Next semester, Temple students will have a chance to take a class on a plant they may already be familiar with: marijuana.

But it’s not a class about how to best to enjoy the Three Kings strain. It’s about the plant itself — the difference between cannabis and hemp, the history of its cultivation, the effect it has on a human body, the history of its prohibition, its medical uses and its integration into pop culture. Temple School of Media and Communication professor Linn Washington has partnered with local marijuana activist and writer Chris Goldstein for the class.

The smell inside the production rooms of Kiva Confections, one of California’s premier  manufacturers of edible cannabis, is, in a word, intoxicating.

You won’t just catch whiffs of the powdery hash that goes into Kiva’s high-quality chocolate bars. You’ll also inhale the scent of dried blueberries and the heavenly aroma of espresso beans, which are slowly being covered with cannabis-infused chocolate as they tumble in big metal machines that look like open cement mixers.

Canopy Growth Corp. jumped to a record high, and other Canadian cannabis growers gained, after unveiling a line of marijuana products for the domestic market in a partnership with rapper Snoop Dogg.

The Smiths Falls, Ontario-based company soared as much as 17 per cent and was up 9.2 per cent to $5.44 at 11:12 a.m. in Toronto trading. The shares have climbed 84 per cent this year, heading for a third straight annual gain.

The cannabis industry is clearly growing when it comes to lifestyle. Lotions, snacks and even health products now exist with a cannabis twist. Enter AuBox, a new luxury subscription cannabis service created by Jessica VerSteeg.

Hezekiah Allen is a third-generation marijuana farmer in this Northern California county, where the cool coastal fog pours off the Pacific Ocean, coaxing pot plants to heights of 20 feet.

The executive director of the California Growers Association trade group, Allen has long sought an end to what he calls “prohibition” and has looked forward to a day when he and the thousands of pot farmers here would no longer be outlaws.

But he said he can’t bring himself to vote for Proposition 64, a referendum on California’s November ballot that would legalize cultivation, sale and recreational use of marijuana.

Turn-key dispensary franchises may still be a ways off, but some ancillary cannabis businesses aren’t waiting for federal legalization to dip their toes into all that franchising can offer.

The legal cannabis industry is becoming big business, after all, projected to hit $20.6 billion in revenue nationwide by 2020 pending voter approval next month of adult-use legalization in five states and medical marijuana in two.

Pot is big business.

And it's only getting bigger.

In November, nine states will vote on whether to legalize marijuana, reports Business Insider's Ben Gilbert, and five of those votes will include recreational use as well as medicinal: Massachusetts, Maine, California, Arizona, and Nevada.

With the summer over, many companies have begun thinking about capturing consumer attention in the run-up to the holidays.

With e-commerce sales during the 2015 holiday season having grown 13.3% year over year, this year is set to be a bumper holiday season for retailers, and they are busy kicking off campaigns even as we speak.

If pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google and Bing is in your marketing plan, here are a few tips to help you get ahead (and stay ahead) of your competition this holiday season.

1. Start putting your campaigns together now

One question Brad Feld gets a lot is, “Is this a good idea?” It’s usually asked by a prospective entrepreneur seeking to validate an idea. Feld, the cofounder of Colorado-based venture capital firm Foundry Group and an accelerator called Techstars, usually directs the budding entrepreneur to material on launching a business, but inevitably, the question returns: “Yeah, but is this a good idea?”

Several marijuana strains curated by "cannabis connoisseur" Snoop Dogg are now available in Canada through the Smiths Falls, Ont., company Tweed, which announced a partnership with the rapper and businessman earlier this year.

Sunset, ocean view and palm tree CBD will be the first three strains available in Canada. The offering will expand over time, according to a media release issued by Tweed on Thursday.

They're expected to be available later this month.

"Like hip hop, cannabis is as much a lifestyle as it is a culture," Snoop Dogg is quoted saying in the release. "Leafs by Snoop is an expression of my experience with that culture over decades on the scene.