A Bangalow-based company which is now the largest exporter of hemp foods in the southern hemisphere is wondering when its products will finally be recognised as food in Australia.

Hemp Foods Australia chief executive Paul Benhaim recently met with the First Lady of Japan Akie Abe at a hemp forum in Kyoto and discovered that she was a great supporter of the industry.

However, while Japan is importing huge amounts of hemp from Hemp Foods Australia, the products are still not recognised as food in Australias due to legislation against the consumption of hemp.

The lightweight panels are already being tested in a few high-end cars, including BMW, Audi and Mercedes Benz.

With a little elbow grease and a lot of ingenuity, a new Alberta business is churning out biodegradable auto parts made from wood, hemp and flax.

The BioComposites Group plant, located on Drayton Valley's Bio-Mile, uses a one-of-a-kind manufacturing process to make door panels, kick pads, cup holders and dashboard panels. 

"We take waste wood fibre and waste agricultural fibers, and then needle them together with a process that creates a mat that is used for interior panels," said Dan Madlung, CEO and co-owner of BioComposites Group.

How – and why – online cannabis marketplaces will replace the black market.

The first thing ever bought or sold online was a bag of cannabis.

The deal went down in 1971. Decades before eBay or Amazon, back in the days when data was delivered in a shrieking telephonic trickle rather than a broadband light beam, the first thing ever traded online was cannabis.

Illegal pot sales are turning into a high earner for governments.

Don Briere’s national chain of renegade retail shops remitted $688,449 in GST/HST collected from December to May on exploding sales of unlicensed marijuana, hashish and cannabis-laced edibles to relieve aches and pains.

Briere remitted $286,452 more in federal payroll taxes and employer contributions to Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan for 2015. Then there’s personal income tax, corporate tax, store property taxes, workers’ compensation and more.

His illegal business rivals are expected to generate oodles more for government.

A loophole allowed applicants with no background in medical marijuana to be treated as if they were law-abiding, taxpaying veterans of the industry.

On July 1, when the Cannabis Patient Protection Act (SB 5052) took effect, all dispensaries without an I-502 license were forced to shut down, sending many of the state's medical marijuana patients into a panic. Patients worry that the recreational market doesn't have enough medicinal cannabis for their needs and that what is available is not affordable. Many point to the fact that the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB) issued only 222 new retail licenses to replace more than 1,500 medical marijuana dispensaries.

The growth of the cannabis industry is encouraging to anyone who supports legalization. Recent reports have found that the sale of legal cannabis this year alone will bring in a whopping $7.1-billion – representing a 25 percent increase from the year before - while other forecasts indicate that cannabis sales could yield as much as $23 billion by the year 2020.

Considering diversifying with a high-risk investment? Heard the lure of the “green rush” toward a possible $100 billion legal marijuana industry?

Before you write that check:

Nevada takes lessons from Rocky Mountain State.

One billion dollars in marijuana was legally sold in Colorado in 2015. Colorado has become a case-study for states, including Nevada, facing ballot initiatives this November to legalize recreational marijuana. A contingent of industry representatives and lawmakers recently traveled to Denver on a fact-finding trip. 8 News NOW also made the trek.

Nevada, California, Maine and Florida have recreational marijuana on the ballot in November. Other states like Arizona are waiting on signatures to be verified to qualify for the ballot.

These states are all watching Colorado. Medical marijuana has been legal there since 2000, and voters approved recreational use in 2012.

The Montego Bay Conference Centre is set to host Jamaica's first cannabis seminar dedicated to shaping the future of the local cannabis market.

CanEx Jamaica is being billed as a unique conference that will focus on the North American, Latin American, and the Caribbean cannabis landscape with key insight for those looking to invest in and be an integral part of the burgeoning market.

It will feature an international speaker line-up and showcase state-of-the-art grow facilities, technology, branding, and political advocacy measures.

The one-day conference will also feature high-level content on the latest advances on the regulatory, legal, investment, and product-development landscape.

Ohio could be the first medical marijuana state to fix the industry's cash-only situation.

Half the states and the District of Columbia have legalized medical marijuana but the federal government still considers it among the most dangerous drugs. Banks, credit unions and credit card companies are reluctant to provide services to legal marijuana businesses because of uncertainty from federal regulators, leaving most businesses to operate as cash-only.

Ohio's new medical marijuana law proposes a new way around the bank problem. The law allows state officials to set up a "closed loop" payment processing system, similar to prepaid debit and gift cards.