The burning debate over legalizing marijuana was on full display last week. HBO’s Real Time host Bill Maher sparked up a joint on TV, blowing smoke in the face of lawmakers and challenging them to come to their senses.

Here in Canada, Bill Blair, Toronto’s former top cop, has been put in charge of the pot portfolio. Blair has repeated, in multiple interviews, that while he supports legalization, the emphasis will be on “control” and “strict regulation” — something the current marijuana industry knows all too well.

I decided to strap on a lab coat and hairnet to obtain an inside look at one of Canada’s fastest-growing industries: The bud business.

The Oregon Department of Revenue says nearly a quarter of the recreational marijuana dispensaries haven't registered to pay the first installment tax on pot sales.

As legal marijuana markets continue to expand in the United States, some experts are arguing that growers have both the need and the opportunity to make their operations, well, greener. A new report, published by data analysis firm New Frontier, highlights the huge energy footprint of marijuana cultivation and outlines strategies to make production more energy efficient -- a transition that the authors claim is not only good for the environment, but good for business, too.

Wellington County OPP say three men and one youth were arrested during a break-in in progress at a medicinal marijuana grow operation in Erin, Ont., northwest of Brampton, on Thursday.

Police were called to the Health Canada-authorized grow operation on Side Road 17 in Erin at 12:08 p.m. on Thursday, for a report of a break-in in progress.

Charges laid indicate the suspects were carrying firearms and wearing some sort of disguise.

Three men ranging in age from 19 to 26 as well as a 16-year-old boy from Brampton were arrested, police said.

They each face seven charges including break and enter, disguise with intent, conspiracy, and firearms offences.

All four suspects appeared in a Guelph bail court on Friday.

DENVER (CBS4)– A committee in the state House has endorsed a bill to create a program to certify marijuana as organic.

The Public Health Care and Human Services committee sent the bill to the finance committee on Friday. The bill directs the state agricultural department to get a third party to draft certification regulations.

If it passes, Colorado would be the first state to regulate organic labels in the pot industry.

Although organic standards are regulated on the federal level, the U.S. government considers pot an illegal substance. That makes it difficult when marijuana growers want to call their product organic.

SEATTLE, WA / ACCESSWIRE / February 19, 2016 / Marijuana has been legalized in some form in 27 US states - including four that have legalized recreational marijuana - and an additional 16 states may legalize the drug in one form or another over the next year. Add that in along with Canada's new Prime Minister vowing to legalize recreational Marijuana on a national scale in the near future, and it is easy to see why state regulators and law enforcement officials have been scrambling to develop and enforce marijuana related laws to protect the public.

New Zealand could miss the boat as an exporter of medicinal cannabis, horticulture expert Dr Mike Nichols said.

Nichols, writing in the latest issue of the horticulture magazine, NZGrower, said New Zealand could miss out in much the same way as it did with the opium poppy trade, which is now dominated by Tasmania.

"The potential to grow medicinal cannabis in New Zealand at this point in time as an export crop would appear to be excellent," Nichols said.

"The value of a kilogram of medicinal cannabis compared with a kilogram of Pinus radiata is a clear example showing that New Zealand should be producing, and exporting, high value and low volume products," Nichols said.

SpeedWeed, the service that delivers medical marijuana straight to your door, is being sued by the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office, who is alleging that it violates Proposition D.

City Attorney Mike Feuer announced today that his office has filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to halt SpeedWeed, alleging that Proposition D—which passed in 2013 and limits the number of dispensaries in the city—does not permit a medical marijuana business to transport, deliver or distribute medical marijuana.

When a Markham father and son’s lease for the medical marijuana site they were maintaining expired, they were forced to get creative and move the operation to the town of Stayner, where the family owned a farm.

Despite having a valid licence from Health Canada to grow 1,025 plants — a limit to which they were adhering — and a lawyer’s letter in hand explaining their actions, their farm was busted by cops and the men were arrested in September 2015.

Zhangjian and Zheng Min Fan now face three years in prison.

First use of governor's order that would destroy tainted weed over worries it contains potentially harmful pesticides

Colorado marijuana regulators Friday announced they have put a large but undisclosed number of plants and products on hold from two cultivation facilities over concerns they were treated with unapproved pesticides.

The health-and-safety advisory by the state's Marijuana Enforcement Division is the first use of an executive order by Gov. John Hickenlooper issued in November declaring pesticide-ladden pot a "public safety risk."