The most lenient states permit consumers to purchase almost every CBD type irrespective of its source or intended use.

As of 2018, all 50 states have officially legalized the use of hemp-based CBD products. In the United States, governing officials initially classified CBD, hemp, and marijuana as harmful substances. However, recent medical insight encouraged federal authorities to legalize industrial hemp and CBD on a national level.

For routine CBD consumers, legalization may be good news. Though CBD-based products are manufactured and distributed throughout the United States, you’ll need to remember that each state has set its own rules regarding CBD use.

It’s a lucrative business in Michigan. The marijuana industry is breaking records and is projected to hit a billion dollars in sales by the end of the year. However, the state is seeing less marijuana dispensary owners of color and that’s something they want to change.

“It was a painstaking process,” said co-owner of KAHN Cannabis Co., Ron Bartell.

With marijuana sales in Michigan projected to hit $1 billion this year, it’s no surprise more people want to get involved.

“It’s a booming business. It was taboo at one point but now it’s very mainstream,” Bartell said.

While indications of the rapid growth in both medical and recreational cannabis markets continue to expand to all parts of the country, one of the most eye-catching places to watch is Michigan.

Voters there approved a measure in 2018 to make recreational marijuana legal in the state. Ten years earlier, voters approved legalizing medical marijuana. Michigan stands out as one of the leaders in the cannabis industry in the Midwest.

Roughly a mile from the Little Bay de Noc in Michigan’s upper peninsula, tucked in a strip mall off Interstate 2, you’ll find Family Video, the last video rental store in the city of Escanaba. 

Family Video has been a dependable source of entertainment in this post-industrial town for 20 years. Today, the store’s neon green-and-orange marquee reveals the only discernible change to the place in the past two decades: instead of the week’s new movie releases, the letters announce WE SELL CBD NOW! The pivot to cannabis might seem like a major branding miss for a “family” video store in a straight-laced rural area, but Escanaba residents who frequent the store aren’t bothered by the change. They know Michelle Graham manages Family Video, and Michelle can be trusted.

Vicious sports rivalries aside, Michigan and Ohio may soon be working toward a common goal: providing affordable weed for Ohio's medical marijuana patients.

The history of cannabis laws and regulations in the United States is a complicated, convoluted affair that has arguably only gotten more confusing as more and more states launch legal medical and recreational marijuana programs. The result can sometimes be, well, a bit odd.

The following is a short list of some of the stranger cannabis regulations currently on the books in the US. 

1. Don’t transport marijuana by boat in California 

Make sure not to run fowl of the law in California. (wiroklyngz/123rf)

Cannabis is the new must-have product in legal States, opening up an industry that didn’t exist before, and diverting money from the longstanding cannabis black market. But change doesn’t always come cheap, and depending on where you live, the taxes are steep, and the price of cannabis is skyrocketing.

About 10 years ago I used to pay about $50 for an 1/8 of good stuff in New York. Around that time, I could get that same 1/8 in Oregon for $10-15 less, highlighting one of the big price differences that has often existed for cannabis between the East and West coasts of the US, a standard that could be changed or erased by the inclusion of a legal cannabis market.

Florida attorney Andrew J. Shamis, who’s developed a cottage industry suing companies over use of unsolicited telemarketing, has set his sites on marijuana companies in Michigan.

Shamis with his Miami-based law firm, Shamis & Gentile, has sued at least three Michigan marijuana companies in federal court this year, including MichiCann Medical, which operates as 420 Dank in Detroit; AEY Capital, which does business as Gage Cannabis and Light ‘N Up Provisioning and Microbuddery in Flint.

Supporters are concerned the 69-year-old diabetic, who is not set to be eligible for parole until he reaches his late 80s, may not survive the ordeal

Although Michael Thompson has been in jail for more than 25 years for selling weed, he may be facing a death sentence.

Thompson is Michigan’s longest-serving non-violent offender. He was convicted of selling three pounds of cannabis to a police informant in 1994 and was incarcerated in 1996 after being sentenced to 42 to 60 years in prison.

As the country gets ready for the much-debated November 2020 elections that are fast approaching, election scorecards are being released, taking the pulse of the country and how we feel about hot-button issues. According to Michigan’s cannabis-focused election scorecard, the once-liberal issue of cannabis is now becoming increasingly bipartisan.