Jan 1, 2016 – Signal Bay Inc (OTC:SGBY) reports that the US CannabisBenchmarks™ Spot Price Index for the week ending Jan 1 is up 1% to $2,030/lb or $4.48 per gram.                                       Average deal size was 15 pounds.

A Portland cannabis cultivator has raised $2.8 million in the last three months.

Created last January by a former Silicon Valley startup founder, HiFi Farms started raising seed money in October. The company will stop at about $3 million, said the company's creator.

A large chunk, $1.8 million, went toward a 50-acre farm in Hillsboro, where company founder Sara Batterby's first generation plant clones are now growing.

Banks in Oregon are rejecting money from legal marijuana businesses over fears that they will face federal money-laundering charges and lose their FDIC insurance if they serve those business. Are the banks’ fears justified? We look at the many challenges facing cannabis business owners on the Lip News with Jose Marcelino Ortiz and Jo Ankier.

Fairbanks first marijuana business has been open for just over a month. “The Higher Calling” – or THC – is one of several so-called “clubs” in the state that have arisen since voter’s passage of a marijuana legalization initiative in 2014.

Clubs like Fairbanks’ “The Higher Calling” do not sell marijuana. The Higher Calling’s co-owner Megan Mooers describes her downtown area business as a private club for cannabis enthusiasts.

“Membership allows you use of the building to bring your own cannabis products to use or smoke,” Mooers said.

Mooers says the club, which offers coffee, snacks and a game room, signed up 130 paying members in its first month of operation.

As the company prepares to sell the medical marijuana, it follows two sets of regulations for the sale of its products next month, a state law passed only 18-months ago and an even older edict of Torah.

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Dec. 30, 2015) -

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California’s new medical marijuana laws were supposed to provide more structure and clarity for the state’s loosely regulated, billion-dollar industry, but in the past few weeks, dozens of municipalities have ignored that intention by moving quickly to ban delivery and other activities codified by the legislation.

Advocates and legislators hope the bans are only a minor setback in the effort to show federal regulators and voters that California — the first state to legalize medical marijuana two decades ago — can provide order to a medical weed sector that has been haphazardly regulated.

The cannabis industry is filled with passionate, forward-thinking people who have devoted their life's work to changing people's perceptions. But the question remains - how do people become involved in the cannabis industry in the first place? It turns out everyone has a unique personal journey that has brought them to the world of cannabis. Each week cannabis professionals, activists, and others will tell their stories in their own words. This essay comes from Lisa Campbell, the Chair of Women Grow Toronto.

In July 2014, five companies were awarded licenses by the New York State Health Department to grow and sell marijuana in the state, and in New York City. One of them, a Minneapolis-based company called Vireo Health, which produces “pharmaceutical-grade cannabis-derived medicine,” announced Wednesday that all of its products had received kosher certification from the Orthodox Union.

BELLEVILLE -