As Nevada nears the expected July 1 start date for its emergent recreational marijuana program, Republicans and Democrats put the finishing touches on the laws that will shape the state's marijuana future for the next two years. 

Tourists still have nowhere to smoke since the public consumption bill died, medical users still can't buy guns and opioid addiction cannot be treated with cannabis despite Democrats' best efforts.

All in all, though, marijuana advocates walked away from this year's session with a lot of wins. Here is how marijuana will be taxed, labeled, regulated and how it's going to affect you. 

Pot tax

The Colorado Department of Agriculture, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and the Occupational Safety and Health Association are teaming up to host a health-and-safety course for marijuana employees this summer, as the industry continues to grow and add more workers.

State revenue officials are working on the roll-out of the latest medical marijuana program with a tax on the drug — the first of its kind in the state — which could increase the agency's capacity for handling cash.

Legislators passed SB333 this spring, adding a number of regulations to the program. That includes a gross sales tax that providers will start putting on the books on July 1.

The tax will be 4 percent of gross sales from July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018. After that the tax will be 2 percent.

A Vancouver-based medical marijuana producer is the first to get a Health Canada permit to grow cannabis using natural sunlight.

Tantalus Labs founder Dan Sutton says SunLab is the new generation of sustainable, natural and highly controlled infrastructure for growing weed.

“It’s sort of unreasonable to grow virtually any plant in an indoor, artificial environment where one is trying to replicate nature. We’re really proud of our knowledge or quality assurance, of processed standardization, of creating efficiencies and repeatability out of processes and systems in an agricultural environment.”

He adds it’s one-of-a-kind, and took five years to develop.

CannabisBenchmarks.comMore

For the week ended Friday, June 2, 2017, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis fell 4.3% to $1,553. According to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks, the simple average price for a gram fell 28 cents to $3.86.

The futures price for the near-month (July) fell to $1,525. For the month of August, the forward price fell to $1,510. The six-month forward price (December) was initiated at $1,465.

About two-thirds of the past week's transactions occurred in a range of $1,072 to $2,426 per pound.

The Cannabis Benchmark analysts commented on the falling prices:

Despite declining TV ratings for National Football League (NFL) games, football remains the most popular sport among Americans. It's also a big industry, with the NFL generating estimated revenue of around $14 billion last season.

Another industry could soon eclipse the NFL, though, if projections from research companies Arcview Market Research and GreenWave Advisors are on target. Both Arcview and GreenWave think that the marijuana industry will be bigger than the NFL by 2020. Could this really happen -- and, if so, what are the best stocks for investors to profit from the trend?

Much like how big banks have kept their distance from cannabis, large insurance carriers have generally stayed away from the industry even as states across the US continue to launch legal, regulated markets for patients and consumers.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones wants to change that.

Jones, a former state lawmaker and Sacramento City Council member, will be holding a series of meetings aimed at educating major insurers and convincing them to begin insuring the industry.

The legal marijuana industry has demonstrated explosive growth in recent years, and marijuana stock investors are really taking notice.

In West Virginia, a new law includes a provision that requires regulators to encourage minority-owned business owners to apply for growing licenses. (Photo by Heath Korvola/ Digital Vision/Getty Images)

In some states that have legalized marijuana, officials are trying to entice nonwhite citizens to join the cannabis industry with breaks aimed at making up for the toll unequal drug enforcement has taken on Black and brown communities.

So far, the booming industry has overwhelmingly line the pockets of white cannabis sellers.

Venture capitalist Adam Levin led the $70 million acquisition through his new firm, Oreva Capital, partnering with Damian Marley's newly-public company Stony Hill, Ean Seeb, the founder of Denver Relief Consulting, a Colorado dispensary, and 17 other partners in the cannabis, real estate, and technology space.

"High Times, to me, is the Coca-Cola of the industry," Levin told Business Insider. "And obviously, cannabis is one of the fastest growing industries today."

Damian Marley, Bob Marley's son as well as a musician and cannabis investor, said he had used High Times when he was "growing herb" in high school to differentiate between male and female plants (the female plants produce THC, the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis).