This Marijuana Stock is for the Dogs.

If you're a regular reader of these pages, you know I'm quite bullish on the legal marijuana trade.

In fact, last week I re-posted this small segment of Viridian Capital's 2015 cannabis market outlook:

We still remain very bullish on the industry and believe that there is a core, and sustainable, investment rationale for operators and investors, including:

Bio-Tech Medical Software Inc. has two state contracts, it operates in 18 states and outside the U.S., and it recently closed a $5 million series A round of funding.

But the company struggles with an issue facing any business operating in the marijuana industry today, even though it isn’t directly dealing with the plants.

“One of our greatest desires is to be seen as legitimate,” said Patrick Vo, co-CEO of the company. “To not be seen as barely legalized drug dealers, but to be seen as legitimate business people.”

After months of legal dispute over the 40 Acres Medical Marijuana Growers Collective, which caused it to relocate in April, the collective filed a lawsuit against the city April 20 alleging discrimination.

The lawsuit filed by the collective’s co-founder, Chris Smith, against the city of Berkeley and its Medical Cannabis Commission alleges that the city has allowed the three currently licensed dispensaries in Berkeley to unlawfully monopolize the local sale of medical marijuana.

Smith, who believes the dispensaries are overcharging people, said he opened up his own medical marijuana collective to “find a way to get medicine at a more realistic price.”

Editor’s note: Amid discussion about the potential legalization of medical marijuana in Louisiana, St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz has offered his perspective in this column. This is the latest of a series of his articles on the subject.

Myth 1: ‘I can’t become addicted to marijuana’

Marijuana may not be as addictive as tobacco or heroin, but 1 in every 6 teens, (and 1 in every 11 adults) who ever try marijuana will become addicted to it. Just as with alcohol and tobacco, most chronic marijuana users who attempt to stop “cold turkey” will experience an array of withdrawal symptoms such as irritability, restlessness, anxiety, depression, insomnia, and/or cravings. These are classic signs of dependency.

A US senator is concerned about privacy and wants some answers on how exactly the Drug Enforcement Administration has been using powerful hacking software bought from a controversial Italian surveillance company.

Sen. Charles “Chuck” Grassley (R-Iowa), sent a letter with a list of detailed questions to the Department of Justice on Wednesday, roughly two weeks after Motherboardrevealed that the DEA had signed a contract in 2012 for $2.4 million worth of spyware from Hacking Team.

Excerpted from "Big Weed: An Entrepreneur's High-Stakes Adventures in the Budding Legal Marijuana Business"

When I left my house on a beautiful morning in February 2013, I was carrying $40,000 in cash in my backpack. The sun was just hitting the foothills of the Rockies as I drove out of Lowry, the neighborhood where I live in Denver. As you might surmise from the contents of the backpack, it was going to be a big day.

My first appointment was the most important. I was meeting with an architect I’d hired several months ago to design a building I was planning to construct somewhere within Denver city limits. The first building of its kind anywhere in the world.

John & Diana Holland with a photo of their son, Jonmarc Holland.(Photo: Charles Levy/Special to the Demo)

Diana Holland got a call from her son, Jonmarc, on a Tuesday in early April. It would be the last time she would hear from him.

"I can't deal with all these problems," Diana Holland recalled her 27-year-old son saying. "I'm just exhausted dealing with all my problems. The pain is just driving me crazy."

"He said, 'Mom, I'm going to go lay down now.' And that's what he did," she said.

She tried to call back, but got no answer.

Three days later, Leon County Sheriff's deputies found his body in a small ravine in a patch of woods next to the family's North Tallahassee home after he'd taken his life April 7.

Louisiana lawmakers have convened the 2015 legislative session. Already multiple bills have been filed to change how the state treats marijuana consumers, including those who use marijuana for medical purposes.

After failing to gain enough support at the end of last year, a pair of bills aimed at clarifying and updating Michigan's medical marijuana law are back and creeping forward in the Legislature.

House Bills 4209 and 4210 mirror proposals introduced in 2013. If they become law, the bills would legalize and regulate medical marijuana dispensaries and allow for "medibles," marijuana products that are edible and used by many who can't or prefer not to smoke the drug.

Wine, cheese and weed? Enjoying all three at once is nothing new, but the movement that officially recognizes the similarities between these tasting parallels is only just starting to gain momentum.

The days of illegal marijuana were a far simpler time, without the complexities of flavors among so many different varieties of indica, sativa and hybrid strains. Today, there are 1,356 strain results on weed site Leafly — and while not all of those are legitimately unique, this new-found variety is opening an entirely new subculture of cannabis connoisseurs and an industry that could one day resemble the long-accepted world of wine.