Banks are leery about signing up marijuana dispensary owners as customers. Giving pot store owners checking accounts and credit cards could open the door to a federal investigation.

As a result, the cannabis industry is struggling with how to deal with the mountains of cash it takes in, which at best, is an inconvenience, and at worst is an easy target for robbers. Increasingly, dispensary owners are turning to a burgeoning mini-industry of “ganjapreneurs” who provide store security and payment systems.

“These guys are basically showing up at the tax assessor’s offices with duffel bags of cash to pay their taxes,” George Jage, publisher of Marijuana Business Daily, said in describing one of the odd consequences of being on the banking blacklist.

BILLINGS, Mont. – Gone are the flashing green neon lights on street corners advertising $200 ounces of marijuana in Billings and Butte and beyond. Gone are the traveling cannabis caravans of doctors infamous for signing up hundreds of medical marijuana hopefuls in a single day.

The vast majority of the nearly 30,000 patients and 4,900 providers that once flooded this state of just more than 1 million people have been driven out of Montana’s medical marijuana program, which was first legalized in 2004.

While Israel is busy sorting out regulation for the natural gas reserves off its shores, a development considered a boon for Israel’s economy, could it be missing an even bigger opportunity in the field of medical cannabis? That was the general consensus at a Thursday conference on how Israel’s farmers could benefit from the growing global market for medical cannabis, hosted by Israel Loss Adjusters Association.

“The US cannabis market stands at $35 billion a year.

Are we able to give up revenues from this market?” asked Doron Havkin, the ILAA’s chairman.

Thanks to the proliferation of high-tech consumer services like Uber and Apple Pay, the business world is trending toward improving customer experiences using automated technologies. But how will these developments advance the business world one year from now? How about five years down the road?

To find out which trends are top of mind for business professionals, I asked 11 entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) to explain which consumer trends they believe will change the way we do business over the next five years. Their answers are below.

1. Retail will become more service oriented

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — It’s been two years since Rhode Island launched its medical marijuana market and opened dispensaries around the state, but tax revenues haven’t been quite as high as state officials expected.

There are now three medical marijuana dispensaries — also known as compassion centers — selling pot to patients in Rhode Island, with the state collecting a 4 percent surcharge and a 7 percent sales tax on all their sales. While revenues are increasing, some compassion centers say they’re facing increasing competition from caregivers who can grow and sell medical marijuana without paying taxes to the state.

Still burning from the January rejection of its long-sought Kenosha casino, leaders of the Menominee tribe will find out this week whether tribal members want to tap a new vice to help it find economic bliss — growing and selling marijuana.

The approximately 9,000 members will vote Wednesday and Thursday in a two-question advisory referendum asking whether the Menominee should legalize marijuana on their reservation for medical and/or recreational use. If either question is approved, tribal legislators would begin the process of writing ordinances to legalize weed on the reservation, located near Shawano, said Gary Besaw, tribal chairman.

Entrepreneurs in the world of pot face a double-edged sword. As new legal markets open, consumers rush to buy products they couldn’t before and the first companies to enter those markets and establish their brands can see strong sales. At the same time, restrictions posed by business partners can hamper marketing activities, even on those companies that don’t “touch the plant.” Graham Gibson, CEO of KandyPens, attests to that first hand. He sells vaporizers for medical marijuana patients and recreational users but can barely say so.

The best cannabis contracts are those that never need to be enforced. The most important goal in contract negotiation is for the parties to determine their obligations and when those obligations are due to each other. Everything else is secondary.

That said, things can and do go wrong in business transactions. Maybe a party tries to back out of the deal. More common is that the circumstances surrounding the deal change and the parties cannot agree on which side was to bear the risk of the change in circumstances. One thing leads to another, and we have litigation. Costly litigation.

Regulators in California’s north coast region have passed the country’s first rules governing the water-related impact of marijuana cultivation.

The new regulations will force pot growers to be responsible for anycontamination of water or land degradation.

But, despite the 5-1 vote, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board is unlikely to face a smooth roll-out of the new oversight and regulation.