The shop will convert its jazz room into a dispensary.

Amoeba Music has been granted the coveted license to sell medical marijuana at its flagship store in Berkeley, CA with hopes that it will help produce a boost in revenue.

The Bay Area store had previously attempted to earn the license in October 2015, but failed. At the time, Amoeba’s co-owner David Prinz said in an interview that legal marijuana could help save the company and the music business: "We need supplemental income. That's the real truth. This helps keep us open and enables us to do some amazing shit."

How people of color are blocked from Washington’s legal pot marketplace.

One of the major campaign promises of cannabis legalization was to begin undoing some of the damage of the War on Drugs in minority communities. But while the new recreational market has reduced cannabis-related arrests, it hasn’t created wealth in those communities. White people are getting rich off the "Green Rush," while minorities are often shut out.

Bill Piper, Senior Director of National Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, believes the legal cannabis industry is hurtling toward racial stratification, noting that only about 1 percent of dispensaries nationwide are owned by people of color.

There’s nothing like federal law to make even the most legitimate business operators in the cannabis industry feel like a bunch of drug dealers.

While the nearly $7 billion weed industry is growing, the conflict between federal marijuana prohibition and state laws authorizing medical and recreational pot use makes it almost impossible for many cannabis businesses to have bank accounts or accept credit cards. Federally regulated banks usually refuse to work with clients who make their money from a Schedule I drug that is still in the same category as heroin. 

Now that Alaska's first commercial cannabis harvest is underway, readers want to know: When will marijuana shops open?

"We're just weeks away," said Cynthia Franklin, executive director of the Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office, on Tuesday. "This is happening."

In Fairbanks, Frozen Budz is nearly done building its retail store, co-owner Destiny Neade wrote Tuesday. Frozen Budz was the first retailer approved by the state and will likely have its final inspection next week.

"Then it's just a waiting game until the labs are running," Neade wrote.

Forget about electric vehicles; pot is driving new energy peaks in the states where it is legal.

Data centers may be more ubiquitous than indoor grow operations for marijuana, but the latter are as energy-intensive as the former, according to a new report by EQ Research.

Indoor grows can have an energy intensity of about 2,000 watts per meter, according to the report, A Chronic Problem. A 2012 study from Berkeley Lab found that indoor marijuana production could account for as much as 1 percent of U.S. electricity use, about half the energy consumed by data centers.

The way Alan Gertner’s shop is set up is de rigueur in Toronto right now. Handmade salvaged wood shelves fill the walls. They’re sparsely decked with a select mixture of local and novelty items: soaps, candles, lapel pins, retro tins, stationery. Along the middle of the space runs a slim bar where people can gather to sip coffee, socialize or do work.

Tokyo Smoke is also a cafe, and what sets it apart is that it’s all cannabis-themed. Alongside the kitschy tchotchkes you’ll find neon grinders, a selection of vapes, and coffee and baked treats.

Municipal leaders will debate several pot related resolutions at the annual UBCM gathering in Victoria.

Local government leaders will spend a lot of time talking about marijuana this week at their annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in Victoria.

With the federal government looking to legalize the recreational use of marijuana sometime next year, up to four resolutions dealing with pot will be discussed.

Regulation

One asks senior levels of government to consult with their local counterparts when coming up with new regulations for legalized marijuana.

After a backroom meeting between political party leaders, a slim majority of Dutch Parliament has aligned behind a proposal to regulate the flow of cannabis that feeds the country’s coffeeshops. If enacted, the new system would bring the Netherlands closer to the legal, adult-use markets emerging across North America.

Sales by coffeeshops of small amounts of cannabis are tolerated in the Netherlands, but the coffeeshops currently don’t have a legal way to obtain product, as commercial grows and wholesale distribution are forbidden. To remedy this so-called backdoor paradox, the Dutch bill would create a system of licensed producers to cultivate cannabis under government supervision and supply the coffeeshops.

GW Pharmaceuticals' Epidiolex outpaces placebo in a second trial in Lennox-Gastaut syndrome patients.

Following today's announcement, GW Pharmaceuticals PLC's (NASDAQ:GWPH) Epidiolex has reduced monthly seizure rates in three separate epilepsy trials, including two trials involving patients with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a rare form of epilepsy. Epidiolex's ability to lower seizure rates in epilepsy patients clears the way for the company to file for FDA approval of Epidiolex next year. If the FDA approves Epidiolex, it will become the first FDA-approved cannabis therapy on the market.

As the cannabis industry continues to gain legal status around the world more and more cannabis growers are learning about commercial scale horticultural production techniques, and of course, that means greenhouse growing. Anxious to grab a piece of the hottest industry of our generation, many consultants have jumped into the picture claiming to be manufacturers and greenhouse experts. Unfortunately these groups are not always well informed and often perpetuate wrong thinking.

Here are the 10 most frequent misconceptions we hear being told to cannabis growers looking to move to greenhouse growing.