DENVER (AP) – Former Broncos tight end Nate Jackson says he believes the NFL will have no choice but to remove marijuana from its lists of banned substances in the near future.

Speaking at a marijuana business conference, Jackson called on the league to allow medical marijuana as a means to help players deal with the physical and psychological pain and head injuries inherent to their profession.

Jackson said he avoided opiate painkillers as much as he could during his six-year career from 2003-08. Instead, he self-medicated with marijuana so that he wouldn’t retire addicted to prescription drugs like so many of his contemporaries, he said.

Full-time employees in the U.S. work approximately 1,700 hours per year. With so much time spent at the daily grind, healthy habits can often fall by the wayside. To combat this, more than 90% of large employers and 73% of small employers sponsor wellness initiatives in the workplace.

For many employers, these programs promise savings in the face of rising heath care costs, and for their employees, the opportunity to start or maintain healthy behaviors such as working out, getting flu shots and screening for high blood pressure.

With recreational marijuana now legal in four states and Washington D.C., entrepreneurs are beginning to think about how to capitalize on this new market.

But cannabis ice cream?

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, founders of the Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's ice cream company, said in an interview with HuffPost Live that while there are no current plans to explore marijuana-infused ice cream, its legalization does open the door for future exploration.

"Makes sense to me," co-founder Benjamin Cohen told HuffPost Live host Alyona Minkovski. "Combine your pleasures."

On February 28 some 75 tribal leaders from across the country met to discuss forming the first “Tribal Cannabis Association” at the Tulalip Resort Casino on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington State.

This followed a packed day on February 27 of “Tribal Marijuana Conference” presentations and panels with speakers as diverse as former U.S. Attorney Troy Eid (current chair of President Barack Obama’s National Indian Law and Order Commission) to the city attorneys of both Seattle and Boulder, Colorado, who gave in-depth overviews of how implementation of state laws legalizing marijuana possession and usage is proceeding in their respective cities.

More big-money investors are looking at the cannabis industry as public perception sways in favor of legalization and the overall risks subside.

Everybody from savvy business pros who’ve pumped millions into mainstream industries to the types of celebrities you’d expect to invest in marijuana (Snoop Dogg and Tommy Chong) are jumping on the cannabis bandwagon.

But landing big money – $1 million or more in the nascent marijuana industry – is still difficult, and only a small number of cannabis companies have done it successfully.

Did you know there is a group of Republicans advocating for marijuana reform? Now that marijuana is legal in DC, we searched for the associations pushing forlegalization in other parts of the country. Here's what we found:

NORML (NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR THE REFORM OF MARIJUANA LAWS)

KFC: Marijuana on the menu? Not likely. A story that began circulating on Tuesday afternoon created a bit of a frenzy, but the fact is, there’s no sign KFC will really be selling marijuana in its stores.

The story began at the Racket Report, where it was announced that marijuana profits were hitting such high levels that the fast food restaurant chain had decided to get in on the game. While the idea may appeal to pot lovers who think they can get the munchies and a bucket full of munchables in a single stop, there are a few problems.

March 3, 2015

Nearly 40% of the 519 businesses that applied for medical cannabis business licenses in Nevada have chosen to remain anonymous, taking advantage of a stipulation in the state’s MMJ law that allows applicants to withhold their information from public view.

A state senator believes that’s a big problem, saying the anonymity option gave rise to questions regarding political favoritism in the licensing process.

“It’s been a disaster,” Sen. Richard ‘Tick’ Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Established cannabis companies looking to expand into new markets could find a major opening in Alaska if a recent legislative proposal becomes law.

The measure – introduced in the state Legislature last week – would ban applicants seeking recreational cannabis licenses from accepting investments by third parties. That stipulation could give established companies a big edge over small startups and individual entrepreneurs, according to some observers, as licenses applicants would more or less need to be entirely self-funded.