Health care leaders and entrepreneurs are competing for five licenses to grow and sell medical marijuana in New York as patients seek improved access to the drug

A $10 million construction project tied to selling medical marijuana to Lower Hudson Valley patients is unfolding about 60 miles northwest of White Plains.

Valley Agriceuticals, a company started by a team of health care and cannabis industry leaders, wants to build a marijuana grow facility in Wallkill, a farming community of about 29,000 people in Orange County.

A recent report by The Arcview Group showed that legalized marijuana is now the fastest growing industry in the U.S., posting a whopping 74% growth rate in 2014. Despite a widespread movement to legalize marijuana for both medicinal and recreational purposes across the country, though, the industry still faces some serious challenges on the legal front that investors need to understand. 

So, to give investors a deeper look at some of the more pressing legal issues, I spoke with a leading expert on medical marijuana, Aaron Lachant -- an attorney with the healthcare specialist law firm Nelson Hardiman LLP.

Weed has gone public.

A social network platform for cannabis users, MassRoots, on April 9 secured the first initial public offering for any company with ties to the marijuana industry. The 2-year-old Denver-based startup is valued at $45 million, with stock now traded publicly through the OTC Markets Group marketplace at 10 cents per share.

DENVER — While federal law makes their entire industry illegal, many marijuana store owners, growers and retailers fear something completely different: Big Tobacco.

Today, most legal recreational marijuana operations are small, limited to a single state and barred from ever getting large by regulators who want to keep a close eye on the fast-growing industry. But those small operators struggle to get bank loans for expansion, often produce an inconsistent product and sometimes have no idea how to balance supply and demand for their crops.

FAYETTEVILLE -- A panel discussion on medical marijuana offered Fayetteville City Attorney Kit Williams a chance to describe his wife's personal story of how the drug helped her while she underwent chemotherapy treatments for cancer.

But the panel at the Arkansas Health Disparities Conference at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville also gave a Little Rock doctor, David Smith, a chance to express his concerns about the chemicals in marijuana.

Williams said his wife, Emily, suffered greatly from nausea while being treated for lymphoma, a type of cancer.

But once she began using marijuana, "the pain that she had been feeling, the nausea that had been wrecking her system, started going away almost immediately," Williams said.

Michigan would legalize the use of marijuana for recreational use under the wording of a proposed ballot initiative submitted Thursday, the first of what could be competing legalization efforts.

If authorized by the Board of State Canvassers, the Michigan Cannabis Coalition's initiated law would require roughly 252,000 valid voter signatures before going to the Republican-led Legislature. If lawmakers rejected the bill or took no action, it would receive a statewide vote in November 2016.

The initiative is being backed financially by six to eight anonymous people from the agricultural, real estate, insurance and education sectors, said the ballot committee's spokesman, Matt Marsden. Donors will have to be identified later in campaign finance reports.

Canadians buying legal marijuana have a much slimmer selection than their American counterparts. That’s because Health Canada-licensed producers are allowed to sell only dried cannabis through the mail to registered patients and must stay away from “edibles” or other forms of the drug that are regulated south of the border.

However, like medicinal and recreational pot sold in Washington State, Canada’s 17 licensed producers offer dozens of strains of dried leaves that help patients treat a range symptoms. Canadian producers must also display the potency of the batch’s tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) content, as enforced under the federal Ministry of Health’s current Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulations.

Don’t accuse Denver City Council at-large candidate Kayvan Khalatbari of getting lost in the crowd. If there’s one thing he knows how to do, it’s stand out — this time, on a pizza box.

Khalatbari, 31, has been harnessing the natural delivery system of one of several businesses he co-owns — Sexy Pizza, which has three locations in central Denver neighborhoods — by affixing campaign fliers to pizza boxes before they’re sent out to customers.

Khalatbari says he printed 5,000 campaign fliers for the pizza boxes, enough to last about two weeks at the pizza shops. The piece pictures Khalatbari under the words “I’m a real person.”

A marijuana institute in Natick is trying to attract a new crop of students by offering them scholarship funds to cover a portion of their tuition fees.

From now until April 20 — or 4/20 — any new students who enroll at the Northeastern Institute of Cannabis will not only qualify for a $420 scholarship, they will also be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a full ride at the marijuana-centric learning center.

The initial deposit to take classes at the school is also being scaled back, from $700 to $420, in celebration of the number that bears symbolic meaning for marijuana users. The usual total cost of the program is $1,500.

The Uber of medical cannabis delivery has arrived, and the venerable accelerator Y Combinator has given its rubber stamp of approval. Meadow, a San Francisco-based startup, allows card-holding medical marijuana patients to browse different types of cannabis from nearby dispensaries and place an order, and within an hour the goods will be delivered to the patient's door.

If you don't have a medical marijuana card, you can schedule an in-home consultation with one of the doctors Meadow has partnered with and get a recommendation to use medical cannabis.