The wide metal barn on the Utah alfalfa farm owned by Russell and Diane Jones will host their youngest son’s wedding next month. By September, they hope the structure will be full of marijuana plants.

The Joneses are fourth-generation farmers, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and among 81 applicants for one of a handful of coveted spots as a licensed medical marijuana grower in conservative Utah.

Though leaders of their faith once opposed the bid to legalize medical marijuana, Russell Jones says he researched the drug’s pain-relieving benefits as he battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Now he and his wife want to be part of an emerging industry that some doubted would ever come to the state.

A recent report reveals that 52 people in the state of Utah fell sick after using falsely labeled, synthetic CBD products.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) discovered that these products were sold between October 2018 and January 2019 at various smoke shops around the Salt Lake City area. CBD oil is legal for people with epilepsy in Utah, but because of limited regulations there is currently no quality control system in place – as is the situation in most of the country.

In what could be one of the most convincing financial arguments for the legalization of recreational marijuana yet, the state of Utah has announced that cannabis cultivators will face a licensing fee from between $75,000 to $100,000.

“The program has to be self-sufficient and pay for itself,” said Andrew Rigby, who is program manager for the state’s marijuana industry. Utah’s Department of Agriculture and Food, the cannabis industry’s regulatory body, has estimated that legalizing medical marijuana will cost the state over $563,000 in 2020. All the same, at the current fee rates, applications and licensing has been forecasted to bring in $1.1 million.

There are two reasons why Russ Belville thinks Idaho has a shot at legalizing medical marijuana in 2020: Utah and Oklahoma.

In 2018, both conservative strongholds approved medical marijuana laws.

"We are very confident that if it makes it on the ballot, it passes," says Belville, spokesman for the Idaho Cannabis Coalition. "The difficulty is in getting it on the ballot. Idaho has some of the most arduous signature requirements. But once we get it on the ballot, we're confident it will pass."

The coalition filed a petition with the Idaho Secretary of State's Office to include a medical marijuana initiative on the 2020 ballot and expects to start collecting signatures before the end of the week, Belville says.

A new study by the Oxford Treatment Center has unearthed the average cost of marijuana by state and both Utah and its adjacent states are on the lower side of the price tag.

Though marijuana is still recreationally illegal at the federal level and within the state of Utah, the center uses information from a national price directory to conduct its study.

Neighboring state Nevada is the cheapest place in the United States to purchase high quality marijuana at $270 per ounce, according to the study.

Utah comes in ninth at $281 per ounce well below the national average of $326. 

The most expensive place in the country for high quality marijuana is in Washington D.C. at a whopping $597 per ounce.

Tensions continue to escalate in an ongoing lawsuit between medical marijuana advocates and the state of Utah. Most recently, the lawyer in charge of a key lawsuit circulated a detailed letter. In it, he described Utah’s current medical marijuana bill as unconstitutional and illegal. Ultimately, the lawsuit calls for a return to the state’s previous medical marijuana program, which was approved by voters last November but overwritten by lawmakers in December.

Utah’s largest healthcare provider has authorized its doctors to recommend the use of medical marijuana for their patients, according to media reports. Intermountain Healthcare announced on Thursday that it has established a system to issue recommendation letters to patients with qualifying health conditions who could benefit from cannabis.

Mark Briesacher, the Intermountain chief physician executive, said that the company’s healthcare providers have prepared to discuss medical marijuana with patients who ask for a recommendation.

The state of Utah is now advertising for someone to oversee all things marijuana.