Over the past couple of years, attitudes towards cannabis have been changing – especially in the US. Colorado and Washington were the first two states to legalise the drug and extensive medical marijuana schemes exist in California. Now that you can buy the drug from your local chemist as opposed to a dark alley or shady street corner, you’d probably expect the product to be more thoroughly tested and safer. However, alarming research indicates that this might not be the case.

Eddie Miller, the 30-year-old founder of a budding pot empire, doesn’t come off as your typical weed advocate. And yet, his company eCann Inc., is an extensive technology platform for the weed industry that could add more steam to the end of prohibition movement sweeping the country.

“Right now the opportunity is the best because the market is being regulated in many states,” Miller told iDigitalTimes. “Every six months there’s a new revelation and a new revolution that's happening. Even here in New York state in about eight months cannabis will be regulated and there will be a very small amount of patients that will be eligible to purchase medicinal cannabis.”

A medical marijuana extract shows considerable promise as a treatment for epilepsy in young people that could reduce seizures in children with severe epilepsy that usually do not respond to other treatments, according to a study by the Langone Comprenhensive Epilepsy Center at the University of New York ( USA) and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
 
The study is based on the use of cannabidiol extract, the main component of this plant and which, unlike the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is not psychoactive, so it has no direct effect on the central nervous system or change its functions or perceptions.
 

If you're just joining us, Oregon's joint legislative committee that was assigned the task of implementing our recreational marijuana legalization got bogged down trying to restrict the medical marijuana program. Never mind that the Measure 91 recreational marijuana legalization initiative said, three times, that the existing medical marijuana program was not to be affected, and 56 percent of the voters agreed with that.

The latest hemp update from the Kentucky Department of Agriculture came at a tobacco warehouse where a packed house included former and current tobacco growers. But the irony was lost on no one.

Among those reporting was Agriculture Commissioner James Comer, who told those gathered at the G.F. Vaughan Tobacco Warehouse #23 in Lexington, “We want to make Kentucky synonymous with hemp like Idaho with potatoes.”

Speaker after speaker sang the praises of the crop that is entering season two of research production, including Derek Vaughan, CEO of Vaughan Tobacco.

PotLocator.com and Bambu Rolling Papers, co-attendees only at that year’s 2015 Denver Cannabis Cup, need Denver’s best shared rollers showing down their skills and face-off against both to see having the quickest hands.

PotLocator.com is a site which provides directories to caregivers, collectives, co-operatives, associations, compassion clubs, distribution solutions, wellness facilities, resource facilities, cannabis dispensaries and physicians and was created as a method of linking medical marijuana patients to organizations into the cannabis business.

Making cannabis coffee is now as simple as inserting a pod and pushing a button.

In Seattle, Uncle Ike’s Pot Shop sells pods of Catapult “premium infused coffee” for $10 each. The pods work in standard, single-serve coffee makers and contain 10 mg of THC, a quantity of marijuana's active ingredient that's becoming something of a standard serving for marijuana edibles.

“I liken it to a Red Bull and vodka,” Uncle Ike’s sales manager Jennifer Lanzador said. “I had more energy, but I still had the relaxation you get from cannabis.” 

Marijuana legalization has already led to many benefits in the United States, ranging from increased tax revenues to decreasing usage by minors to lowering incarceration rates for non-violent marijuana offenders. But marijuana legalization is also putting a substantial dent into what the Department of Justice calls the “greatest organized crime threat to the United States,” the Mexican drug cartels. And that’s a good thing.

The Las Vegas community bank that last year announced it was open to banking Nevada’s budding medical marijuana industry has changed its mind, telling KNPR’s State of Nevada that compliance issues made it difficult to handle these businesses.

Jason Awad, chief executive officer of First Security Bank of Nevada, said the bank will be sending letters to its customers informing them of the bank’s decision. He told KNPR’s State of Nevada these were holding accounts used by dispensary owners while they were waiting to be licensed.

“We found after several months that the cost is so prohibitive and the burden so high that it is very difficult to do what we … really wanted to do,” Awad told KNPR.

Hans Enriquez is quite the personality. He’s witty, driven, and personable. He’s committed to his vision, enraptured by his clientele, and has succeeded in creating a new type of experience for the cannabis consumer community. For years, the cannabis community has found themselves wandering into dingy storefronts being sold only low-quality products and vessels in the stereotypical dark and sketchy atmosphere, but with the changing tide of cannabis in mainstream culture, they’ve been looking for something more!