Tyler Kearns, owner of the cannabis cultivation company Seven Leaves, stood in one of his half-dozen temperature-controlled grow rooms on a recent day, surveying a crop derived from the same mother plant.

“We have really tried to educate the general public through talks, tours, communication and presentations,” Kearns said, “to bring a better understanding of the legal California cannabis industry.”

But winning public favor is only half the battle for operations such as Seven Leaves. The other challenge is trying to survive as a small business in the state’s increasingly crowded cannabis industry. At about 10,000 square feet of indoor marijuana canopy, Seven Leaves is small for a California cultivator — the kind of business the new law was supposed to help.

With new California cannabis product testing and packaging regulations scheduled to take effect on July 1, legal cannabis manufacturers, distributors, and retailers are feeling increased growing pains as they struggle to fall into compliance.

Latest investment round, led by New York-based Rose Capital, to accelerate adoption of Thrive’s unique lighting technology into global horticulture market

New York, NY (April 27, 2018) – Thrive Agritech, Inc., a technology company focused on leading innovations in LED horticulture lighting (“Thrive”), today announced that it has received an additional $2 million in equity capital to accelerate the development and deployment of its LED technology in controlled environment agriculture. The investment round was led by Rose Capital, a New York-based institutional investor. In conjunction with the investment round, Rose Capital has also joined Thrive’s Board of Directors.

Since 2011, Dr. Rav Ivker has seen nearly 8,000 medical marijuana patients at his holistic medicine practice in Boulder. Over that same period, Ivker has been in steady contact with David Threlfall, owner of Denver dispensary Trill Evolutions and Boulder's Trill Alternatives, meeting regularly to exchange information gathered from MMJ patient feedback.

Medical marijuana was supposed to make life easier for people with chronic pain, cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, and other conditions.

And it has, as long as you live in a state where medical marijuana is legal… and you stay there.

But if you decide to leave your state — or the United States — you could end up facing a dizzying array of legal consequences.

These range from being asked to dump your weed at the airport, to having to deal with local law enforcement, to getting a prison sentence (in certain countries with a hardline stance against marijuana).

A glut of legal marijuana is driving 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 licenses to grow hemp, marijuana’s non-intoxicating cousin, have increased more than twentyfold since 2015, making Oregon No. 2 behind Colorado among the 19 states 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 pace of cannabis research continues to escalate as we’ve hit midway through 2018. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cannabidiol (CBD) continues to be a hot topic in medicine. Here are five medical research studies from the last quarter that made particularly important strides.

Studies at a Glance:

A British pharmaceutical company is getting closer to a decision on whether the U.S government will approve the first prescription drug derived from the marijuana plant, but parents who for years have used cannabis to treat severe forms of epilepsy in their children are feeling more cautious than celebratory.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to decide by the end of the month whether to approve GW Pharmaceuticals’ Epidiolex. It’s a purified form of cannabidiol — a component of cannabis that doesn’t get users high — to treat Dravet and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes in kids. Both forms of epilepsy are rare.

The city of New York promised to wind down its decades-old war on marijuana Tuesday, with Mayor Bill De Blasio announcing a new policy limiting trips to a police station over cannabis possession.

“New Yorkers with no priors will receive a summons instead of an arrest for smoking marijuana publicly,” the mayor said. “We believe this will result in thousands of fewer arrests. In fact we think at least 10,000 fewer New Yorkers will be arrested under this policy.”

On Tuesday, the Canadian Senate voted to legalize the recreational use and sale of marijuana by adults. The House of Commons already passed the bill on Monday, which means Canada is poised to be the first industrialized nation with federally sanctioned pot shops. And while the potheads up north may see this as a reason to rejoice, it’s also a reason for them to be wary when traveling to the United States.