s from Long Island, New York, after discovering Boulder on his way to a Rainbow gathering in Wyoming. For him, selling marijuana in a locale known around the nation for its liberalized pot laws is not just about counting money; it’s about taxes, regulatory compliance, inventory management, and above all, staying on the right side of Colorado’s “pot cops” -- the Marijuana Enforcement Division (MED).

DENVER — Just outside of Downtown, far from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the Williams family is cultivating what they hope will become America’s next big consumer brand.

They’re so confident in the new venture that they’ve invested millions of dollars into new processes, equipment designs and their increasingly popular product: legal marijuana.

CEO of Medicine Man, Andy Williams, inside his office at his company's headquarters. Emily Maxwell | WCPO

“We’re on the bleeding edge of a new developing industry,” said Andy Williams, president and CEO of Medicine Man. “There are very few times in the history of the world where people have been able to do what I’m doing right now.”

Does morality matter in investing? Put another way, can amorality pay off?

Gerry Sullivan thinks it can. He manages the $298 million Barrier Fund (formerly known as the Vice Fund), which specializes in the types of stock that get a bad rap from morally-conscious investors and institutions.

Four of Sullivan’s top five holdings are in tobacco companies, and for all the hand-wringing over the health hazards of smoking – and the massive settlements the companies have coughed up – he still thinks the stocks are among his best bets.

Neutra Corp. (OTCBB: NTRR) will complete market testing this week on a new suite of products that could help cannabis growers avoid Colorado’s crackdown on pesticides.

Not long ago, a man who had covertly dealt pot in the nation’s capital for three decades approached a young political operative at a birthday party in a downtown Washington steakhouse.

He was about to test a fresh marketing strategy to take advantage of the District’s peculiar new marijuana law, which allows people to possess and privately consume the drug but provides them no way to legally buy it for recreational use. Those contradictions have created a surge in demand and new opportunities for illicit pot purveyors.

“Do you like cannabis?” asked the dealer.

“Yes,” answered the man, who had recently left his job as a Republican Senate staffer.

During Prohibition, it was booze. Then gambling, racketeering and cocaine. But today, the New York mob makes big money from an unlikely product — marijuana. And the godfather of ganja is from one of the storied names in Mafia lore: Eboli.

Silvio Eboli, 44, is the grandson of Tommy Eboli, who ruled the Genovese crime family from 1969-72, and grandnephew of Patsy Eboli, a Genovese capo and head of the what the family called the Greenwich Village Crew.

Tommy Eboli was killed, his family believes by Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, a k a the “Oddfather,” who replaced him as boss of the Genovese. Patsy, the family tells me, figured he was next, so he fled to Lagos, Nigeria, then made his way over land and by boat to Sicily, where he lived in exile.

Lounge in the Loft owner Jeff Lundstrom shuttered the lounge after refusing to allow city inspectors to enter premise

Saskatoon's only marijuana lounge went out in a blaze of glory after the owner closed up shop in protest over a city inspection Monday.

The Lounge in the Loft owner Jeffrey Lundstrom hosted a final pot smoking event Saturday evening. Anyone over the age of 18 was invited, but an earlier promise of free marijuana was only available to those with medicinal prescriptions.

"It's a public disobedience. It was just a call out to just attempt to shine light on what's occurring," Lundstrom said.

Deep within a cedar forest in British Columbia, Dan Sutton is building what he hopes will be the most energy-efficient, high-technology greenhouse for growing cannabis. Spurred by the booming market for medical marijuana, he and a group of biologists and engineers have experimented for almost three years with digital sensors, lighting arrays, software programs and ventilators to design a greenhouse system with the lowest energy costs and highest crop yields.

“We said, ‘Let’s assume everything that’s ever been done in cannabis cultivation is wrong, and we have to build from the ground up,’” said Sutton, the 28-year-old managing director of Tantalus Labs in Vancouver.  “We have this broad realm of science that no one has been able to previously explore.”

For police, pot edibles are the latest frontier when it comes to confiscating marijuana. From brownies and cookies to lollipops and gummy bears, police are increasingly dealing with sweets made with marijuana, not just buds from the plant itself, the New York Times reported Saturday.

Customer Paxton Berlanga, of Indiana, right, smells a strain of marijuana, while being helped by employee Billy Archilla, inside the retail marijuana shop at 3D Cannabis Center, in Denver, Friday Feb. 14, 2014. The marijuana industry breathed a sigh of relief Friday after federal banking regulators issued long-awaited permission for them to access basic banking services. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

NEW YORK — The U.S. government has opened a new line of business for America’s biggest banks, and for once they don’t want it. Little wonder: it’s cash from legalized marijuana.