With autumn tightening its grip on Alaska, the state's first-ever commercial marijuana harvests are underway.

At Greatland Ganja, a marijuana grow in this small town on the Kenai Peninsula, brothers Leif and Arthur Abel are nearly finished pulling their cannabis plants from the high tunnels they call "gnome domes," where 10 different strains grew throughout the summer.

"We've got probably over half our crop already dried and partly cured," Leif said Wednesday, standing in one of the facility's four rooms, surrounded by bins of marijuana being processed by workers.

Around 75 pounds of dried marijuana had been processed so far, Leif said. The company is hoping for roughly 100 pounds from this first crop.

Scotts Miracle-Gro built a multi-billion dollar business by being a market leader across several categories of the lawn-and-garden industry.

The problem? Those categories weren’t growing all that fast.

To augment sales, Scotts took a page out of Big Beer’s playbook and crafted a wholly owned subsidiary called the Hawthorne Gardening Co. to create and capture portions of the booming urban gardening and hydroponics market — an industry bolstered by home-growers of cannabis.

This week's Elevate conference had all the makings of a typical startup summit: Incubator founders moderated discussions on how to raise capital; entrepreneurs sat on panels about measuring success; and expo booths were filled with eager companies showing off their goods.

But unlike your usual conference, panelists at Elevate talked about "no intoxication policies," the outdoor expo hall had a cordoned off area for attendees to "medicate" — and the legality of investing in the very industry everyone gathered to discuss is still a gray area.

THE British parliamentary report in favour of legalising cannabis for medical purposes, and the decision of some states in the US to make it legal to smoke it, raises the question: why don’t we follow the Colorado example? After all, we are renowned for growing the best stuff.

It is four years since Colorado voters decided 55%-45% to legalise marijuana, allowing adults to possess, sell and cultivate limited amounts. The referendum was close and aroused passionate argument.

Atwo day marijuana exhibition in Vancouver is giving people an idea of just how large and varied Canada’s cannabis industry has become—and where it could grow next. More than 100 businesses set up booths to showcase their wares at the event, but not a single cloud of smoke could be seen in the massive hall.

The expo is helping to break down stereotypes and prove that there’s a credible side to the industry, said Natasha Raey, spokeswoman for Lift Cannabis Co., which put on the show. “It’s not just someone selling bud out of a ziploc bag anymore. You’re seeing real brand development. The industry is growing up,” she said.

Wiz Khalifa has his own marijuana strain. Snoop Dogg has an entire line of edibles, concentrates and flower. Willie Nelson’s company is actually growing its own cannabis plants. And now Bob Marley’s youngest son has a pot shop branded with his name and aesthetics.

Reggae star Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley is in Colorado this week for a show at Boulder’s Fox Theatre on Friday, but he’s also celebrating today’s opening of Damian Marley’s Stony Hill — By Tru Cannabis, a rebranded pot shop near Sports Authority Field at Mile High.

“It’s the entire store,” Tru Cannabis operations director Andrew Kaplan told The Cannabist. “You’re in Damian’s branded facility — you could not be anywhere else.”

The weed industry is getting to know a time-honored tradition of the American business world: corporate fraud.

Federal prosecutors in Colorado last week charged the men behind FusionPharm, a publicly traded hydroponic marijuana farming company, with securities fraud over an alleged plot to pocket more than $12 million from the sale of phony shares.

Improvements in cannabis analysis result in improvements in cultivation. As soon as information broke that high-CBD strains can be utilized for critical situations like epilepsy, quite a lot of CBD-dominant vegetation confirmed up on dispensary cabinets. The newest pattern? Hashish that halts the munchies. Right here’s why growers are speeding to develop “weight loss program” cannabis.

The weight loss program rush

California is the world's sixth largest economy, only outpaced by the US as a whole, China, Japan, Germany, and the UK. The Golden State's economic output for 2015 came in at $2.46 trillion. 

Let's be clear: We're talking about a single US state economy compared with those of entire countries. California, on that scale, is number six. 

And that's why it's such a tremendously big deal that California is on the edge of fully legalizing marijuana, just like Colorado, Washington, and Oregon before it.

Merle Haggard is bringing the good times even from the grave. A strain of marijuana that the iconic singer began developing before his death in April 2016 is set to hit the market in the coming months.