Over the past decade, the culinary world has started to pick up a faint whiff of marijuana smoke. Famous, reputable chefs across the country have copped to their love of marijuana, and its utility in their creative processes. Because weed makes food taste better! Even science says so.

I have never been fired from a job before, but I’d imagine it sucks very badly. I have quit jobs in the past, but I’ve never been terminated. If I was terminated for being a horrible employee, then I think I would be more accepting. But if I was fired for something that was unfair, I would be very upset about it. For instance, if I was fired for using a medicine that is legal in the state that I worked in, I would be extremely upset.

This Marijuana Stock is for the Dogs.

If you're a regular reader of these pages, you know I'm quite bullish on the legal marijuana trade.

In fact, last week I re-posted this small segment of Viridian Capital's 2015 cannabis market outlook:

We still remain very bullish on the industry and believe that there is a core, and sustainable, investment rationale for operators and investors, including:

Oklahoma and Nebraska want to rollback Colorado’s legalization of pot, calling it a “cross-border nuisance.”

Here’s a round-up of Monday’s Supreme Court developments.

Justices ask White House to comment on marijuana case: The Supreme Court asked the Obama administration to weigh in on a lawsuit brought by two states seeking to rollback marijuana legalization in Colorado, reports WSJ’s Jess Bravin:

Oklahoma and Nebraska asked the Supreme Court to invalidate laws implementing a 2012 voter initiative approved by their neighbor state, which legalized recreational use of marijuana.

Bio-Tech Medical Software Inc. has two state contracts, it operates in 18 states and outside the U.S., and it recently closed a $5 million series A round of funding.

But the company struggles with an issue facing any business operating in the marijuana industry today, even though it isn’t directly dealing with the plants.

“One of our greatest desires is to be seen as legitimate,” said Patrick Vo, co-CEO of the company. “To not be seen as barely legalized drug dealers, but to be seen as legitimate business people.”

New legislation has rocked the medical marijuana world, taking the traditional grow op from suburban basements to mammoth warehouses. The new pot kings own suits, have smart haircuts and list their companies on the TSX, and they’re dead set on getting rich.

THE EGGHEAD
Marc Wayne, CEO of Bedrocan, a grower and importer of vaunted Dutch medical pot.

Excerpted from "Big Weed: An Entrepreneur's High-Stakes Adventures in the Budding Legal Marijuana Business"

When I left my house on a beautiful morning in February 2013, I was carrying $40,000 in cash in my backpack. The sun was just hitting the foothills of the Rockies as I drove out of Lowry, the neighborhood where I live in Denver. As you might surmise from the contents of the backpack, it was going to be a big day.

My first appointment was the most important. I was meeting with an architect I’d hired several months ago to design a building I was planning to construct somewhere within Denver city limits. The first building of its kind anywhere in the world.

Video is the perfect medium to enhance your existing strategies, says columnist Michael Litt, and will help you nurture leads and close deals.

Marketers have a lot on their plates, and their jobs aren’t getting any easier. Marketing technology is getting more complex. Sales teams continue to want more leads, but they don’t want just more, they want better leads.

Buyers have more resources to review on their own before engaging with vendors, and their paths to purchase are more circuitous and difficult to track than ever. And there is more clutter and noise for marketers to break through, forcing them to up their game in the battle for attention span.

Investing in the marijuana industry is a tricky thing. In most other industries, the main things to look for in an investment is if and when you will get a return on your investment, and how much. That is true of the marijuana industry as well, but investing in the marijuana industry also involves the added element of legality. There are many, many good ideas out there in the marijuana industry, but a lot of them involve operating in a legal gray area at best.

sparks & honey tracks trends by drawing on dozens of data sources, hundreds of scouts and cultural strategists in our London, New York and Los Angeles offices. In April alone, we covered over 1200 signals. Here are the top five trends we observed.