About 30 party guests wearing suits and summer dresses mingled in the candlelit back yard of a small, private home in the Forest Hills neighborhood in Northwest Washington and snacked on hors d’oeuvres to the sound of jazz. Instead of cocktails, they sipped gourmet coffee and tea infused with marijuana.

In the kitchen, servers poured hot and iced drinks for the tasting party. They were showcasing products from House of Jane, a California-based company that sells cannabis-infused beverages. Jane’s Brew C-Cups were on display in the living room, stacked on a table alongside similarly branded coasters.

Previous cannabis-related conventions and trade shows in Washington have lacked only one thing: cannabis.

That is about to change.

Given what he’s about to bring to Tacoma, the “M” in Cory Wray’s MBA might well stand for marijuana, a substance of which he claims to be a longtime consumer.

The Bethel High School and University of Washington Tacoma graduate, 32, has inked an agreement and begun promotion for the Northwest Cannabis Classic, a three-day event featuring speakers, seminars, a trade show with vendors and, again, cannabis itself.

Previous organizers have discovered that state law prohibits actual marijuana being present or being consumed at venues that hold a license allowing the consumption of alcohol.

Jazmin Hupp thinks its long past time for women to lead an industry. The one she has in mind happens to be the fastest-growing in the county—the cannabis industry.

Hupp and her co-founder, Jane West, run Women Grow, a network for women in, or who want to be in, the marijuana industry. The opportunity is big. Marijuana is now legal, to varying degrees, in about half of states. Legal sales totaled about $2.7 billion last year, up from $1.5 billion the previous year, and are projected to reach 10.8 billion by 2019, according to the ArcView Group, an investment and research firm covering the industry. “We’ve had artificial barriers up to this point, and as those disappear, millions of dollars will flow in to the industry,” says Hupp.

Legalisation Leads to US Self-Test Kit Whilst UK Safety Group Pleads for Zero Alcohol Levels

US – UK – In the US a small start-up company has produced an app suitably titled ‘Canary’ which is intended to help car and freight truck drivers decide whether they are fit to take control of a vehicle. Whilst not condoning the practice of taking drugs, prescription or otherwise, if they are likely to affect performance, this application is clearly aimed at those who smoke marijuana, particularly where it is no longer proscribed.

For more than a year, Sheila Gerstenzang has carried the card in her wallet: "Medical Marijuana Patient."

But she's yet to purchase a single bit of marijuana.

After a year of frustration and more than $200 out of her pocket, she gave up and let her card expire in May.

Months of delays in opening the first legal Las Vegas-area dispensary have cost investors money and frustrated advocates. But the effect on patients has been the most cruel.

There are more than 9,300 active marijuana cardholders in Nevada, including almost 6,700 in Clark County. There also are an untold number like Gerstenzang who have given up, at least for now.

AUSTIN - Texans with epilepsy may not be buying legal cannabis oil here until 2017, but home-grown entrepreneurs are already lining up for a cut of the mainstream marijuana business.

If there’s any doubt about their belief in marijuana as a medical remedy, five words underscore their seriousness: Texas Cannabis Chamber of Commerce.

The group is one of several - others include the Texas Cannabis Industry Association, Christians for Liberty and the Med Can Foundation - with meetings this weekend in Austin to address the state's budding, legal marijuana trade.

California's most valuable cash crop, marijuana, is taking a heavy toll on some of the state's most sensitive ecosystems, with the effects ranging from erosion, contamination, threats to wildlife, and heavy water use at a time of severe drought. 

The situation is prompting ecologists and wildlife managers to urge greater focus on bringing marijuana plots under tighter environmental scrutiny.

It's a tall order, notes a research team calling for the added focus via an article in the August issue of the journal BioScience.

I occasionally enjoy smoking weed. I was also raised in a pretty buttoned up Catholic home, though I'm not really sure where my "faith" is these days. I do, however, enjoy learning about new "organized" religions. So when I learned that there was a new church in Indiana that used marijuana as a "sacrament," I was more than a little curious. And I had a million questions. 

Why does this church exist? Is it because people have exhausted their unheard prayers on the more traditional religions? Is it because the Bible belt of Indiana has asphyxiated the level-headed lungs of Indiana, and this is a cry for help? Or is it a clever protest-slash-manipulation of a law poised to protect religious freedoms but contained a subtle veil of discrimination?

Chronic pain agonizes the lives of about 100 million adults, more than the combined total of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. This isn’t including other sets of the chronic pain-afflicted, such as those in nursing homes, war veterans with long-term injuries, or children.

Unfortunately, chronic pain is also one of the least researched and understood health issues. Doctors aren’t quite prepared to address it, due to the fact that medical schools only spend an average of nine hours on the issue during a four-year course of study. That’s not to mention the federal government’s gross under-spending on chronic pain research – only about four dollars a year.