Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize marijuana for recreational use in the U.S., have brought in about $200 million in tax revenue, collectively. And the revenue is already benefiting the states and their residents.

“Our philosophy has been that marijuana pays its own way,” said J. Skyler McKinley, deputy director of the Office of Marijuana Coordination in Colorado. “Every dime we bring in from legalization is dedicated to the cost of legalization. That’s regulatory framework first, then public education campaigns about safe and responsible use and then prevention and treatment programs.”

This is the first of what I hope will be many posts for The Weed Blog. I am going to be writing about the business end of cannabis. The business end of business really, because that is what I know the most about. But first…

Washington State’s newly legal cannabis capitalists don’t tend to agree on much. Ask any one of them about any current pot-business topic—the regulation of medical marijuana, indoor versus outdoor grows, whether labs fudge pesticide and potency test results for favored clients—and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a passionate harangue. But the more you talk to them, the more they seem to agree on one refrain: However volatile our market might seem, and however much investment capital is sloshing around trying to turn itself into profit, the big bucks haven’t even shown up yet.

Florence Childs hopes to sell her Spokane-area Washington Pot Shop. Photo by Max Lathrop

While many retirees spend time in their gardens, 82-year-old Florence Childs has chosen to work with another kind of plant. In 2014 she won the license for, and created the Top Shelf recreational cannabis store near Spokane Washington. Small and tidy, friendly and well-stocked, the store attracts tourists, locals and a handful of regulars who stop in everyday to “pick up a cookie or something,” said Childs. Yep, grandma built a pot shop.

DENVER — Whether bought from a downtown shop or cadged from a friend’s basement greenhouse, legal marijuana is easy to find in Colorado. Places to smoke it, not so much.

In less than three weeks, High Valley Farms will learn whether it will remain in business. 

The fate of the marijuana greenhouses, however, isn’t about rent spikes, plummeting revenue or dying business. Instead, this high-stakes battle, which has played out in a series of Pitkin County commissioners meetings over the year, concerns the skunk-like pot odors the greenhouses have been generating since they began operating in March. 

Ohio's proposal to legalize recreational and medical marijuana is being met with opposition from residents who generally support legalizing pot. iStockphoto hide caption

Yellow Springs is a small college town in Ohio that has more than one head shop and a lot of tie-dye and hemp.

Many would consider it ground zero for likely supporters of the referendum on the ballot this November that could make Ohio the fifth state to legalize recreational and medical marijuana.

But the proposal is drawing some unusual opposition — and it's coming from residents who generally support legalizing marijuana.

Among the inivestors in the for-profit marijuana-legalization plan are legendary basketball player Oscar Robertson, left; entertainer Nick Lachey, center; and two great-great-grandnephews of President William Howard Taft.

There is a doctor, a developer, an NBA legend, a fashion designer, a knight, an ex-boy-band member, a professional football player and two relatives of a U.S. president.

Despite their widely varied backgrounds, investors in the for-profit ResponsibleOhio marijuana-legalization plan have something in common: They all want to make money, and lots of it.

In November of this year, I will be the guest of the American Consulate in Poland in order to deliver a number of classes on entrepreneurship and business excellence at several universities in Kraków. Today, I received an email from a contact in Russia that is interested in possibly hosting a few business seminars in Moscow, and in that email, he asked me for a “bullet point” list of business tips to put in their newsletter to promote the events. So I sat down and tried to come up with the ten most important things I could offer, and I thought the list turned out pretty cool, so here it is.

It was 20 years ago that Trevor Holness was arrested for marijuana possession in Vancouver. He had just turned 18 and was out with friends at the annual fireworks celebration on English Bay, Holness recounted in a telephone interview.

Today he lives in Burnaby as a family man with a career and a mortgage. But Holness conceded that back then, he was “a bit of a delinquent”.

“I was pulled aside during an altercation between my friends and some other friends,” he said of that night. “And I was arrested.”