Marijuana legalization has been growing like a weed for the past two decades, but 2016 could prove to be its most monumental year yet. Although marijuana has gained 24 state approvals for medicinal use, and four states have legalized its recreational use, we could see up to 12 separate approvals for the currently illicit drug in November.

This expansion is especially important because current President Barack Obama has suggested that the best way to get the attention of Congress is to continue legalizing the drug at the state level. Doing so would eventually force lawmakers to reconsider the federal government's current Schedule 1 stance on the drug.

A group dedicated to keeping marijuana illegal has launched an effort to convince city councils across the country to actively oppose measures to end cannabis prohibition that are expected to appear on at least five state ballots this November.

Hitting the gridiron means dealing with aches and pains, but for Baltimore Ravens left tackle Eugene Monroe that doesn't mean he's willing to accept future penalties. Monroe was one of the many advocates of marijuana research at UNLV on Wednesday for a symposium.

"We are warriors, we're gladiators, no one wants to talk about wants to hear about your pain," said Monroe.

Monroe has witnessed how professional athletes rely on prescription drugs like opiates to deal with the pain of injury. Wednesday, Monroe stepped up as the first active NFL player to advocate for cannabis research.

"Medical cannabis has a way to mitigate pain, and potentially has the ability to protect our brain," said Monroe.

“Gardening is one of the single biggest acts of protest for consumerism.” – Dragonfly Earth Medicine

As the marijuana movement gains momentum nationwide, more stories in the media are drawing attention to the fact that our precious greens are in reality, not so green.

Dragonfly Earth Medicine (DEM) is here to set the standard for sustainability with their Pure Certification, and the standard is being set sky-high.

Cannabis consumers are turning to more discreet concentrates and oils.

Smoking pot will soon be as retro as smoking a cigar or enjoying a fine wine.

As the legal market for marijuana expands, product offerings have diversified from the standard dried flowers and cannabis-infused edible items like cookies and gummy bears to vaporizable oils and concentrates. They have become a major portion of legal marijuana sales, allowing consumers more potent and less overt forms of consumption. “Patients don’t want to be stigmatized or ostracized, they don’t want to be obvious,” says Rob Hunt, a general partner at cannabis-focused private-equity firm Tuatara Capital. “It’s important for people to have alternative forms of consumption, to consume in a way that’s anonymous.”

Six states that allow marijuana use legal tests to determine driving while impaired by the drug that have no scientific basis, according to a study by the nation's largest automobile club that calls for scrapping those laws.

The study commissioned by AAA's safety foundation said it's not possible to set a blood-test threshold for THC, the chemical in marijuana that makes people high, that can reliably determine impairment.

Yet the laws in five of the six states automatically presume a driver guilty if that person tests higher than the limit, and not guilty if it's lower.

As a result, drivers who are unsafe may be going free while others may be wrongly convicted, the foundation said.

Voters will soon be deciding if recreational or medical marijuana is right for their state.

This could be a transformative year in more ways than one. Not only are voters heading to the polls in six months to decide who should become the next President of the United States of America, but voters in quite a few states could be heading to their respective state polls to decide whether or not to expand the use of medical or recreational marijuana within their state.

As a registered nurse working in trauma and rehabilitation centers in Kansas, Jennifer Shepherd cared for patients who weren't benefiting from the pain medications prescribed to them.

She noticed a pattern that prompted her to detour from her 13-year career in the traditional medical field. No matter what type of pain or medical problem the patients were experiencing, they tended to be prescribed the same opiates or steroid pain relievers. Yet some didn’t want to take their medication due to side effects associated with them, and others weren’t getting enough pain relief, she said.

“I couldn’t figure out why I had 20 patients with the same pills,” she said. “At that point, I started noticing that Western medicine wasn’t helping as many patients as I thought it should.”

Last week, this column was pretty pessimistic. Apologies, but when a state in my own beloved Northeast decides to put the kibosh on a law that would reduce the number of prisoners in their jails in and increase the amount of tax dollars in its coffers, it grates at the nerves. New Hampshire did it, and Vermont did too, but to the East, Maine has given New England a new hope for legalization. 

Normally, when a company based in one state wants to sell products in another state, it starts calling truckers. For Strainz, a Las Vegas marijuana company, it was more complicated.

By early 2015, Strainz’s owners knew they wanted to expand to Colorado and Washington, the states with the most normalized marijuana markets. Despite state laws that allow the sale of marijuana, it remains a federal criminal offense to ship it across state lines. And as Nevada residents, the ­husband-and-wife co-founders weren’t eligible to apply for business licenses in either state.