GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - Applications for permits to open new medical pot dispensaries are increasing as the state prepares to allow the businesses to sell retail marijuana to anyone over 21.

Figures obtained by The Associated Press from the Oregon Public Health Division show that since Measure 91 passed last November, there have been 411 new applications to open medical marijuana dispensaries and 51 since the start of July, when the Legislature voted to allow medical marijuana dispensaries to start selling recreational pot on Oct. 1. There were 203 in the six months before the election.

Donald Morse, a dispensary owner and director of the Oregon Cannabis Business Council, says the market is saturated, with three dispensaries recently going out of business.

New York’s medical marijuana program is about to achieve liftoff, but so far New Yorkers have few clues as to who will grow the herb, process it and sell it in a non-smokable form.

Despite all the hurdles — such as the fact that marijuana is illegal under federal law — 43 companies have applied for state Health Department licenses to sell pot products. A decision on five licensees could come any day now, though companies competing for the licenses say they remain in the dark about how far along the process is.

One of them is Etain LLC of Katonah, Westchester County. Etain’s proposal calls for a greenhouse growing facility in Chestertown, Warren County, with dispensaries in Kingston, Yonkers, Albany and Syracuse.

Sunlight streaming through a glass roof in a rural warehouse will likely soon be feeding one of Illinois' first legal crops of marijuana seedlings.

The company that owns the warehouse, PharmaCann LLC, is preparing for a final inspection from state regulators Tuesday. Once that is secured, along with IDs for workers who have passed background checks, Illinois' fledgling medical marijuana industry will finally be able to get down to business — growing pot — nearly two years since a change in state law made it legal and after a series of hiccups in the rollout that followed.

Industrial Hemp Association SA spokeswoman Ruth Trigg, with hemp products, and Greens MP Tammy Franks, holding a block of hempcrete.

LEGALISING cannabis farms to make clothes, building materials and beauty products could be part of the solution to South Australia’s looming post-Holden manufacturing crisis, a hemp industry expert and state politician say.

The newly formed Industrial Hemp Association of SA and Greens MLC Tammy Franks say hemp farms would create new jobs and inject much-needed cash into the state’s economy.

Hemp is a form of cannabis. However, it only contains 1 per cent THC — the chemical responsible for the “high” people feel when smoking marijuana, which contains about 5 to 20 per cent THC.

As attitudes toward marijuana become more lenient and states authorize its use for medicinal — or even recreational — purposes, a long simmering debate over the efficacy of workplace drug testing has found a new flash point.

Marijuana accounts for more failed workplace drug tests than any other substance, and the new laws have the potential of decreasing or eliminating employer testing for it.

Defenders of drug testing maintain that employees who use drugs, including marijuana, have been found to miss more work, cause more accidents, change jobs more frequently and ultimately cost employers more money.

Ms Zeng speaks quietly, almost in a whisper, with a strong Chinese accent. How long have you been having trouble sleeping, she asks her customer.

By Cashinbis

A Syracuse-based company is looking to turn the vacant Giant Food Mart building in Johnson City into a cultivation center for medical marijuana.

A Syracuse-based company hopes to turn a former Johnson City supermarket warehouse into a cultivation center for medical marijuana, bringing up to 200 jobs to the area.

Salus Scientific was one of 43 businesses to submit bids for one of five licenses to manufacture and dispense medical marijuana after the state passed a bill last summer authorizing limited access to non-smokeable forms of the drug.

New York is expected to announce the winning bids as early as next week.

As Illinois' fledgling marijuana industry slowly gets underway, some companies have begun hiring in anticipation of opening in the coming months, attracting a diverse set of candidates willing to take a chance on a business with an uncertain future so they can get in on the ground floor.

Take Rick Bower, 58, of downstate Dwight. After working for 31 years at commercial printing giant RR Donnelley, Bower has been hired as the inaugural director of warehousing at PharmaCann, where he will bring his expertise in workflow standardization and quality control to its Dwight and Hillcrest cultivation centers.

As the high-stakes competition to win one of five coveted licenses to run a medical marijuana operation in New York gets down to the wire, an organization that proposes to grow and extract the drug in Glenville shared news on Tuesday that appeared designed to raise its local profile.

Fiorello Pharmaceuticals announced that, if selected as a medical marijuana operator, it would distribute $5 million in research grants statewide, including $1 million to Capital Region scientists, over five years. Research on marijuana's effects has been scant, in part due to federal restrictions.