Anyone raising capital (finders or company officers), absent an exemption (see Regulation D and employee, officer or director), for any company (private or public) through investors (including friends and/or family) is engaging in the sale of securities and must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the Securities Act. Selling securities unregistered is considered illegal. 

But manufacturing process, potency have caused concerns

Bend resident Tamara Brost became an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program patient after being diagnosed with cancer in 2011 . The marijuana mitigated some of her symptoms, but smoking aggravated her asthma, and edibles, which can take an hour or more to kick in, didn’t provide immediate pain relief.

Flandreau Santee Sioux tribal officials intend to develop a marijuana grow facility on tribal grounds and sell the product in a tribal marijuana lounge.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — Five months from now, according to the plan, Indians and non-Indians alike will be smoking marijuana on tribal lands in Flandreau.

The U.S. Justice Department told Indian tribes last December that they can grow and sell marijuana as long as they follow the same federal conditions laid out for Washington, Colorado and other states that have legalized the drug.

As attitudes toward marijuana become more lenient and states authorize its use for medicinal — or even recreational — purposes, a long simmering debate over the efficacy of workplace drug testing has found a new flash point.

Marijuana accounts for more failed workplace drug tests than any other substance, and the new laws have the potential of decreasing or eliminating employer testing for it.

Defenders of drug testing maintain that employees who use drugs, including marijuana, have been found to miss more work, cause more accidents, change jobs more frequently and ultimately cost employers more money.

It’s called the “Green Rush.”

That’s the name given to the flood of investment into marijuana startups.

In California, new companies are trying to corner different parts of the medical marijuana market, hoping to position themselves for widespread legalization. Delivery is one hot spot for competition.  Companies are jockeying to become the “Uber” of pot.

I’m sitting with Kat Ilera in her apartment, waiting for a delivery of medical marijuana.

Ilera uses medical marijuana to cope with pain and anxiety. She was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer last fall. It quickly metastasized to her liver and spine. On Thanksgiving she got surgery on her back, which left her fairly immobile.

SEATTLE - A landmark restaurant could try to push the limits on menu options by putting pot on customers' plates.

If David Meinert has his way, the kitchen at The 5 Point Café will someday mix marijuana into the cuisine.

Meinert keeps his business edgy - much like the clientele at the restaurant - where tourists rub shoulders with motorcycle clubs. The state already licenses him to sell intoxicating liquors, Meinert said, and he wants to see it expanded to pot.

"I think there would have to be a new kind of retail license," he said.

The sky's the limit on how weed could fit into a food menu, and 5 Point Café customers think it could fly.

The proposed initiative that would allow Denver entrepreneurs to open their 21-and-up business and patio spaces to limited marijuana consumption has divided many in the city – and it’s not even clear yet if the question will land on the city’s November 2015 ballot.

While a new poll commissioned by the activists behind the measure shows voters supporting the initiative, many of the businesses that would decide to either allow cannabis consumption, or not, are vehemently against the proposal.

Less than a month after holding a fundraiser on the sidelines of a Colorado marijuana conference, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is joining the fight to give America’s growing legal marijuana industry access to banking services.

Paul, the first major-party presidential candidate to publicly seek support from legal marijuana industry, is among the bipartisan co-sponsors of the Marijuana Businesses Access to Banking Act of 2015, introduced Thursday in the Senate.

If you thought getting into the marijuana business meant starting a pot farm in Seattle or selling pot infused smoothies in Denver, think again.

That was so five years ago. Now, the cannabis industry has sprung anew.

You see, once the marijuana industry began to boom in 2014 due to legalization in some states, there came about, like any traditional goods-based industry, a fresh crop of for-profit service and infrastructure businesses to support it.

Since then, a successful cannabis ecosystem of financial and other services has been growing like a weed.

A Budding Industry

Here are just a few examples from a plethora of success stories:

Legalized medicinal marijuana is yesterdays’ news; legal recreational marijuana is the way of the world now, and with each passing year, additional states are considering the legalize-and-tax regime first instituted by Colorado and Washington. While state law is becoming more and more accepting of the idea of free-market marijuana, however, a decades-old provision of the federal tax code remains firmly in place, threatening to administer a painful amount of tax on marijuana facilities, and serving as a greater barrier to entry into the industry than any outdated notion of moral or ethical impropriety.