In June of last year Florida Governor Rick Scott signed into law a bill that legalizes the use of low-potency marijuana for medical purposes. On Wednesday of this week the state will begin accepting applications from parties interested in being one of five legal regional growing operations in the state.

It won’t be cheap or easy, though. The application fee is $60,063 and the state’s Department of Health will be accepting applications for just three weeks. Applicants also need to have been in the nursery business in Florida continuously for the past 30 years.

Medical marijuana is a multibillion dollar industry and hundreds of hungry entrepreneurs are ready to make it a reality in Hawaii.

It’s up to Gov. Ige to sign it into law, but in the meantime, hundreds attended a seminar on Oahu Saturday to learn about the risks and necessary steps needed to open a medical marijuana dispensary.

If medical marijuana becomes legal, Hawaii as a whole will have 16 dispensaries: six on Oahu, four on Maui, four on Hawaii Island and two on Kauai.

To open a dispensary, you must be a legal resident of Hawaii for at least five years, and an applicant must also have at least over $1 million in the bank.

Marijuana has a long history of use in the treatment of illness, and the stigma associated with the drug is waning as more states embrace legalization of medical marijuana and many barriers to access disappear.

Continued momentum in the mainstreaming of medical marijuana could be good news for Insys Therapeutics (NASDAQ: INSY  ) , a biotech company that is awaiting Food and Drug Administration approval of a new formulation of a long-standing marijuana treatment for chemotherapy-induced nausea or anorexia caused by HIV.

Marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in America, behind alcohol and tobacco. It is estimated that nearly 100 million Americans use it.

Alaska, Oregon and Washington, D.C., recently have legalized marijuana’s recreational use and distribution. Many employers in Iowa are wondering how this trend will affect their workplace.

But frankly, unless federal and state laws are changed, the answer is not at all.

Remember, marijuana still is illegal under federal law (the Controlled Substances Act) and Iowa law. In fact, even in those states that legalized marijuana years ago (Colorado and Washington), many employers continue to drug test for marijuana in the workplace.

For the week ended Friday, June 12, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis rose to $1,718, up about 4.4% from $1,646 a pound in the prior week. The futures price for December 2015 rose from $1,175 a pound last week to $1,250.

Half of the past week’s transactions fell in a range of $1,700 to $1,900 per pound, but the largest sales traded in the range of $1,400 to $1,700, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks. The asking price in Colorado averaged $1,930 a pound last week, nearly 12% higher than the settlement price. Colorado authorities arrested a dispensary employee last week for trying to sell 4.5 pounds of marijuana on the black market.

On the business side, recreational marijuana exposes employers to increased workplace accidents, more workers’ compensation claims and lower overall workplace productivity. We also can’t ignore the adverse effects marijuana has on adolescents’ developing brains, which has serious implications for the development of Arizona’s workforce talent pipeline. No credible economic development organization would tout marijuana legalization as a reason to locate in Arizona. Legalization sends the wrong message to the companies we want to grow and invest here. On the public health side, Arizona faces increased rates of addiction and the costs that come with drug treatment and rehabilitation.

It's been 15 years since Hawaii became one of the first states in the country to legalize medical marijuana.

Today, the state is on the edge of another major leap: opening dispensaries.

But this is complicated business.

Those who know the pitfalls were flocking to the islands to share their knowledge.

"There's nothing easy about this," said Michael Visher.

He jumped into the medical marijuana business in Colorado in 2009.

Since then, he's learned a few things:

"So, you could be paying more in taxes than you generate in revenue," he said.

There were lessons learned for Washington and Colorado.

DENVER – A highly anticipated Colorado Supreme Court decision on an employee's right to use marijuana will come out Monday.

Brandon Coats maintains he was improperly fired from his job at Dish Network in 2010 after testing positive for marijuana. Coats, a quadriplegic, worked as a customer service representative for the company for years.

Lower courts have repeatedly ruled in Dish Network's favor, but last year the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear his case. The decision could impact businesses across the state as they continue to employ not only medical marijuana users but recreational users as well.

As of now, Colorado law affords employee's little if any protection should an employer decide to fire someone who fails a drug test for marijuana.

A sweeping bill to regulate the burgeoning marijuana industry in Oregon is back on track after legislators agreed to make it easier to ban retail pot sales in almost all of the state's eastern counties.

Leaders of the  marijuana committee agreed to give a powerful eastern Oregon lawmaker language that would allow local governments in his region of the state to ban medical and recreational marijuana shops without voter approval.

Rep. Ann Lininger, D-Lake Oswego and co-chair of the House-Senate marijuana committee, said Friday that the compromise "is not my top choice," but she said it was necessary to prevent the entire legislative package from falling apart.

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