Indoor cultivation of cannabis consumes tremendous amounts of electricity and causes high greenhouse gas emissions. California Lightworks, an LED manufacturer, says the cannabis industry can increase yields, decrease costs, and reduce climate impact by using its MegaDrive technology. Industry uptake of new LED technology caused average energy consumption of indoor grows to decline by more than 20 percent between 2018 and 2020. Cannabis Reporter cites the Environmental Protection Agency that LED technologies “offer the potential for cutting general lighting energy use nearly in half by 2030.”

“California Lightworks is committed to addressing climate change and the issues resulting from outdated technology,” said George Mekhtarian, CEO of California Lightworks. “Our MegaDrive technology helps reduce the costs, increase the yields and help cultivators reduce the heat generated in their facilities.”

California Lightworks’ MegaDrive technology increases the mass, both in terms of grams per square foot and grams per watt, and quality of yielded crops. The advanced LED technology reduces fixture costs by up to 30% and installation costs by up to 80%. And, the benefits come at a 50% lower operating cost than traditional high-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting systems.

Mekhtarian says his company is expanding its philanthropic activities as well to help make a positive impact on the environment.

“We are happy to see our technology have a positive impact on our climate and environment. Innovation brings about improvement in our environment,” said Mekhtarian. “We are not only doing this through our business, but we are doing it through charitable work too and will be announcing more on that in the near future.”

Michigan’s hemp industry could get up to $100 million in federal funds to help it compete globally under a proposal pushed by a nationwide growers association.

The state is one of four with emerging hemp industries targeted by the National Hemp Association, along with Oregon, New York and Florida. The funding would be for developing a “regional super site” in each state to aid in the industry’s growth, said Geoff Whaling, the association’s chair.

Hemp is a cannabis plant with a very low percentage of THC, the psychoactive element of marijuana. Developing the industry could benefit Michigan environmentally and economically, Whaling said. The plant has many uses, but the state’s auto industry is what makes it a target for development.

“The biggest potential use for hemp today, outside of food, is the automotive industry,” Whaling said. “That’s why we’ve called for $100 million of that money to be allocated specifically to Michigan.”

For example BMW is planning to reduce its carbon footprint by using hemp bioplastics, a renewable resource, in production, Whaling said. The growth of electric vehicles means more opportunities because hemp rope is lightweight and can hold an electric charge like copper.

A Wood River Valley based hemp insulation manufacture plans to build a production facility in Jerome County along the interstate beginning this fall. Southern Idaho Economic Development said Hempitecture Inc., based in Sun Valley, intends to build a plant at the Northbridge Junction near the Interstate 84 and U.S. Highway 93 junction; a groundbreaking ceremony is set for early October. This is one of the first major business announcements made since a bill was signed into law earlier this year allowing the production and transportation of industrial hemp in Idaho.

Professional golf is one of, if not the most, cannabis-friendly globally played sports today. While Olympians and athletes in other sports continue to be suspended for cannabis use, several pro golfers and the Professional Golf Association (PGA) have largely embraced CBD and its $2.8 billion global market value.

Still, skepticism remains as the bond between pro golf and CBD seems to forge stronger over time.

Kadenwoodand its athlete-centric brand Level Select added 2015 Players Championship winner Rickie Fowler as a brand ambassador in 2020. In 2021, Catriona Matthews OBE signed on as a brand ambassador for the UK’s Golfers CBD brand.

Some are taking their involvement further. Ten-year LPGA pro, Amelia Lewis became an investor and vice president of CBD brand Zeal Pure — a brand operated by her mother. Others include Darren Clarke, 2011 Open Championship winner, who launched his Darren Clarke CBD brand in July 2021.

An exciting crowd funding cannabis cultivation project is scheduled to start this week for Grow Space Orange, the Massachusetts company that develops cannabis cultivation facilities that are leased to licensed growers. Grow Space Orange, Inc, is a wholly owned subsidiary of New England Agriculture Technologies, LLC ("NEAgTech") in which investors are able to get in on the ground floor of an asset-based cannabis business with planned above-average returns plus the exciting possibility of being an owner of a prosperous cannabis cultivation operation. Full details of this and other NEAgTech projects including financial forecasts is on the investor section of the GrowSpaceNE.com website.

Notoriously risk-adverse Big Law firms are building cannabis practice groups as a rising number of states legalize recreational and medicinal use, even though the drug remains largely banned under federal law.

Cannabis practitioners hail from a variety of specialties, reflecting the range of issues that their clients face. The lawyers have to be flexible in the rapidly changing area as voters and lawmakers act to advance—and sometimes fight—legalization.

“This is not for the weak of stomach,” said Eric Berlin, who co-leads Dentons cannabis practice and helped craft and pass the Illinois and Ohio medical cannabis laws. “You have to deal with a level of uncertainty there.”

Cannabis data and analytics specialist Headset just released its latest report comparing US medical and recreational cannabis market development, bearing results that reveal sales patterns and unifying trends across the industry.  The report’s findings are grounded in the context of the predominant pattern of a three-step process in cannabis market development, including prohibition, medical access, and adult-use legalization. Though there are exceptions to this evolution where markets leapfrog medical use and go straight from cannabis prohibition to adult-use legalization, flagship states like California, which approved medical use in 1996 but took another twenty years to allow adult-use cannabis, follow a more predictable pattern.

Sometimes this job feels more like political analysis than stock market prognosticating. The reason? Marijuana stocks are intrinsically tied to politics. After all, until prohibitions against cannabis are lifted the world over, pot stocks won’t reach their full potential.

Which brings us to a tantalizing new prospect.

I’ve been writing about marijuana stocks for years now, and I’ve cooked up a number of ways federal U.S. marijuana legalization could get it done. From Congressional maneuvers, to presidential executive orders, to ballot initiatives, to Supreme Court interdictions, it’s safe to say that I’ve thought a lot about how U.S. pot legalization could happen—and happen fast.

After all, many of the pot stocks I routinely write about would skyrocket in value in the event of marijuana legalization in the U.S.

Which brings me to what I want to focus on now: the flagging Democratic Party approval ratings.

Jack Dwyer pursued a dream of getting back to the land by moving in 1972 to an idyllic, tree-studded parcel in Oregon with a creek running through it. “We were going to grow our own food. We were going to live righteously. We were going to grow organic,” Dwyer said. Over the decades that followed, he and his family did just that. But now, Deer Creek has run dry after several illegal marijuana grows cropped up in the neighborhood last spring, stealing water from both the stream and nearby aquifers and throwing Dwyer’s future in doubt. (Photo By: Shaun Hall/Grants Pass Daily Courier via AP)

The legalization of recreational marijuana use has broadly increased the availability of cannabis and the number of cannabis users. In the latest information (2019) compiled by SAMHSA, an estimated 31.5m individuals over 12 in the US used cannabis in the last month. These rates are growing at approximately 10% per year, with the largest growth in use by adults over 26 (19% growth in 2018-2019). However, growth in the sales of edible cannabis products has outpaced even these trends: sales of edible expanded 60% from 2019 to 2020 for an estimated market of $1.23 billion. (As Originally seen on Benzinga By: Nate Guzowski)

This rise in edible cannabis has had several unintended consequences, in particular a rise in the number of cases of accidental over ingestion. Edibles contain a range of different THC concentrations, including many with several times the average dose for an adult. Also the onset of drug effects for edibles is much longer than for smoked or vaped cannabis products, and this can lead to individuals overconsuming these products under the impression that they have under-dosed.

There is evidence that these cases of over-consumption have lead to an increase in the rates of acute cannabinoid intoxication (ACI) requiring medical attention. Poison control centers have documented a dramatic increase in the number of reports involving edible cannabis, rising from 8.4% to 31.2% of reports from 2017 to 2019.

This report also documented the increased risk to children from edibles, with these products making up 48% of reports involving children under 10, despite being only 11.1% of cannabis sales nationwide. The availability of gummies, cookies, brownies, and other sweets likely exacerbates the issue. ACI is a medical emergency in children and is associated with encephalopathy, coma, severe respiratory depression requiring ventilation, and even death. 

New Problems Require New Solutions

Anebulo Pharmaceuticals is developing a treatment to help address the issues of ACI from edibles and other products. The company’s lead compound ANEB-001 is an antagonist of the CB1 receptor responsible for the effects of cannabis and THC intoxication. ANEB-001 works by binding to and blocking these receptors from engaging THC and other cannabinoids (eg. synthetics like K2 or Spice). 

Although it is true that great cocktails come down to the perfect balancing of spirit, sweet, sour and bitter and salty, there is creativity and achievement to be made in this exciting realm of marijuana mixology.It seems like every time you enter a dispensary, there is a brand-new way to consume cannabis. Whether it is an edible in homage to a favorite snack food, or a tiny discreet vaporizer, there is no lack of creativity in product development.One of the latest trends in recreational cannabis consumption is less inspired by exotic creativity and scientific achievement; it’s derived from hundreds of years of mixing and shaking behind the dark mahogany bars of the world.The cannabis cocktail is quickly gaining popularity as a fun and effective way to ingest CBD or THC. Retail beverages like THC seltzers are available in recreational dispensaries nationwide, and they are exploding in popularity.

These retail beverages are a popular way to enjoy marijuana, but some enthusiasts are turning the concept of drinking cannabis into its highest art form — the crafted cocktail. By savoring cannabis through a straw, a union has formed between budtender and bartender, and the result is delicious.

Successful mixology is the art of balancing a cocktail’s key components, which, according to Diageo Bar Academy, are sweet, sour, bitter, saltiness, temperature, texture and alcohol (or the lack thereof). Cannabis cocktail experimentation maintains the same balancing act, but adds the very specific flavor profile of marijuana. Although the perfect balance for a great cocktail can be found using an array of different specific ingredients, certain flavors are already beginning to stand out as favorites.

Citrus flavors like grapefruit, lemon and lime are among the most common popular ingredients in many cannabis cocktail recipes. Grapefruit drinks, like Wunder’s Grapefruit Hibiscus sparkling — its most popular and award-winning flavor, according to Popsugar — are sought-after flavors. Its bright acidity and slight bitterness likely helps compliment the flavor of the cannabis while also balancing the flavor profile of the overall drink.

Amy Reid is serious about medical marijuana.

She’s a Wichita registered nurse and president of the Kansas Cannabis Coalition. She describes herself as a cannabis navigator for her patients, and she is all business when it comes to advocating for medical weed. I couldn’t help but chuckle when she told me the name of a sister organization, the Kansas Cannabis Chamber of Commerce. She asked me what was so funny.

Um, the name, I said, guilty as a schoolboy. The hard K, the alliteration, all ending with “chamber of commerce.” It was like no chamber I’d ever heard of, but the only one I might want to join.

It’s not funny, Reid told me. There are people in Kansas who need medical marijuana to relieve their pain, especially from cancer, and it’s far better than using opioids. It was an outrage, she said, that somebody living on the Missouri side of the river in Kansas City had safe and legal access to medical marijuana, while just a couple of blocks away in Kansas the same patients risk a felony conviction.

“We are simply asking our lawmakers to allow Kansas residents access to the therapeutic effects of this amazing plant,” Reid told me. “Three of our four neighboring states allow this, and it’s time Kansas stepped out of the ‘Reefer Madness’ mentality and allowed patients to have a choice.”

“My relationship with cannabis has changed a lot over the years, as has the flower itself, as well as its perception in pop culture and in society as a whole. The industry has also changed a lot, same as the science behind the plant,” declares rapper G-Eazy (born Gerald Earl Gillum) during an exclusive interview.

As a teen, Gerald conceived cannabis as a drug, a fun, rebellious thing to do and nothing else. Still, he loved the “alien, wonderful” feeling he got from consuming it since day one. (As originally seen on Benzinga by: Javier Hasse)

Notwithstanding, G would remain in the proverbial cannabis closet for years. He didn’t want his mother to find out he was smoking weed as a youngster.

“The irony was my mom had also been hiding it for me,” he quickly adds, laughing. “Obviously, later, I hit a point with my mom where we finally came clean to each other and we had a ceremonious smoking experience together, which was pretty awkward at the time. But now it's something we share; it’s a really positive thing. Cannabis can be a connector that brings people together.”

Nowadays, G, who leads an extremely active lifestyle, uses cannabis to help him decompress and sleep. At the same time, he consumes marijuana to stimulate creativity in the studio.

Here’s an interesting fact for your next Zoom call “ice breaker,” an 800-pound cow will produce about 100 pounds of poop a day.

There are about 9 million dairy cows in the United States at any given time, producing about 900 million pounds of poop a day. Second in volume only to the House and Senate. ( As ori

It’s a lot of poop, and of course one of the results of their waste is methane.

Before we all get on our Impossible Burger soapboxes, there are technologies available today that are harvesting the power of cow poop to help capture methane gasses, recycle water for farms, and even create fertilizer that is cleaner and more abundant than peat moss and other fertilizer components. 

Yes, there is a peat moss shortage.

Investing in cannabis stocks can be like looking for a goose that lays golden eggs -- but finding only lemons much of the time. Between the ever-present hype about questionable companies and the industry's struggles with efficiency, even savvy buyers can make mistakes; I know I've made a few! 

The good news is that becoming a wiser investor is easier than it may seem. And today, I'll be sharing four of my best tricks for identifying the best marijuana stocks so that you'll be equipped to succeed.

Now that recreational use of cannabis is legal in New York, what happens to the records of individuals convicted of marijuana related charges?

With the passing of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act in March, marijuana-related convictions that are no longer criminalize in New York will be automatically expunged.

However, the caveat is that legislation allows the New York State Office of Court Administration up two years to expunge the records.

This is New York State Senator Jeremy Cooney, who represents New York’s 56th Senate District is hosting an expungement clinic on Saturday in Rochester to give folks an opportunity to speak with legal experts for free about their case and how they can expedite the process.

“They can give applicants the best advice on how to position themselves, how to be honest with employers, and a realistic time table in removing the offense off their record,” said Cooney.