To make a truly informed cannabis-buying decision, you have to smell the product. And I don't mean taking a dainty whiff. You've got get in there and really inhale, because smelling it — really focusing on the fragrance — may just be the best way to choose your cannabis.

“Depending on what the scent is, it can make or break a strain for people,” said Tyson Dieter, a manager at the Southwest Portland outlet of Nectar, an Oregon cannabis retailer.

Daily Stock Reporter is issuing a report on four stocks to watch. VAPE, HEMP, TRTC, and CBIS have been added to our watchlist yesterday.

This past January marked the first month that the state of Oregon collected taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana, marking another milestone in the state’s unfolding experiment with legalized pot.

But it was the amount collected in taxes in January that raised eyebrows in Salem and around the state: The Oregon Department of Revenue pegged the amount at $3.8 million.

Let’s put that number into perspective: Obviously, no one knew for sure what sort of sales would result from the voter-mandated decision to make recreational use of marijuana legal, so state economists admitted that their estimates were little more than guesses. But they figured that Oregon would collect somewhere between $3 million and $4 million in tax revenue a year.

The Sisters of the Valley have created a market for remedies made with the drug, but now they've been stopped in their tracks

A group of nuns is kicking against social norms by growing MARIJUANA at their convent - and selling it for medical purposes.

But their healthcare remedies are under threat thanks to removal from a popular online store.

The Sisters of the Valley are a sisterhood based in Merced, California who are not Catholic or traditionally religious, but consider themselves nuns.

Zoned Properties, a medical-marijuana real-estate company, is developing what it bills as the state's first "medical-marijuana business park."

The Scottsdale-based company announced on March 17 that it had signed a deal to lease 25,000 square feet of space in a building near 52nd Street and University Drive in Tempe, with an option to lease 40,000 square feet. As a press release notes, Zoned Properties lobbied Tempe successfully to change its zoning requirements a few months ago, allowing 25,000-square-foot medical-marijuana cultivation and food-processing facilities.

When you think of cannabis and innovation, Israel likely doesn't come to mind. But as we've recently highlighted here on MERRY JANE, Israel is advanced when it comes to cannabis-related exploration.

Last week marked the second annual CannaTech conference, an international summit dedicated to accelerating cannabis innovation. 

The three-day event held in the capital city of Tel Avi featured courses on Israel's so-called 'Green Rush' including entrepreneurship, best practices in growing and research on the region's unique relationship with cannabis. It’s easy to see Israel quickly becoming a hub for the global cannabis community - and rightfully so.

If other products can be rebranded, why not marijuana? After all, it's an industry that's expected to reach $44 billion in sales by 2020.

Unfortunately, advertisers are reluctant to be associated with the pot business because of its murky legal status. It doesn't help that the public's negative perception of the product has been shaped over the decades by everything from the 1930s' anti-pot movie "Reefer Madness" to the late Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign during the 1980s as well as more recent efforts by opponents of legalization.

Cannabis industry sales projected to grow from $5.4B in 2015 to $21B in 2020.

With its moat, wall, barbed wire, armed guards and security cameras, the facility could be mistaken for a military base if it weren’t for the pungent odor of marijuana in the air.

Here, on the outskirts of a quiet village in northern Israel, 50,000 plants of 230 varieties grow at the country’s second-largest medical cannabis plantation.

“For cannabis, we are in the promised land with a good climate, 300 days of sunshine each year and perfect levels of humidity,” said Tamir Gedo, head of BOL Pharma, a company authorized by the Health Ministry to grow and distribute medical cannabis.

The recreational use of cannabis is illegal in the Jewish state, but for the past 10 years its therapeutic use has not only been permitted but also encouraged.

If Massachusetts voters approve an expected ballot measure this fall legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, the state could become home to a $1.1 billion cannabis industry by 2020, according to a report.

The research, released last week by the marijuana data and investment firms ArcView Market Research and New Frontier , predicts the advent of legal marijuana would make Massachusetts a thriving hub of “canna-tourism” in the Northeast, depending on whether neighboring states also legalize marijuana.