If achieving a glistening, golden-hour slideshow on Vanity Fair’s website alongside Hollywood happenings and New York Fashion Week news last month is any indication — farm-to-table dinners paired with spirits and cannabis are officially a thing, breaking new ground toward cultural acceptance.

A couple of weeks after the 2014 Election, during which Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. voted to legalize marijuana, all eyes turned to California. California is, and has always been, the ‘top prize’ for marijuana reform efforts. It’s estimated that almost half of the marijuana industry in America is located in California. Think about that for a minute. The marijuana industry is MASSIVE, and getting bigger everyday, and half of that industry is located in one state.

A majority of Florida voters support legalizing recreational marijuana use in the state, according to a Quinnipiac University swing-state poll released Thursday. The survey found 51 percent of Florida voters supported legalizing personal use of marijuana, while 45 percent were against.

That happy, invincible feeling you get when you’re floating through the air at the peak of a workout? Now, a new research done on mice has found that endorphins have nothing to do with “runner’s high”.

The researchers found that, in addition to appearing more calm less sensitive to pain after running, the mice had higher levels of both endorphins and endocannabinoids.

Endorphins are known to be natural painkillers and give us that energy boost & happiness after all this intense physical activity. All mice were then watched for signs of anxiety (i.e. preference for darkness, pain intolerance, etc.). That is what led to the easy, logical and pure rationalization that they have been what should be blamed for the phenomenon often called runner’s excessive.

Step aside, Comedy Central. Beat it, MTV. Eat your heart out, Food Channel.

A new media darling is tapping into the wants and needs of an emerging social culture: people who smoke pot, both medicinally and, in a growing number of states, simply to get high.

It's called Cannabis Club TV, or CCTV, the brainchild of Danny Keith and Pete Biggam. The two Santa Cruz partners with tattoos and hipster get-ups happen to be pot consumers themselves for, you know, those nasty aches and pains.

Their goal is to provide a platform for marijuana advertisers to reach potential customers — a burgeoning pot business community that is now, unlike the large U.S. pharmaceutical firms, precluded from such conventional outlets as TV and newspaper advertising.

A new poll suggests men are far more likely than women to support legalized marijuana for recreational use, and experts say the reason why is simple.

Recent polling in presidential swing states suggests that the majority of Ohio and Florida voters support the legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Pennsylvania voters were mixed on the issue. And for some reason, men were far more likely than women to approve of legal cannabis.

As MPs in the UK prepare to debate cannabis legalisation, Transform's new report on Colorado, which became the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise cannabis in 2012, demonstrates the benefits of ending the criminalisation of users and putting government in control of the trade.

Despite dire predictions, early evidence suggests that legalisation in Colorado has had the following positive outcomes:

The hemp market—at least for food products—is heavily weighted toward grain-based products including cereals and cereal bars.  Those are the two big food categories. Hemp is used quite widely in non-food categories. It looks like more of the cutting-edge innovation is coming from overseas markets as you can see spreads and even a coffee product with hemp.
 
Here’s insight from an April 2015 presentation on hemp that I gave at Ingredients Marketplace that includes the following insights:
 

For decades, buying pot off the street sometimes meant you had to take the seller’s word about the quality and origin of their product. But with some states legalizing retail marijuana sales in the U.S., there’s an opportunity for consumer safeguards and increased transparency for pot purchasers.

Colorado and federal agents have raided illegal marijuana operations across the state the past six weeks in a concerted effort to take out syndicates marketing marijuana to different parts of the country.

U.S. Attorney John Walsh’s staff has filed numerous criminal charges in recent weeks against illegal operations that are secretly growing marijuana in Colorado for shipment across the country.

“This wave of marijuana grow operation sites is greater than we’ve seen the last couple of years,” Walsh said. “They seem to have the view that if I come to Colorado and set up a marijuana grow operation I won’t be noticed.”