The clusters of chairs and small tables in the waiting area bring to mind a hotel lobby. The counters and islands in the pharmacy make the well-lit, airy space look more like the interior of a high-end jewelry store than a place to buy medication.

When and how many patients will be buzzed into the interior of the Columbia Care of New York at Eastman Business Park and make their own analogy is anybody’s guess — including the head of the company.

“Just to give you a little background, we managed the first dispensary that opened in the Washington, D.C.,” Columbia Care chief executive officer Nicholas Vita said Thursday morning. “We were open for a month before we saw our first patient. That’s not unexpected.”

Ramsin Ishaq can smoke his medically prescribed marijuana all day long at a new medical marijuana smoking and vaping lounge in downtown Windsor, Ont., but health officials say he can't flick the ash from his joint in an ashtray.

Instead, he has to ash his joint on the counter top or table.

That's because health officials ordered the owner of Higher Limits lounge to remove all ashtrays, which cannot be kept inside any business under Ontario's tobacco laws.

The situation is a bit of an odd conundrum for the owner, Jon Liedtke. Those same tobacco laws have no mention of marijuana, which is why he can legally operate a smoking and vaping lounge that caters to medical marijuana users.

Seeking a haven in Colorado's legal marijuana marketplace, illegal drug traffickers are growing weed among the state's sanctioned pot warehouses and farms, then covertly shipping it elsewhere and pocketing millions of dollars from the sale, according to law enforcement officials and court records consulted by The Associated Press.

As new industries arise, old problems can resurface and cause a lot of headaches for employers. The most common one for employers right now is employee status. Who is considered an employee? How can you provide work for someone without being responsible for workers compensation premiums for them, especially if the work is high risk?

It often makes more sense in a burgeoning industry to farm out some operations to independent contractors. Non-employee producers are less expensive since they don’t require as much oversight, equipment or space as employees. Businesses also don’t have to provide workers compensation insurance coverage or employee benefits like medical insurance or paid vacation time to these workers, and training costs are nil.

Oregon's medical marijuana advocates say the state's proposed rules for production impose expensive and unnecessary burdens on growers and will ultimately harm patients who rely on the drug to cope with a wide range of health problems.

The Oregon Health Authority's draft rules, set to take effect March 1, are part of a sweeping law passed last year that regulates Oregon's cannabis industry.

Call it Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s secret stash.

A new report from CIBC World Markets says Canada’s federal and provincial governments could reap as much as $5 billion annually in tax revenues from the sale of legal marijuana.

CIBC economist Avery Shenfeld crunched the numbers using current estimates of Canadian recreational pot consumption, the revenue experience in U.S. states that have legalized, and other factors – such as prevailing “sin tax” rates on alcohol and tobacco.

The Liberal government has promised to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana and has made MP Bill Blair, the former Toronto police chief, the lead on investigating a new regulatory model.

TACOMA, Wash. (AP) — The Puyallup Tribe of Indians is opening a marijuana testing laboratory, marking their first foray into the Washington’s budding marijuana industry.

The News Tribune of Tacoma reports that Gov. Jay Inslee signed a compact this week to make the move official.

The lab will be housed in a Fife building that houses the tribe’s cancer-treatment center and will offer safety and potency tests to holders of state marijuana licenses.

They Puyallup Tribe is the third tribe in the state to take advantage of a 2014 U.S. Department of Justice policy calling for respecting tribal policies on marijuana and a 2015 state law outlining the compact process.

Hemp growers look to oil, rather than fiber, to make good money

The Oregon Department of Agriculture will resume issuing licenses for hemp growers in late February just as the industry is veering away from industrial uses and toward the more lucrative market of medical marijuana products.

Hemp is a hybrid cousin of marijuana but with low levels of THC, the chemical that produces the high. It has been used over the centuries for fiber, clothing, food, oil and other industrial purposes. But since the legalization of medical marijuana 18 years ago, growers have found that hemp's high levels of cannabidiol can provide patients with some of the same medical benefits as marijuana but without the psychotropic effects.

Since entering the cannabis space in 2013, Leslie Bocskor and his Las Vegas-based investment firm, Electrum Partners, have become high-profile oracles, investors, and advisers. It’s not just because Bocskor looks cool. He’s a passionate, demanding, clear-sighted financier who’s grounded the cannabis investment world in old-school virtues like research, market analysis, and due diligence. 

Greenhouse Ventures is a Philadelphia-based startup accelerator program that seeks to bring new ancillary businesses to fruition.

There are a few business accelerator programs that currently exist in the cannabis space, but Greenhouse Ventures (GHV), based in downtown Philadelphia, seeks to fill a gap in helping ancillary businesses get off the ground. Through a ten-week, 90-hour curriculum, program, Greenhouse Ventures assists startups by increasing their business model sophistication.