LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky's second hemp crop in decades is expected to surpass 1,700 acres, up from about three dozen acres a year ago, as the versatile crop's comeback starts to attract interest from processors looking to turn it into products, state agriculture officials said Tuesday.

Hemp advocates led by state Agriculture Commissioner James Comer touted the crop at an event in an old tobacco warehouse that could symbolize the past and future of Kentucky agriculture. Tobacco production has plunged in the past decade, and farmers have looked for alternative crops to maintain income. Hemp, which once flourished in Kentucky, is seen by some as one potential option on the farm.

A provision of a Florida medical marijuana law has caused much controversy among black farmers in the state who say it’s shutting them out of the potentially lucrative industry. This group has now taken their fight to the Florida legislature in the hopes of passing an amendment that takes the regulation out of the bill.

After spending months in limbo, waiting for the state to hash out rules for testing medical marijuana, laboratories might be able to get to work soon. That moves patients one step closer to the first legal sales in dispensaries.

A state health official said Tuesday that all the rules are in place for labs to start testing marijuana. But in a sign of how confusing the process has been, that news came as a surprise to a dispensary owner and a lab scientist, who both expected a longer wait for the state to finalize some rules.

“It’s been incredibly frustrating,” Cindy Orser, chief science officer of DigiPath Labs, said of the wait. “We were hoping to be operational at the end of January. Or February. Or March. Or April. And now it’s May.”

Past a barbed-wire fence and motion sensors, and under the gaze of 31 cameras, Shawn Galbraith opens the door to a two-storey, windowless concrete structure amid the lush Central Saanich farmland. It’s the region’s worst-kept secret: a medical marijuana facility on Lochside Drive, next to the family-owned Michell’s Farm.

The head of the operation, Galbraith, has been reluctant to offer media tours because his company, Evergreen Medicinal Supply Inc., is in the final stage of Health Canada’s approval process, a complicated 18-month journey that he doesn’t want to jeopardize.

“Most Japanese people see cannabis as a subculture of Japan but they’re wrong. For thousands of years cannabis has been at the very heart of Japanese culture,” explains Takayasu Junichi, one of the country’s leading experts.

According to Takayasu, the earliest traces of cannabis in Japan are seeds and woven fibers discovered in the west of the country dating back to the Jomon Period (10,000 BC - 300 BC). Archaeologists suggest that cannabis fibers were used for clothes - as well as for bow strings and fishing lines. These plants were likely cannabis sativa - prized for its strong fibers - a thesis supported by a Japanese prehistoric cave painting which appears to show a tall spindly plant with cannabis’s tell-tale leaves.

A mentally strong leader who is knowledgeable about group dynamics can influence the way team members work. Here are three ways to build a mentally strong dream team:

1. Create a Culture of Strength

Success starts with thinking differently from everyone else, because then you can achieve differently from everyone else.

It's hard to think differently and be able to dream new dreams. We'd all like to be visionary thinkers like Bezos, Buffett, and Branson (the Three B's of Bold Thinking) and achieve great things.

But most of us aren't bold visionaries. (I'm definitely not.)

And that's OK, because while you and I might never come up with the next big thing, we can decide to think differently from other people--and in the process, achieve differently from other people.

Here are five things people think that ruin their chances for success... and more importantly how you can think differently:

1."I never get the right opportunities."

OK, let’s assume that I’m looking to fill another Blogprentice position.

All hires must then pass a background check and drug screen.

She’s killing it in the interview! She’s hired.

Then comes the drug test, which she fails due to the medicinal marijuana she tells me she’s taking because of her epilepsy. So, I rescind the offer.

A violation of the ADA?

But, let’s say that, before I rescind the offer, my conditional hire and I have a little chat about her epilepsy, from which I form an opinion about the impact it could have on her ability to perform the essential functions of the job. That is to say, I’m concerned.

When news broke that Founders Fund, the proudly contrarian venture firm helmed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, was going to invest a major $75 million in Privateer Holdings, a company focused on producing, distributing and educating consumers about legal marijuana, it opened the floodgates for other investors to barrel in.

We’ve since seen startups like Eaze, which just raised $10 million, and Y Combinator-backed Meadow.

The neighbour of a Guildford ‘cannabis café and hotel’ has described the premises as a joke after weeks of disruption and being unable to sleep.

John Liddicott, 51, said he has been plagued by a constant slamming of doors and the smell of the class B drug.

The night shift worker, who sleeps during the day, said: “I have lived here 15 years and I want to put my view across.

“As for it being a café and hotel, it is just a front for a local doss house where people can drink and use drugs.

“How can he really call it either of those things? Has he had health and safety round? Will he be paying business rates?