Josh Khankhanian stuck his nose deep into a jar of dense, multicolored marijuana flowers on Saturday and cracked a broad smile. The pot was pungent, and this grower from Mendocino County, California, can consider himself a connoisseur after three years on the job. But what was especially pleasing about this particular sniff is that it was of flower grown on a southern Oregon farm owned by Elizabeth and Nick Luca-Mahmood that could hardly be more sustainable, its plants raised on a nearly closed-loop farming method that battles pests and disease not with insecticides and herbicides but diversity—specifically, diversity in poop.

“There are a lot of cannabis growers still using old procedures,” Khankhanian told Newsweek. “This is better.”

Security cameras and barbed wire suggested this was the right place -- the old warehouse on a dead-end street not far from the White House that hosts one of the handful of legal marijuana farms in the US capital.

"We're going to do the visit with a panic button... in case of a break-in," Matt Lawson-Baker, the co-owner of Alternative Solutions, told AFP.

Alternative Solutions is one of seven facilities in Washington authorized to grow medical marijuana for nearly 3,700 local patients.

Cannabis legalization challenges a lot of the norms we have held to be true. It has been considered an illegal drug for decades and hasn't been allowed in the workplace.

Legalization of medical cannabis has been the first challenge for employers and legal recreational use brings up many more questions.

The thing that's unique about cannabis is it has both medical and recreational uses. This means there have to be two sets of rules in the workplace – accommodating medical use and restricting recreational usage.

We have established in past articles that employers have a duty to accommodate medical cannabis in the workplace when a patient has a valid prescription.

Recreational consumers will have different rules than medical ones

The process of legalizing pot for recreational use isn't expected to start until next year, but medical marijuana is already a hit in Calgary.

A local clinic that works exclusively in cannabis has about 5,500 patients.

"I do this because I believe that cannabis is a safer alternative to many of the medications that I have prescribed over the course of my career," said Dr. Stephanie Mason, the medical doctor at Natural Health Services. 

Mason, a psychiatrist with 30 years of experience, made the full-time switch to the world of medical marijuana last fall. 

Who are the patients?

Gov. Terry Branstad said Monday he’s open to the idea of medical cannabis oil being produced in Iowa, but he’s still focused on limiting “unintended consequences."

“If it’s just limited to the oil, that might be something that could be looked at,” he said. “I’ll keep an open mind. But again, there’s a lot different ideas and a lot of different proposals out there, and nothing reached a consensus point during this last session.”

This very second, Silicon Valley startups are doing what they do best: working out how to grab a piece of the booming market in marijuana. Confident Cannabis, for example, is one start-up that’s put out a call for coders and techies to develop their front and backend software. Their aim is primarily making getting high “as easy as ordering delivery food.”

Jessie Young is the manager of medical marijuana dispensary in Toronto, which opened in February. He says dispensaries follow the same rules as licensed producers and provides patients with in-person options.

Storefront shops 'not what the federal government envisioned,' city official says.

Toronto's growing number of medical marijuana dispensaries are breaking the rules and could pay for it with tens of thousands of dollars in fines, one city official is warning.  

Mark Sraga, the city's director of investigation services for municipal licensing and standards, told CBC News Monday the city plans to start enforcing legislation related to marijuana shops in the coming months.

The forecasts for legal U.S. cannabis sales are in the billions.

But entrepreneurs in the weed trade, despite landing in hot markets like Colorado, face a bit of a reality check. That's due, in part, to a lack of traditional financing tools like banking, and still growing stream of venture capital into the industry.

"There's this misconception that everyone is rolling in the money here," said Jill Lamoureux, a Colorado-based cannabis business expert.

"Fundraising, particularly in cannabis, is a black box to new entrepreneurs."-Nick Hofmeister, mentor at CanopyBoulder, an accelerator program

Most cannabis businesses know the importance of having good quality online content. Your website is your digital storefront. In many cases, it’s your customer’s first (or only) introduction to your brand. Good content is important not only for getting the right customers to your site, but also crucial for getting them to stick around long enough to make a purchase.

Developing a comprehensive content strategy that takes into account each of your target audiences as well as your own business objectives can be challenging, but it’s not impossible. The following are three examples of content strategies I would suggest you avoid.

urban-gro is augmenting its expertise on the East Coast with the addition of former MedCann Advisors CEO Mark Doherty as Director of Sales. In this role, Doherty will work to meet urban-gro’s revenue growth objectives with commercial Cannabis cultivation facilities east of the Mississippi River. Doherty is based out of Utica, New York.  

“As legalization marches down the East Coast, Cannabis producers need urban-gro’s core expertise in lighting solutions, integrated pest management, fertigation and water treatment,” Doherty said. “My experience with large scale horticulture provides me with the knowledge to help commercial Cannabis cultivators determine product solutions for both start-up and established cultivators.”