MariCann Inc. looks forward to ‘growing green with green’ in its state-of-the-art $8-million 180,000-square-foot expansion.

“This is the field of dreams,” said VP of Operations Richard Kropman, indicating a large, fenced rectangle dotted with heavy machinery.

On a drizzly January morning, the target area on the MariCann property southeast of Glen Meyer was a muddy expanse. But for what Director of Media and Investor Relations Shawn Alexander describes as a startup company in a startup industry, ambitious dreams are well on their way to reality.

“We refer to it as scaling up,” understated Alexander of a 700-per-cent expansion from the current 30,000 square-foot self-contained indoor grow, production and distribution facility.

If all marijuana growers were asked what the bane of their existence was, many (if not most) would answer, “bud rot.” Bud rot can be incredibly devastating to any marijuana crop, due in large part to the fact that it comes after nearly an entire season of growing healthy plants, only to completely ruin the buds in the end.

Not only does bud rot have the ability to ruin months of hard work, it also can take hold and destroy everything in one mere week – or less. For that reason, prevention is key. Once bud rot takes hold, it can be extremely difficult (if not impossible to get rid of). Find out how to detect and fix the problem and be sure to check out my free Marijuana Grow Bible for more pro tips.

Investing in cannabis stocks is being called the "gold rush" of the 21st century. That's because legal marijuana sales in North America climbed to $6.7 billion in 2016.

As impressive as that sounds, sales are only expected to climb…
By 2021, legal marijuana sales in North America are expected to reach $20.2 billion. That's a sales increase of 201% in just four years.

While investing in marijuana stocks can be profitable, it's important to understand they are speculative investments right now.
That's because marijuana is still illegal under U.S. federal law.

However, with 28 states having some type of marijuana legalization law in place, medical legalization will become the norm.

More financial institutions are servicing the marijuana industry, but depositories have terminated 5,650 accounts at an increasingly rapid clip. The data shows incremental improvement for a previously locked-out industry, but the gains are not keeping pace with the industry's exponential revenue growth.

Between June 2016 and September 2016, U.S. financial institutions terminated roughly 8.8 accounts per day, up from a rate of 7.5 terminations per day from November 2015 to May 2016. At the same time, the number of depositories servicing the industry has increased 15.6% year over year.

Hey mate, wanna buy some pot… stocks? Yes, Australian medical cannabis companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange are hot items right now. But as investors rush to get in on the ground floor of a nascent market, things aren’t always working out as planned.

Consider MMJ Phytotech. Shareholders who bought into the company last year might now be scratching their heads. Since February 2016, the company’s share price fallen by roughly 40 percent.

Things had looked promising for the young Australian pharmaceutical firm. It had struck a reverse takeover deal that allowed it to enter the Canadian medical market, and it was in the process of setting up a “farm-to-pharma” supply chain that tied together production, research, and manufacturing.

President Trump voiced support for medical marijuana and states’ rights during his campaign, but Jeff Sessions, his pick for Attorney General, has opposed legalization, and will have the power to enforce the federal drug laws that could send people to prison. This political uncertainty adds a new level of risk to entrepreneurs who already operate in an evolving landscape that requires flexibility and creativity.

If it's allowed to evolve, the legal cannabis market just in California, could top $4.5B  in sales within 3-5 years of the first recreational shops opening there, and over $7B nationwide, according to analysis by Marijuana Business Daily.

Cannabis is currently the world’s most explosive industry, but the boom will not be limited to medicine and hemp. Advances made in technology for growing, tracking and testing cannabis will extend to agriculture as a whole.

Agtech has been a buzzword in Silicon Valley the past few years, with a record $2.7 billion invested in the space in 2015. But so far returns haven’t met expectations. Part of it is tight margins, which make it tough for farmers to invest in R&D and innovation, even if they can demonstrate a positive ROI. But even more so, many farmers are extremely risk-averse, and they don’t want to pilot technologies, but would readily adopt proven systems.

Tilray, a global leader in medical cannabis research and production, today announced that it has become the first medical cannabis producer in North America to be GMP certified in accordance with the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards. As North America’s only GMP certified medical cannabis producer, Tilray is uniquely positioned to expand distribution of its pharmaceutical-grade medical cannabis products to patients, physicians, pharmacies, hospitals and researchers in new markets around the world.

These entrepreneurial twentysomethings are riding a wave of marijuana legalization to online celebrity. Call them Cheech and Chong for the digital age.

osh Young smokes weed before he eats breakfast. He gets high before lunch, too, again before dinner, and usually one or two more times on top of that. Most days, on at least a few of those occasions, he’s filming it for his YouTube channel, StrainCentral, which has more than 373,000 subscribers. Millions watch him every month.

This is how Young pays his bills. And if that’s a hard idea to wrap your head around, Young said it’s even harder to answer the question of how he makes a living.

The cannabis-friendly “vacation” of yesteryear was largely spent on the living room couch, far away from prying eyes and prosecution.  

With online services like Bud And Breakfast, which allow you to browse and book 420-friendly accommodations in an Airbnb-like format, today’s cannabis-friendly vacation can be spent in luxe locales across the U.S. and far beyond. And since the Nov. 8 presidential election, when the total number of states with recreational cannabis legislation leapt from four to eight, that scope has only continued to widen.