It’s an interesting time for marijuana, more US states are looking ahead to full legalization and Canada is moving forward with a wide scale plan which could eventually legalize cannabis across the whole country. Jamaica is getting serious about building a cannabis industry and more countries such as Columbia, Australia, and New Zealand are looking at changing their laws to accommodate marijuana on a medical basis.

Here are the top 10 business sectors that will thrive under this process:

1. Agriculture

A northern Wisconsin tribe has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for the right to cultivate industrial hemp.

The Menominee Nation argued in the case it “should have the right under the Farm Bill to cultivate industrial hemp in the same manner as Kentucky, Colorado and other states.”

The tribe has been in negotiations with the DOJ and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency regarding the cultivation of industrial hemp. In October, the officials from the two institutions raided the Menominee Reservation and destroyed its industrial hemp crop.

Brendan Johnson, an attorney representing the Menominee Nation, argued the provisions of the Farm Bill apply to the Menominee tribe.

HARRISBURG -- A state House committee advanced a medical marijuana bill in a bi-partisan vote Wednesday, but passing it into law will still likely require changes.

A House vote on the bill could come as soon as next week, but it's not clear if still-unresolved issues will stall the legislation.

“I would expect that [the bill] will be amended on the floor. We are still trying to work out the details of those amendments. There will be some changes made, but we wanted to get the vehicle in place, so that we can do a final vote and hopefully send it off to the Governor very soon,” said House Majority Leader Dave Reed, R-Indiana.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) -- Tribes across the U.S. are finding marijuana is risky business nearly a year after a Justice Department policy indicated they could grow and sell pot under the same guidelines as states.

Federal raids on tribal cannabis operations in California followed by a South Dakota tribe's move this month to burn its crop amid fears it could be next have raised questions over whether there's more to complying with DOJ standards than a department memo suggested last December.

ATLANTIC CITY — Two days after lawmakers held the first public hearing discussing the idea of legalizing marijuana in New Jersey, the top four leaders of the state Legislature were split along party lines on how the state should approach the issue. 

The top Democrats — state Senate President Stephen Sweeney and state Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto — said Wednesday during a panel discussion at the New Jersey League of Municipalities Conference that they are open to examining legalization. But neither would take a stronger stance.

Vermont Cannabis Collaborative spokesperson Bill Lofy speaks in favor of marijuana legalization at a news conference in Burlington on Wednesday.(Photo: GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS)

Entrepreneurs are pitching marijuana as a cash crop that would keep college graduates in Vermont and create thousands of jobs.

The Vermont Cannabis Collaborative says in a new report that if Vermont lawmakers bring “order to the chaos” of the underground illegal marijuana market, business opportunities would abound.

The city of Denver announced the ninth marijuana recall in 10 weeks on Wednesday — this one for more than 12,600 packages of pot-infused edibles made by Gaia’s Garden.

Medical marijuana patients and advocates welcomed Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signing a bill last week that would expedite emergency access to medical marijuana for extremely sick people, most prominently children with severe seizure disorders. But the bill was necessary because there appears to be a slim chance that the state’s medical marijuana program will be ready to open by the January 7th deadline.

When California begins issuing licenses to medical marijuana businesses, the first on the list will be those that had played by the rules of their local governments.

To get this priority status, the operators must show they were in “good standing” with their local jurisdiction, according to the state’s new marijuana laws. But “good standing” is currently undefined in Humboldt County, and operators only have until Jan. 1, 2016 to prove they fall under it.

Faced with this fast-approaching deadline, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors called on staff to create a new Commercial Cannabis Activity Registry that will allow operators seeking county compliance to register.

On a dimly lit street in SOMA, black drapes hung from the windows of a popular lunch spot for techies. A spunky brunette woman, dressed in a short black dress, welcomed me as I pulled the curtain back. Before I could take another step, she asked for my name and what color pen I’d like to have. As a self-proclaimed rookie smoker—someone who has never experienced a commendable stoner phase in high school or college—I wondered why she was offering me a pen.

“Vaporizer. You get to keep it after the party,” she said.

“Of course I do,” I thought to myself, irritated by my own ignorance. I chose a blue one and quickly entered the room.