California health authorities dealt a blow to the burgeoning CBD industry by banning preparations of CBD derived from industrial hemp rather than psychoactive cannabis. The decree adds to the legal confusion around the cannabinoid and highlights the need for greater clarity from authorities at both the state and federal level.

Despite the fact it has received little media attention, a recent decision from Sacramento bureaucrats has potentially far-reaching implications for the cannabis industry — and for patients who have come to rely on CBD to treat a wide range of ailments.

With recreational marijuana legal in California for seven months, companies are still jockeying for positions in what will be the world's biggest pot market. CoachellaGro, a California-based subsidiary of Toronto's High Hampton Holdings (CSE:HC), is one such company.

CoachellaGro has a conditional use permit for a full-service production facility in order to serve third party state licensed medicinal marijuana operators. The company intends to construct a 254,000 square-foot greenhouse facility in the cannabis industrial park in Coachella, California.

If you have a history of consuming cannabis, there’s still spots available to get paid to drive high.

In an effort to better understand the ways cannabis use impacts traffic safety, UC San Diego is conducting a virtual driving study that tests how driving high impacts the ability to respond to common challenges on the roadway.

he study, the largest of its kind to date, is being conducted by the college’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. And to make sure they’re attracting the right candidates, researchers are paying people to smoke weed for the study.

Last Friday, July 13, 2018, all three agencies overseeing California’s implementation of the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act (“MAUCRSA“) dropped proposed permanent regulations that will eventually replace the readopted emergency regulations that are active now.

As states legalize cannabis, the day-to-day challenges presented by lifting such bans need ironing out. One such problem is how long to wait before driving after lighting up. 

It’s a question that researchers at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) aim to answer with a new study. And they’re inviting members of the public to help them find out.

Cannabis retailers soon may be able to deliver marijuana anywhere in California, no matter what city or county rules say.

Also, it’s likely that medical marijuana patients will be allowed to buy edibles infused with cannabis more potent than currently permitted under state law.

And on another front, the rules for what companies can and can’t say when advertising cannabis products soon could become more strict.

All three shifts are among the new rules listed Friday by state regulators in their long-awaited draft of permanent regulations for California’s cannabis industry.

The July 4 weekend kicked off the first summer travel season since California voted to join seven other states in legalizing marijuana for all adults. What’s more, there are now 30 states where medical marijuana is allowed, with a couple more close to coming on board.

So, as vacationers prepare to hit the road, many have a simple question: How can we legally mix travel and weed? “We have been getting lots of calls about this issue recently,” said Nico Melendez, spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. In California, the rules on traveling with cannabis are evolving. And conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws – and how rules are enforced among the various states or even one airport vs. another – are causing confusion.

This has been a year of big changes for the marijuana industry. Namely, our neighbor to the north passed bill C-45 on June 19, which also is known as the Cannabis Act. It will allow Canada to become the first industrialized nation in the world and second, overall, to legalize recreational marijuana for adults.

The problem of illegal marijuana farms on national forests is, pardon the pun, growing. Although marijuana is now legal in California and other parts of the U.S., illegal marijuana growing is still a billion dollar industry with international tentacles.

“Twenty years ago the people who planted and tended illegal pot farms were poor farmers from Mexico,” said Craig Thompson, a research wildlife ecologist with the USDA Forest Service.