Florida's Republican-dominated legislature can barely pass basic laws like tax cuts or budget plans without tripping over themselves or spiraling into intra-party screaming matches. The state legislature is so bad at writing its own laws that, as the Miami Herald astutely pointed out last week, gigantic companies like Florida Power & Light have to write entire laws for them. The current legislature is a Stygian pit of bad ideas.

So naturally, Florida voters chose in 2016 to give all those people drugs.

Want to legalize marijuana federally? Propose sensible taxes on the drug.

That’s the tactic of a new bill from two Oregon Democrats: House Ways and Means Committee member Earl Blumenauer and ranking Senate Finance Committee member Ron Wyden. It takes on tough questions: What should a marijuana tax measure? Should it tax medical marijuana? The Marijuana Revenue and Regulation Act (MRRA) provides thoughtful answers.

What to tax? 

Female leaders of the cannabis industry in the Bay Area shared their secrets of success with up-and-coming women who want to stake a claim in the business during a gathering Thursday night hosted by Women Grow.

The networking event featured presentations by female leaders of the cannabis industry, including Lynnette Shaw, the “godmother” of medical marijuana dispensaries; Sherry Glaser, operator of a Mendocino County medical dispensary and “bed, bud and breakfast” inn; and Jazmin Hupp, co-founder and chief executive officer of Women Grow, the nation’s largest cannabis professional networking organization.

I will be looking at a recent research report by Chris Damas, an analyst at BCMI Research. Damas goes into detail about some of the key fundamentals relating to supply and demand with respect to marijuana companies that he believes are sure to lead to massive declines in stock prices sooner rather than later.

New IPOs have resulted in large-scale venture capital

There's no two ways about it: As an investor, you'd struggle to find an industry with a more appetizing long-term growth rate than legal marijuana.

According to cannabis research firm ArcView, North American legal sales increased by 34%, to $6.9 billion in 2016, albeit black-market sales still totaled $46.4 billion. As more U.S. states push to legalize, and with Canada potentially on the precipice of legalization by 2018, the expectation is more that this $46 billion-plus in illicit sales will shift to the legal and regulated markets in the years to come.

America's neighbor to the north is fast moving toward legalizing recreational marijuana nationwide, which would make Canada the second country in the world to do so. And the impact of having weed legalized on such a big scale, so close to home, may affect the future of pot in the United States.

Uruguay will begin selling cannabis in pharmacies from July, the final stage in the country's pioneering regularisation of the drug.

The South American country will be the first in the world to legally sell the drug over the counter for recreational use.

The move was set in motion in 2013 with a law that fully legalised the cannabis trade.

However, it has been a slow process to put the law into practice.

"Cannabis will be dispensed in pharmacies starting in the month of July," presidential aide Juan Andres Roballo told a press conference.

The law requires buyers to sign up to a national registry, which Mr Roballo said would be up and running by 2 May. The price will be US$1.30 (£1) per gram.

Whatever your stance on cannabis may be you can’t fault the ingenuity of our nation’s illicit growers. This year alone factories have been uncovered in a mock Tudor home, an iconic chapel, an empty shopping unit just yards from a police station and even in a mansion a stone’s throw away from the Queen herself. Plenty of cases to show, if we needed evidence, that the industry is alive and well in Britain.

Across the pond the legalised industry is reporting its financial results for 2016. The Arcview Market Research showed that people in the United States and Canada spent an estimated $53.3 billion of taxable money on legal cannabis products in 2016, with the black market finally losing ground to the legal market which operates under the eyes of the law.

When Hadley Ford created a company for investing in the fast-growing business of legal marijuana, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. investment banker left New York and headed north of the border.

While more than half of U.S. states allow marijuana for medical or recreational use, the drug is still outlawed by the federal government, starving pot entrepreneurs of institutional capital. Major stock exchanges won’t accept listings for businesses that Washington deems illegal, and banks and other lenders have stayed mostly on the sidelines.

Remedy Ice Cream is made in Calgary and infused with shatter — a concentrated form of marijuana.

The operation may not be legal but it's not exactly underground, either.

Co-founder Chris Vasconcellos says the ice cream is meant for licensed medical marijuana patients only. As a licensed user himself, he said he was looking for a different way to consume his medicine, which led him to the idea.

He doesn't have a licence to sell the drug, however, so he's wary of law enforcement — but still willing to talk publicly about what he does.

He's created a widespread online presence and has been making the rounds on pot-themed podcasts, promoting the product as a first of its kind in Canada.