Canna Care Docs in Dennis holds an open house Saturday, May 2, to give free services to veterans wanting to obtain a medical marijuana card.

YARMOUTH - Michele Olem, a substance abuse counselor in Wellfleet, traveled to the Mid-Cape Saturday with her husband with two stops in mind.

First they went to Canna Care Docs on Route 134 in South Dennis, which was having an open house for veterans, offering free medical marijuana qualifying paperwork.

Next they traveled one town away to the Cape’s first Cannibis Convention, which was held at the Colonial Inn on Route 6A in Yarmouthport.

Olem’s husband, a Vietnam veteran, has cancer.

“He lost 30 pounds in one month. He couldn’t stand the sight of food,” Olem said.

When Colorado legalized recreational marijuana, we started getting calls from local companies wanting to lease equipment as we appear high in the search engines for equipment leasing. I immediately realized that there was an underserved industry that could not get banks to even take their money, let alone lend them with the capital they needed to grow. So, I started working with some of these businesses that had the characteristics that we were looking for to get them the funding that they were seeking. We added working capital and real estate loans to our service offerings and through the syndication partners that we work with, we can now provide the full spectrum of debt based financing.

It's been nearly two years since the New Hampshire Legislature passed a medical marijuana law, but it's unlikely that the first dispensaries will open here until 2016.

"Evaluators" are still combing through the applications - each hundreds of pages long - from the 14 nonprofit entities vying to open alternative treatment centers (ATCs), according to the state health department.

"The applications are huge," said Eric Borrin, director of contracts and procurements for the Department of Health and Human Services. "They're requiring time to work through, and there's a certain amount of due diligence and fact-checking that needs to be done with respect to the responses that have been received."

Cannabis Landscape Overview

What an interesting and exciting time for cannabis this is. With four states and D.C. legalizing cannabis for adult use and dozens of states working to implement medical cannabis programs, cannabis is becoming more widely accepted in our society. Every day new opportunities arise and new challenges are faced. As cannabis returns to the mainstream of society there are both external and internal forces at work to consider.

Cannabis Landscape Overview

What an interesting and exciting time for cannabis this is. With four states and D.C. legalizing cannabis for adult use and dozens of states working to implement medical cannabis programs, cannabis is becoming more widely accepted in our society. Every day new opportunities arise and new challenges are faced. As cannabis returns to the mainstream of society there are both external and internal forces at work to consider.

The Marijuana Investor Summit was not short on speakers and panelists offering advice on financing a cannabis business. But many cannabis entrepreneurs learned a grittier lesson in the conference center’s labyrinth-like hallways and the hotel’s lobby bar: don’t rely on venture capitalists to finance your early-stage business.

Quotations can connect you to wisdom from the past that you can apply to the present and the future. Many of the legal marijuana industry’s key players have already amassed vital wisdom during the industry’s fledgling years. At Marijuana Investor Summit, several of these key players shared their insight with attendees. Because their knowledge is a valuable resource for those looking to enter the industry, here are seven notable quotations captured at MJIS:

What kind of facility has lighting as intense as that found in an operating room (500-times more than needed for reading), 6-times the air-change rate of a biotech laboratory and 60-times that of a home, and the electric power intensity of a datacenter?

The emergent industry of indoor Cannabis production results in prodigious energy use, costs, and greenhouse-gas pollution. Large-scale industrialized and highly energy-intensive indoor cultivation of Cannabis is driven by criminalization, pursuit of security, and the desire for greater process control and yields. The practice occurs across the United States and in many other countries.

What were Ready to Build letters (“RTBs”)? In a nutshell, they amounted to a conditional MMPR production licence. In an affidavit filed by the government in Allard et al. v. Her Majesty, Health Canada employee Todd Cain explained:

The National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependency estimates that over 23 million Americans (age 12 and older) are addicted to alcohol and other drugs. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), just under 11% (2.5 million) received care at an addiction treatment facility in 2012. SAMHSA also estimates that the market for addiction treatment is about $35 billion per year.

The vast majority of addiction treatment is based either partially or entirely on the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), but is there scientific evidence to support AA as a clinical treatment? Should addiction treatment centers make enormous profits by simply funneling substance abusers into the free fellowship of AA?