For the week ended Friday, September 4, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis jumped more than $80 from $2,045 in the prior week to $2,128. The price of marijuana has risen by $150 a pound over the past two weeks.

The futures price for December 2015 remained unchanged at $1,385, and the October forward fell about 5% to $1,825. For the month of November, the forward price drops to $1,500 a pound.

About two-thirds of the past week’s transactions occurred in a range of $1,703 to $2,741 per pound, and transaction prices ranged from an average low of $700 in California to a high of $4,000 in Nevada, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks. The volume-weighted average price in Colorado ticked up from $2,085 on August 28 to $2,090 a pound last week.

Legal marijuana could be the first billion-dollar industry not dominated by men, writes Gogo Lidz.

It seems fitting that a plant called Mary Jane could smash the patriarchy. After all, only female marijuana flowers produce cannabinoids like the potent THC chemical that gets users buzzed. Pot farmers strive to keep all their crops female through flowering female clones of one plant, called the Mother. And women are moving into the pot business so quickly that they could make it the first billion-dollar industry that isn’t dominated by men.

Tribes are weighing the risks and opportunities of legalizing pot

This New Year’s Eve, Tony Reider wants to throw a party unlike any his South Dakota tribe has seen.

There will be live music, food, outdoor games—and, floating over the revelry, a haze of marijuana smoke, from a first-of-its-kind pot lounge that is set to open by the end of the year, said Reider, the tribal president of the Flandreau Santee Sioux in Flandreau, S.D.

That pot lounge—modeled on an Amsterdam coffee shop, where customers would be able to buy and smoke up to 2 grams of marijuana a day—would be illegal anywhere else in South Dakota, which, like most U.S. states, bans the sale, possession and public smoking of pot.

The Government is preparing to begin under strict security structure

The cultivation of cannabis plants in Puerto Rico for medical and research uses is scheduled to begin in early 2016, through a process regulated by the departments of Health and Agriculture, the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), and federal laws and local laws.

Planting plants "cannabis sativa" and "cannabis indica" both on land and in hydroponic systems, the initial wheel will move the new public policy on marijuana in Puerto Rico.

The crop would be the responsibility of self government of the island and / or duly authorized private farmers. In regard to government level, they have not yet selected the land where the crops would be developed, the USDA said.

There are a lot of lucrative opportunities in the marijuana industry. In a lot of areas cannabis entrepreneurs are doing very well in virtually all sectors of the industry. But there is a growing trend in some states where the opposite is happening, which is something that I have talked about a lot on this blog. As predicted, things are not going so well in ultra-strict medical marijuana states.

The War on Drugs may have reached its pinnacle of absurdity when 94-year-old World War II veteran Douglas Ponischil was arrested for felony marijuana charges earlier this year.  The pot had been mailed to his home on someone else’s behalf, and law enforcement swept him up with no further investigation.

The case against Mr. Ponischil, who miraculously survived a Nazi U-Boat attack, was dismissed on June 30 after months of negotiating with prosecutors by attorney Christopher Connelly.

I spoke to a reporter from Rolling Stone who is doing a story on the division within the drug reform community over Ohio’s 2015 marijuana legalization amendment. Indeed, the proposal to create both medical marijuana and a taxed-and-regulated adult marijuana market has alienated many supporters of legalization with its assignment of just ten commercial cannabis cultivation sites to the ten investor groups who have funded the initiative campaign.

I was at the International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco when Drug Policy Alliance’s director Ethan Nadelmann weighed in on the Ohio initiative:

As the number of U.S. teenagers using electronic cigarettes increases sharply, a new study has revealed another use for the device: vaping marijuana.

Roughly one-fifth of high-school students who have tried e-cigarettes said they also put cannabis, hash oils or THC-infused wax into the device, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics on Monday.

“This is a relatively novel way of using marijuana, and kids are using it at a fairly high rate,” said Meghan Morean, co-author of the Yale University study and now assistant professor at Oberlin College, according to Yale News.

At this time last year, Oregonians were talking about the possibility of legalizing recreational pot. These days, they're looking at marijuana milestones.

DALLAS, TX--(Marketwired - Sep 4, 2015) - Totally Hemp Crazy, Inc. (OTC PINK: THCZ) announced today it is extending the Rocky Mountain High Video Competition. THCZ would like to thank everyone who submitted a video for its Rocky Mountain High Video Contest and to everyone who voted for and viewed them over the past few months.

The video competition was intended to engage Rocky Mountain High's consumers, learn how they use the products and most importantly have fun. The collective videos had over 12,218 legitimate views across YouTube and Vimeo.