NoCo Hemp Expo draws 1,000-plus to second annual event at The Ranch

Justin Petty of Los Angeles isn't too keen on laundry, so he likes to wear his T-shirts for a week.

Petty can wear the shirts multiple times made by the company he co-owns called Recreator Hemp Apparel, because of their material: hemp. Hemp is twice as durable as cotton and is hypo-allergenic and microbial, which prevents the buildup of odor, he said.

"We like to think of hemp as having the performance capacity of synthetics, but it's natural," Petty said.

Recreator Hemp Apparel, a KickStarter project that launched a year ago, imports the fabric from China because of legal issues and then cuts, dyes, sews and prints its line of T-shirts in Los Angeles.

If you grow cannabis, then odds are you keep a journal to record your grow operation. Journals can be incredibly helpful tools, but they can be a bit of a mess as far as organization goes. You run the risk of having your journal getting damaged by the elements, which is the kind of problem you don’t want if you’re running a professional cannabis garden.

GrowBuddy, a cannabis tech startup based in Denver, Colorado, is on a mission to empower cultivators by providing an intuitive application that allows you to record every aspect of the cannabis cultivation process, from soil PH levels to environmental control conditions.

LOVELAND — Once banned because it is a close cousin to marijuana, hemp is coming back in Colorado and now has its own convention, attracting international interest as a new crop for farmers struggling to find new crops to stay afloat.

Hemp, which is fiber drawn from marijuana plants, was outlawed in 1937, but a new Colorado law allows it. However, farmers are still trying to find ways to get their plants and seeds to market because federal law still heavily regulates the industry.

Ten states went ahead and allowed the growing of hemp. Those states are Colorado, Washington, California, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, Vermont and West Virginia.

Rep. Jonathan Singer, D-Longmont, has been a leading voice on how Colorado’s medical and recreational marijuana industries are regulated, carrying most of the most important bills and providing testimony and experts on nearly all of them.

Singer, 36, has represented House District 11 — which also includes northern Boulder County, most of Niwot, Allenspark and parts of Lyons — since 2012. He has undergraduate and master’s degrees in social work from Colorado State University. He is a former board member for the CSU Drug and Alcohol Task Force and the CSU Counseling Center.

SAN DIEGO, March 31, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Global Payout, Inc. (OTC Pink:GOHE), a leading provider of international electronic payment solutions, announced today that it has entered into a strategic relationship with CannaTrac™ Technology, Inc. (CannaTrac™) for the deployment of Global Payout's closed-loop marijuana industry payment platform. As announced on March 18, Global Payout has developed a closed-loop payment system that resolves the unique challenges present in the fast-growing medical cannabis and recreational cannabis industries by reducing the risks associated with cash transactions, and by solving the crucial payment and transaction execution issues currently plaguing the industry.

As cops, part of their jobs was to put away drug sellers and users. Now, former law enforcement officials are doing private security work for Illinois’ now-legal medical marijuana industry.

Bud Genius Inc. (RIGH 0.0002 -33.33%), a leading cannabis laboratory and branding specialist, recently announced the addition of Dr. Peter Wilson, Ph.D., to its Executive Advisory Board. Dr. Wilson is a well-known and highly-respected expert in accounting, financial reporting, and business law with over 25 years of experience in corporate finance and 19 years at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

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About 20 marijuana plants sit on a table Wednesday, April 1, 2015, at Puff-n-Stuff on Grand River Avenue in Lansing. The dispensory sells plants, harvested marijuana, edibles and other products.(Photo: Dave Wasinger/Lansing State Journal)Buy Photo

LANSING – Mayor Virg Bernero's planned speech Saturday at Hash Bash in Ann Arbor is expected to get plenty of attention, but it's unclear if words will lead to any action that makes Lansing's policy on the drug easier to understand and enforce.

The city already allows limited use of marijuana beyond medicinal purposes. Bernero is expected to help drive the effort for a possible 2016 ballot initiative that would make recreational use of the drug legal in Michigan.

It is widely assumed that the so called ‘war on drugs’ (the war between drugs), has been a disastrous failure, and faced with mounting evidence and criticism, governments would eventually seek legislative and policy change. The evidence presented is largely based upon an analysis of the inability of drug prohibition to reduce the supply and demand for banned substances, supplemented by a critique outlining the widespread harms caused by prohibition.

As one of the fastest growing sectors in America, legal cannabis and its ancillary markets are attracting investors eager to take part in the “green rush,” and opportunities for partnerships  abound.

“2014 was the year where the cannabis industry went from being an interesting cocktail conversation to something any serious business person has given a fleeting thought,” said Troy Dayton, cofounder of The ArcView Group.