In late 2017, the Oregon Department of Agriculture issued an alert that a new pest had been spotted feeding on a valuable crop. A kind of aphid, it damages and weakens plants and could even spread viral diseases, the alert said.

The creature, Phorodon cannabis, is also known as the cannabis aphid. “It appears to be a recent arrival in Oregon, and it is in the interest of all growers of cannabis to slow its spread,” the alert noted. The department has the bug on its list of cannabis pests, which includes four other species of piercing and sucking aphids.

Over the past 22 years, the green rush has engulfed North America. In 2001, Canada legalized medical marijuana, and it's fully expected to become the first developed country in the world to OK the sale of adult-use recreational cannabis by this summer.

In June 2017, Mexico legalized medical cannabis. And between 1996 and 2018, 29 states in the U.S. have passed legislation allowing for medical marijuana to be prescribed by physicians, with nine other states allowing the use of recreational pot by adults ages 21 and up. It's been quite the shift in a relatively short amount of time.

In June 2016, Microsoft made a startling announcement: It had partnered with a Los Angeles-based company called Kind Financial to start offering marijuana software to government agencies. The software, part of a government-specific version of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, allowed states that had legalized medical or recreational marijuana to easily track that cannabis from the moment it was planted to when it was sold at a local dispensary.

Michael “BigMike” Straumietis has been growing cannabis since he was 23. Here’s an inside look at the empire he created.

California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones announced on Wednesday he has approved a new product liability and product recall program for the cannabis industry in California.

This new cannabis insurance policy, offered by Continental Heritage Insurance Co., provides product liability and product recall coverage against claims arising from commercial cannabis activity for licensed businesses in California.

The program offers coverage to businesses with the following license types: Cultivator, Manufacturer, Distributor, Retail and Medical. Laboratory testing licenses are not eligible for this program.

Shoppers flock to Union Square for its luxury retail outlets, with icons like Tiffany’s, Louis Vuitton, and Prada all sharing space in the busy downtown destination. Soon there could be a new option for high-end spending, but the wares are a little different than handbags: a shop to showcase high-end, sustainably produced, ethically sourced chocolates infused with sun-grown, organic cannabis. At least that’s the hope of Eric Eslao, founder of Oakland-based Défoncé Chocolatier. Eslao spent six years at Apple before diving into the world of weed about three years ago to start Défoncé (meaning “high” in French) in a quest to elevate chocolate cannabis to gourmet levels.

Recreational marijuana boosters have long cheered the potential for recreational marijuana to fatten state coffers by providing a new source of tax revenue. Yet as the state reveals its 2018 recreational pot tax revenue, it seems unlikely that recreational marijuana will fundamentally transform the social welfare of Californians — particularly when you compare those taxes to the amount of money California has lost from the Silicon Valley–led charge to leech the state of revenue by misclassifying their core workers as independent contractors.

A glut of legal marijuana has driven Oregon pot prices to rock-bottom levels, prompting some nervous growers to start pivoting to another type of cannabis to make ends meet — one that doesn't come with a high.

Applications for state licences to grow hemp — marijuana's non-intoxicating cousin — have increased more than twentyfold since 2015, and Oregon now ranks No 2 behind Colorado among the 19 states in America with active hemp cultivation.

The rapidly evolving market comes amid skyrocketing demand for a hemp-derived extract called cannabidiol, or CBD, seen by many as a health aid.

The two-story building where he grew 200 pounds of weed a month sits nearly empty, and a greenhouse built to expand his pot business is packed with hemp plants instead.

These weed-growing nuns have been growing weed for the purpose of healing.

You can’t say you know everything about California cannabis until you’ve seen these pot farming nuns. Not only do these ladies grow some high-quality herb, but they’ve faced steep—and dangerous—opposition from a persistent sheriff and a drug cartel.

In Breaking Habits, a Salon Pictures documentary premiering at Canne’s this week, these marijuana mavericks are finally getting the screen time they deserve.

These Nuns Are The Real Deal