The popular TV show "Chopped," as every foodie knows, involves four chefs who face off against one another in a timed cooking contest. The goal is to prepare a three-course meal using four secret ingredients. The one who gets the best score from a panel of judges wins.

A new spinoff of that show is designed to appeal to a cannabis-loving audience. It's one of the surest signs yet of the mainstreaming of cannabis in American culture.

California’s licensed marijuana shops are doing an excellent job at preventing sales to minors, according to a first-of-its-kind study commissioned by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

That means the industry is living up to a key promise advocates made when voters legalized cannabis for adults 21 and older nearly five years ago.

“Licensed marijuana retailers are clearly keen to follow the rules,” said Angela Eichelberger, a research scientist with the Insurance Institute who authored the report with University of Chicago and University of Minnesota experts. “They’re aware that the industry hasn’t won everybody over yet, and they don’t want to get shut down.”

A California dispensary is calling attention to the environmental impact of cannabis packaging waste with a campaign that encourages customers to help recycle some of the industry’s plastic into diesel fuel. And to thank the company’s clientele for its support, customers who bring in plastic packaging from cannabis products into Airfield Supply Co. of San Jose, California will get a special reward for their trouble.

Prerolls make up 10 percent of California's cannabis market, and their popularity is growing. The last few years have shown excessive growth for mini joints in particular. With one-gram singles historically dominating the category, it's great to see more consumer choice regarding serving sizes.

Minis, often known as dogwalkers, offer more options. The joints range from .25 gram to .5 gram and several infused versions. Additionally, minis have served us well over the last year as COVID changed when and where we consume and brought new consumers into the fold. The combination of events makes me think the mini moment is here to stay. Here's why:

Less than four months after a San Luis Obispo County judge ruled that marijuana billboards on California’s interstate highways are prohibited by Proposition 64, two California legislators introduced dueling bills on the subject.

Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) is pushing legislation that would expand prohibitions against advertising cannabis on interstate highways to include all state highways. Irwin believes that the authors of Prop. 64 wanted to limit cannabis advertising exposure to children by restricting billboards.

California has granted $15 million to 10 cities and counties that are part of social equity programs. The Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development and the Bureau of Cannabis Control announced the grant funding through the Cannabis Equity Grants Program for Local Jurisdictions earlier this week.

Nicole Elliott, senior advisor on cannabis to Governor Gavin Newsom, disclosed that generations of Californians have experienced impacts of cannabis prohibition and criminalization. The grant funding is poised to help those within the legal cannabis market that were disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs, California Cannabis Portal writes.

A new survey of recent research into the impact of marijuana legalization shows that many of the fears used to argue against legalization never happened. For example, concerns about increased crime, more traffic accidents, and more people missing work? None have come to pass. In fact, legalization may have helped reduce claims on state workers' compensation programs by giving older workers a way to manage pain better.

We're soon going to learn a whole lot about cannabis in California.

An often overlooked provision of California's landmark legalization measure — Proposition 64 — set aside funds for research grants to study the impacts of cannabis. Well, the Bureau of Cannabis Control recently announced that it is awarding nearly $30 million in grants of up to $2 million to a host of public universities across the state — including Humboldt State University — to study various aspects of cannabis, including public health, public safety and economic and environmental impacts.

The Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development has granted millions of dollars to fund cannabis equity grant programs.

Throughout the past year, there has been much talk about how to make things more equitable for people of color and marginalized communities, and a big part of that is providing equity programs and expungements to the cannabis industry, in order to right the wrongs perpetrated by the war on drugs. Now, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and some other California cities are making history with their Cannabis Equity Grant Programs. 

Leafly’s fifth annual cannabis jobs report showed the cannabis industry to support 321,000 full-time equivalent jobs in 2021! An incredible number for an amazing and highly-deserving industry.

Cannabis jobs aren’t accurately reported to the Department of Labor because it’s federally illegal, so in partnership with Whitney Economics, Leafly has been filling that gap since 2017! The result is a goldmine of knowledge, and always filled with incredible cannabis job data.