An estimated 100,000 people are currently employed in California's marijuana industry, but that number could grow 10-fold within a few years, according to the California Cannabis Industry Association.

There is one big "if," though. That's if California actually gets around to legalizing it next year.

Theresa May’s psychoactive substances bill has plunged the nation’s legal highs sellers into existential crisis. The legislation would ban all recreational drugs, while making individual exceptions for booze, tobacco, caffeine and so on, ending the lucrative legal cat-and-mouse game that has allowed high street shops and internet entrepreneurs to deal, legally, in new and untested drugs.

SAN LUIS VALLEY — The concrete was soupy, a wet mush unlikely to harden properly, so Sundance Stadtler added sand to the mixture he was pouring into wooden forms to make footers for his new home in Costilla County. Stadtler, a 19-year-old from Vermont, arrived in the San Luis Valley in February with a plan to build a home and grow marijuana legally.

He purchased 5 acres of desert property for $3,250 and set up a tepee for temporary lodging as he began building.

Stadtler is one of a number of people lured to the county in the San Luis Valley by legal marijuana and cheap land.

Officials say the population boom is creating problems for schools, social services and other agencies.

It’s an industry, they say, that’s too new to have a glass ceiling. And for many women, that’s a good reason to get into the booming legal marijuana business.

“There is no such thing as an old boys’ network in a new industry,” says Wendy Berger Shapiro, co-founder of a group called Illinois Women in Cannabis.

Berger Shapiro started the professional networking group with attorney Dina Rollman last August to “get women at the starting line at the same time as the men,” Rollman says. “So they’re not playing catchup, and they’re leading the industry, shoulder-to-shoulder with the men.”

With Illinois having legalized medical marijuana, seriously ill people who qualify could be able to obtain legal weed as soon as this fall, some predict.

AMHERST, N.Y. -- The Friday 4 p.m. deadline has now passed for companies that want one of five medical marijuana grower licenses in New York State.

2 On Your Side talked with two groups -- both headed up by physicians -- who submitted their applications to the New York State Department of Health.

Dr. Gregory Daniel and nearly 30 other physicians are part of Alternative Medicine Associates, LLC. They turned in a 66,000-page application.

"It's very restrictive, very laborious, but we nevertheless struggled mightily, recognizing that, as physicians, we have a duty to the patients that we serve," Dr. Daniel said.

The latest Rocky Mountain Poll shows slightly more than half of Arizona voters favor legalizing marijuana for recreational use, and 80 percent support its use for research.

It's a controversial drug that one local doctor says has been labeled "schedule one" for no reason. Marijuana has been deemed medically useless without any scientific evidence.

The latest Rocky Mountain Poll, released Wednesday, shows slightly more than half of Arizona voters favor legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

The same study show an 83 percent supports to allow Arizona's universities to conduct medical research on marijuana in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Denver’s housing market is on fire. Home prices have shot up by double-digits, inventory has fallen dramatically and multiple offers with bidding wars have become common.

One factor driving the demand: pot. The budding industry has impacted home prices since the state legalized marijuana in 2012.

“There has been a huge bump in real estate prices due to the legalization of marijuana,” according to James Paine, managing partner at West Realty Advisors. “It’s massively pushed up raw land and industry prices.”

In March, Denver experienced the second-largest jump in annual home prices at 10%, just behind San Francisco, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index.

At least four Western New York groups are seeking permission to grow, process and dispense medical marijuana in New York State.

They include a pair of Cheektowaga eye surgeons, an Amherst dentist, a Niagara County tomato grower and a medical entrepreneur who has partnered with the founder of the Tanning Bed chain.

They’re among the 100 to 350 groups, if not more, expected to apply for the right to become medical marijuana providers, according to those who follow the industry. They face a Friday deadline to submit applications to the state Department of Health.

Daniel J. Humiston, founder of Tanning Bed, said the group he helped form, Alternative Medicine Associates, on Tuesday turned in “thousands and thousands” of pages in 10 banker boxes.

With weed now permitted in some form in 23 U.S. states, the flow of cannabis out of Mexico has slowed and, to a degree, reversed

The street lieutenant fidgeting in a Ciudad Juárez pizza parlor deals drugs for Barrio Azteca, a gang that emerged from Texas prisons in the 1980s to control a chunk of illegal shipments from Mexico into the U.S. Southwest. Think No Country for Old Men—secret nighttime drops, murders, and a lucrative sideline in human trafficking and prostitution. Meeting with a reporter while his heavyset boss circles the block, the Juárez dealer is preoccupied with his hottest new product: handcrafted American-made pot.

Zig Ziglar sent an important message when he said, “The only thing worse than training your employees and losing them, is not training your employees and keeping them.”
 Although many factors contribute to a negative employee culture, including poor management, lack of advancement opportunity, low pay, and other factors, there is another strong correlation: how well people are trained to do their jobs. It turns out, if people feel well-prepared and well-equipped to succeed in their roles, that feeling improves their morale.