“We’re here, we’re high and we aren’t going away.”

With those words, pot-purveyor Bruce Myers explains the sudden emergence of a marijuana dispensary operating like an old-fashioned fruit stand on the southeast corner of Renfrew and Hastings streets in East Vancouver.

Myers, 55, of Surrey said the pop-up pot tent and table complete with scales, bongs, pipes, grinders, papers and blow torches was first moved onto the City of Vancouver-owned property in August to coincide with the PNE. They plan on keeping the pot stand running 24-7 right through until the Fright Night Halloween attraction is over across the street at the PNE.

During its seven years of existence, Cannafest, which bills itself as “the international trade show of cannabis and medical herbs,” has evolved from a quaint local event in the Czech Republic to one of the largest and most popular cannabis fairs in the world. Prague is already gearing up to host this year’s three-day fair, set to kick off Nov. 11.

The 5th Annual Marijuana Business Conference & Expo will be hosted at The Rio in Las Vegas, Nevada next month; however, according to a memo sent to Caesar employees (Caesar’s owns The Rio), individuals caught possessing cannabis will be turned over to Metro Las Vegas Police.

The memo, which was shared by Denver, Colorado-based Hoban Law Group, reads in part:

A deep-pocketed coalition is spending big to keep marijuana illegal in Arizona. Drug companies, the Chamber of Commerce, and the alcohol industry, have together poured millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat Proposition 205, a ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for those over 21. And  as opinion polls show a tight race, another industry entered the fray: prison food providers.

Some makers of marijuana concentrates, extracts and edibles are sounding dire alarms about how the state's new testing rules are holding back their products from the market and jeopardizing their businesses.

They complain that the state lacks approved labs to carry out all of the required tests, causing long delays, forcing them to mull layoffs and generally leaving them out of the state's new recreational marijuana program that opened this month.

The state has 18 accredited and approved labs for marijuana; only four are approved to test for pesticides, a hallmark of Oregon's marijuana regulation.

Master horticulturalist Francoise Levesque tends to the thousands of marijuana plants at Tilray, one of 35 federally licensed producers of medicinal marijuana that have brought pot growing “from the basement into the light.”

“We are pioneering, in a way, how to do things,” says Levesque, who was growing tomatoes before joining the Vancouver Island company.

But pioneering is rarely easy work.

Tilray won a coveted licence in 2014 for the previous Conservative government’s mail-order medical pot system, but, like many of the licensed producers, has since endured a boom-and-bust cycle.

Most cannabis entrepreneurs huff and puff at the financial regulations in their industry. Not Lamine Zarrad.

“For me, personally, it was an opportunity,” said Zarrad, 37, the founder of Denver cannabis technology startup Tokken (pronounced like an arcade token).

In SEC filings since March, Zarrad has reported raising $750,000 to build Tokken, an app consumers can use to purchase marijuana from their phones. Because regulators subject legal marijuana to sharper scrutiny than other industries, many banks and payment processors shun cannabis companies, leaving them to operate on a cash-only basis.

Long gone are the scary days of Reefer Madness and an insurmountable societal fear of cannabis. CNN's Sanjay Gupta recently blew up a 70-year myth about the enigmatic herb, confirming its medicinal properties. This, while some states are legalizing the herb's recreational use, and even more states already permit medical marijuana and its derivatives.

The original Bena Riamba — or "Sons of Hemp" — lived in equatorial West Africa in the 1800s. They were a cannabis cult that had spiritual and medicinal uses for the plant. The Bena Riamba were credited with changing the warlike nature of the Bashilange tribe from which they emerged. 

Detroit's Sons of Hemp has also cast a favorable eye on cannabis. According to a press release they recently sent out, the "Sons of Hemp is ... a diverse group of herbalists, caregivers, and medical patients in the hemp/cannabis industry whose sole purpose is to unite, educate, create opportunities and support ownership in every facet of the hemp and cannabis industry."

New regulations concerning cannabis edibles in Colorado could set a new standard throughout the industry.

For investors, there aren't many industries that can pack as much growth potential as marijuana.

According to cannabis research firm ArcView, legal marijuana sales hit $5.4 billion in 2015, and they're on track to grow by an estimated 30% per year through 2020, thanks to organic growth in states that have already legalized it, as well as the expected legalization of marijuana in a number of new states. For added context, residents in nine states will be voting on a marijuana initiative or amendment in their state in the upcoming election next month.