Federal investigators have subpoenaed Diego Pellicer Worldwide, a newly public company whose marijuana-related business barely exists. Also, Starbucks rises to No. 2 in U.S. restaurant sales, topping Subway.

The Top 5 Things You Don’t Want to Say when introducing a new public company might be:

No. 5. We’ve received a subpoena from the U.S. Attorney.

No. 4. We’ve only got one real paying customer.

No. 3. We’re not sure when we can actually collect any money from that customer.

No. 2. We’re lending money to keep that customer running.

No. 1. We’re not sure what the U.S. Attorney wants, but in the worst-case scenario, our officers could be imprisoned and our investors hosed.

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman announced Friday that the state will defend its legalization of marijuana for sale medicinally and recreationally against a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Nebraska and Oklahoma. Friday was the final day for Colorado to respond to the lawsuit, which alleged its voter-backed legalization initiative, Amendment 64, has sent a wave of uncontrolled cannabis across the two states’ borders since becoming law in 2012.

The first publicly-traded medical marijuana producer in Canada has found other ways to generate publicity

Medical marijuana producers in Canada are typically branded like pharmaceutical companies—clinical, staid and boring. Tweed is their hip counterpart. The company’s personality is more akin to that of a craft brewery.

“They have a really easy name to remember,” says Daniel Pearlstein, a life sciences analyst with M Partners, which covers the company. “It sounds like what people call it on the street.”

Increasingly large swathes of the public now view cannabis in a favourable light. Cannabis-focused businesses are developing strategies to further strengthen its positive image, potentially bringing total acceptance ever closer. Mainstream companies too are realizing its value and are seeking ways to capitalize on it.

Disguise or exploit the stoner subculture?

California has the oldest and largest legal marijuana market in the country, bringing in $1.3 billion a year. It's also the least regulated, allowing for local governments to enforce their own rules at their whims and a thriving underground industry to smuggle the product to other states en masse.

Hundreds of Millions of dollars are pouring into the legal (or at least semi-legal) marijuana industry. Is it too much investment for the market potential? Here are the critical issues to consider.

Current Marijuana Users Already Have Their Suppliers

Let’s say that you smoke or otherwise consume marijuana with some regularity, at least once a month. You have a source. It’s always a challenge to get a buyer of any product to change to a new seller. Very few current users will be eager to switch just because the old supplier is not legal.

You don't want to get a lawsuit by your office's pot advocate.

Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images

With medical marijuana legal in 23 states and Washington, D.C., there are now millions of card-carrying cannabis users working at companies across the U.S. While four states and the District have legalized recreational marijuana use, pot is still illegal under federal law, and many business owners still subscribe to the plant's Reefer Madness stigma and don't want to allow people to smoke on the job. For some of those owners, that can mean getting sued for failing to accommodate an employee who has a medical condition.

As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They’re presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.

HARLEM — There are a lot of ways to make money from pot that don't involve the drug itself.

That was the message from three former Wall Street analysts who spoke Wednesday night to those gathered at the monthly meeting ofHigh NY, a group dedicated to changing the way people use cannabis.

“Now is the time to get involved if you are serious about getting in this industry. Public opinion has never been higher, we’ve never had this much momentum,” High NY co-founder Michael Zaytsev, who worked as a financial analyst for J.P. Morgan and then as a salesman for Google, told the 50 people gathered at the Harlem Garage.

You can go for a ride with the Pineapple Express - or any other strain of cannabis - while visiting friends in D.C., but you might get fired from work back home in Virginia as a result.

Legalized marijuana is closer than ever, now that adults can smoke, grow and share it in the nation's capital. But some local companies are sticking with tests that screen employees for the drug because it's still illegal in Virginia.

A local employment law expert said businesses must be more cautious about dismissing workers for positive drug tests now that marijuana is legal in some parts of the country - but users with a prescription likely have more protection than those who smoke just because, well, they like getting high.