Green Technology Solutions, Inc., together with its 3D printing partner, 6th Dimension Technologies, today announced it is seeking a suitable manufacturer for its 3D printed, child-proof cannabis containers.

American attitudes toward cannabis have changed a lot in forty years. In the early 1970s, Richard Nixon initiated the divisive “War on Drugs”, incarcerating substance users on an unprecedented scale. Today, the legal landscape has changed. Numerous objective studies have demonstrated the relative harmlessness of cannabis, as well as its positive medicinal properties. The psychoactive drug is now legal in the states of Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, and is used both medicinally and recreationally.

Sidelined by a workplace injury that left him with chronic back pain and already suffering from fibromyalgia and post-concussion syndrome attributed to years of playing contact sports, Rick Vrecic was taking a cocktail of prescription medication just to make it through the day.

About seven years ago, Vrecic relied on as many as five Percocets, 90 mg of morphine and two 80 mg Oxycodone pills daily. It wasn’t until after his doctor gave him a prescription for medical marijuana that his life radically improved.

“I’ve replaced (the pills) with four to five (medicinal) cookies a day, which won’t destroy my liver or stomach and won’t make me feel like a walking zombie,” he told The Villager.

Rose McGowan is in the dope game.

The “Charmed” star was overheard talking about the pot business Wednesday at the Galore magazine bash at Parlor, where guests were smoking free (non-marijuana) Hestia cigarettes.

The actress and director told us, “I’m not going into the marijuana business — I am already in it, as an investor.”

McGowan is also going to direct and produce a Western movie about a Native American girl-biker gang called “Death Valley Hell Cats,” she revealed.

“Very smart, very gritty, and not salacious,” she said. “Think ‘Easy Rider,’ but with pissed-off women.”

New Frontier, the leading Big Data provider in the cannabis industry, analyzes the high energy costs associated with cultivating marijuana in its latest report, Illuminating Cannabis: The Future of Energy in the Cannabis Industry. Marijuana is the most energy intensive agricultural crop produced in the U.S. Its production consumes one percent of the country’s electrical output at a cost of $6 billion annually, using the energy equivalent of 1.7 million homes.

While many Alaska communities are looking to tighten restrictions on marijuana businesses, two Southeast cities are hoping for fewer constraints on the fledgling cannabis industry.

Petersburg and Sitka, two island cities in Southeast Alaska, have asked the state to reconsider its rules about buffer zones, saying they want more freedom to choose how far a marijuana business must be from certain facilities.

Under Alaska’s commercial marijuana laws, canna-businesses must be 500 feet from schools, churches, correctional facilities, and recreational or youth centers.

Ontario plans to allow up to 300 grocery stores to sell wine across the province, starting with 70 locations slated to begin this fall, Premier Kathleen Wynne has announced. 

"Imported and domestic wines will be sold at up to 150 grocery stores," the province said in a statement.

"As well, up to 150 existing winery retail stores that are currently just outside a grocery store checkout will be permitted to operate their store inside that grocery store, with a shared checkout, and broaden their assortment to sell the wines of any Ontario producer."

At a news conference Thursday in Toronto, Wynne said "people in Ontario will now be able to buy wine with their cheese." 

A number of area attorneys are telling The Compassion Chronicles that medical marijuana dispensaries are being raided by the Detroit Police Department, despite assurances that businesses of that type will begin licensing procedures on March 1.

Although attorneys are reluctant to release the names of the dispensaries involved, it seems more than a dozen raids or ‘visits’ by DPD have been executed in the last two weeks. Dispensaries in the city have been renamed “medical marihuana caregiver centers” (MMCC) by the City Council.

Marijuana has attracted many labels in its time. On Friday, Colorado lawmakers debate whether the state should give the drug one more often associated with purple carrots than purple haze — certified organic.

Colorado starts work Friday on becoming the first state to regulate organic labels in its pot industry, with other legal weed states watching to see whether they too should step in to help consumers wondering what's on their weed. Organic standards are regulated federally, and pot remains illegal at the federal level, meaning there's nothing stopping commercial pot growers from calling their wares organic.

As the state readies for the implementation of a legal cannabis industry in the next few months, Alaska Public Media is profiling one business along every step of the way.

Jane Stinson is is a “green entrepreneur” hoping to open a family-run retail shop in Anchorage. But the last few months of tracking regulations, securing a location, and figuring out how to start a new business that banks won’t lend to has not been easy.

Stinson is not exactly who you think of as the face of legal pot in Alaska. She’s in her 60s, tall, with the calming presence of a sturdy aunt.

“I’ve been in Alaska for 36 years, and my background has been in the oil and gas industry, so I had my career there and just recently retired.”

A law passed in the ’80s to prevent drug dealers from getting tax breaks is now taking a huge chomp out of legitimate outfits in Colorado and Washington.

Legal marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington have grossed billions, but legal dealers will see little of that thanks to a draconian federal law meant to punish street pushers.