Quarantine caused by the global outbreak of COVID-19 is forcing people across the world to find ways to entertain themselves.

In Michigan, people are lighting up.

According to a Twitter survey conducted by the health blog bodynutrition.org, Michigan residents are smoking marijuana more than any other state during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Analysts used trends software with direct access to geotagged twitter data to arrive at the conclusion.

Of the potential markets left untapped in America's legal marijuana industry, The South is the biggest of them all. A collective 125.5 million people live in the Southern United States, and only a fraction of them have access to medical marijuana. None of those 125.5 million Americans have access to recreational or adult-use marijuana.

That’s 38 percent of the country, a vast market for cannabis entrepreneurs. But social conservatism and a reluctance to change marijuana policy have kept this market from getting developed. That could change soon.

The inaugural Texas hemp crop is expected to be planted soon, after state regulators on Monday officially opened the online-only application process for prospective growers.

The move by the Texas Department of Agriculture to begin taking applications — which, if all goes as planned, will result in initial licenses and permits within weeks — culminates years of effort by hemp proponents to enable farmers in the state to grow the non-psychoactive cousin of marijuana.

The novel coronavirus continuing to spread around the world has taken the “work-from-home” concept to a whole new level.

At the moment, the global M.O. is to stay home as much as possible. Thankfully, we live in a time where that couldn’t be any easier. With abundant remote work opportunities, numerous product delivery options, and a slew of virtual services available, leaving the house is completely voluntary for some people.

Texas might not have the most punitive cannabis laws in the United States, but no place that logs 80,000 misdemeanor arrests a year can claim to be cool or chill — even if the penalty can range from nothing to jail time depending on local attitudes.

Millions of Americans now have access to medical marijuana. But millions more do not, and attempts to change that have hit a brick wall in some states. Medical marijuana is inaccessible to 34 percent of the states in the country and remains illegal on a federal level.

This fact is a fly in the face of national sentiment. Based on the most recent nationwide survey by Gallup, 66 percent of Americans favor legalizing marijuana.

The ongoing dilemma over lab testing has defined the rollout of Texas’ new hemp law. This month brought another development, with the state’s Department of Public Safety informing law enforcement that state labs will not conduct testing in misdemeanor marijuana cases. 

Lawmakers in Texas passed a bill last year permitting farmers in the state to cultivate hemp, and effectively removing it from the state’s list of controlled substances and legalizes cannabidiol, or CBD, as well as products made from hemp. The measure was signed into law last June  by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has announced the latest states to have their plans approved under the U.S. Domestic Hemp Production Program.

Delaware, Nebraska and Texas all scored a guernsey, adding to the original state plans approved late last year –  those for Louisiana, New Jersey and Ohio.

As well as states, a number of Indian tribes have also had their plans approved:

When Texas legalized hemp last year, it threw the state’s marijuana policing into some kind of chaos. All of a sudden, officers were largely left without proper testing technology to determine if suspects’ leafy greens possessed a THC percentage above the legal cutoff of 0.3 percent. As a result, law enforcement authorities across the state began to throw up their hands and throw out low-level possession cases.

It was only five years ago that Governor Greg Abbott was firmly against legalizing marijuana in Texas, even for medicinal purposes. However, a change of heart appears to have come over the governor and the Republican majority, signaling that an end to a key fight in the War on Drugs may be nigh.