Entrepreneurs are revitalizing their businesses by focusing on the growing cannabis industry.

An embarrassing experience trying to get medical marijuana gave Mark Hadfield, chief technology officer of HelloMD Inc., the idea he needed to stimulate his business.

Weedmaps, the initial and largest tellurian record and media association in a cannabis space, announced a new partnership with cannabis record company Green Bits, a personality in point-of-sale (POS) and register management solutions.

Vancouver pot shops have won seven-for-10 at the city’s board of variance since March, having brought forward successful arguments for second cracks at marijuana business licenses. 

While it’s a tidal shift from the first two months of hearings when every decision went against shopkeepers, even the most keen observers, appellants and their lawyers would have a difficult time divining the precise ingredients that make for a successful pot shop appeal. In some cases, shops with nearly identical characteristics have received opposite decisions at the board.

Providing a quick statistical snapshot of the fast growing marijuana industry within the US, Marijuana Business Daily reported in its 2016 Marijuana Business Factbook; a majority all marijuana-related businesses – think cultivators, dispensaries, collectives, and the ever popular brick-and-mortar recreational pot shops – reported they were able to “Break-Even” or were “Modestly Profitable,” during the first part of 2016.

Orlando attorney and legal magnate John Morgan is giving the keynote address at the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo, which opened today at Gaylord Palms Meeting Center, 6000 W. Osceola Parkway.

The event costs $800 for the full conference and $400 for meals and exposition only. It began today with a reception and a separate "crash course" for beginners that costs extra. It continues Tuesday and Wednesday with a full schedule.

Morgan, founder of Morgan & Morgan law firm, is also chairman of United for Care, an advocacy group for the legalization of medical marijuana in Florida.

Care for a slice? You’d probably bump into a pot dispensary quicker than you would a Pizza Pizza in Toronto.

There are 100 dispensaries in the city with another 21 scheduled to open in the coming days, according to The Big Toke, a Toronto-based consulting firm for Canadian cannabis brands.

The firm published a map of dispensaries in the city.

By comparison, there are 105 Pizza Pizza outlets in Toronto proper.

Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang is calling on Toronto to adapt their city’s dispensary licencing system.

Inside licensed producer Mettrum’s 1,600-square-metre pot-growing facility — where the rows of Super Lemon Haze really do smell like lemons.

Forget the illegal marijuana “dispensaries” that are popping up like weeds across Toronto and will soon face a crackdown by city staff over zoning.

The only legally available medicinal marijuana is prescribed by a medical doctor, comes from producers licensed — and inspected — by Health Canada, and is delivered directly to patients’ doors by Canada Post.

It was 2007 and the years leading up to it had been very good for John Fritzel.

Then it was 2008 and it wasn’t.

By 2009 the one-time Subway franchisee and  newest would-be real estate mogul was in bankruptcy, another in the line of business failures caught in the contrails of the nation’s economic collapse.

The future was bleak.

“The music just stopped and there weren’t any more chairs,” said Fritzel, whose Subway success opened doors to an ill-fated real estate venture.

Through a new licensing agreement between two Washington-based companies, cannabis-infused sugar and salt can make its way to the state's recreational retail marijuana market.

Seattle-based DeepCell Industries developed a technology to fuse THC from marijuana with crystals, like salt and sugar. Now, Green Labs, a licensed producer/processor in Raymond, have inked a deal to manufacture and distribute DeepCell's brands.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

They climbed to the top of a long list of entrepreneurs in the marijuana industry through acquisition, sweat equity and ruthless pursuit.

Vail’s largest commercial developer. An owner of a car-detail shop. A former nonprofit event planner. A businessman who made a fortune in child car seats. A one-time Subway franchisee bankrupted by real estate losses.

These marijuana business entrepreneurs — Peter Knobel, Joshua Ginsberg, Rhett Jordan, John Lord and John Fritzel — have emerged atop Denver’s pot industry just two years after the first recreational joint was sold. 

In all, they hold 134 marijuana business licenses in Denver — about 13 percent of the total.