Syracuse, N.Y. - The first U.S. public company allowed to raise money on the stock market to produce and sell medical marijuana wants to grow pot in Central New York.

Terra Tech Corp., of Irvine, Calif., plans to apply for a state license to cultivate and dispense medical marijuana in New York, said Derek Peterson, the company's CEO.

"We're looking at Central New York for cultivation," Peterson said. "If you want a retail footprint around the state, you want cultivation and production centrally located adjacent to major arteries to provide access to all the retail locations."

The company has not picked a Central New York location yet, he said. Peterson said dispensaries would be scattered around the state in places such as Ithaca, Albany, Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Tribal leaders, lawyers and marijuana-industry representatives gathered in Tulalip for the nation’s first tribal marijuana conference, an event that served as much as a policy debate on the merits of legalization as it did an educational session.

WASHINGTON — Now that marijuana is legal in the nation’s capital, prospective pot entrepreneurs gathered in a daylong conference Saturday to learn about the business of pot.

“We teach people how to grow, we teach regular citizens and potential dispensary owners and current dispensary owners on how to grow their own cannabis,” says David DeGraff, CEO of the Denver-based “Grow School.”

Business-minded people swarmed exhibitors’ tables like that of the Grow School and Montgomery Hydroponics.

“We have everything you would need for indoor gardening, HPS, high pressure sodium, hydroponic soil, whatever you wish,” says Daniel Sims, the owner of the Montgomery County based firm, Montgomery Hydroponics.

Some of Sims’ LED grow lights sell for $349 each.

Colorado's marijuana industry is producing a lot less than it could, according to a state report released Friday.

Although state laws limit how many plants a business can cultivate, the monthly average for medical marijuana businesses last year ranged from a third to about half of what they could have produced, according to the annual update released Friday by the marijuana enforcement division of the Department of Revenue. The division estimates retail cultivation averaged 40 percent or less of the production limit.

Other highlights of the report:

-- Of Colorado's 312 cities and towns, 228 prohibit medical and retail licenses. Still, the places that allow sales include the state's population centers, among them Denver, the capital.

The first Tribal Marijuana Conference featured a variety of quality speakers from all avenues, to discuss a wide-range of issues associated with embarking on marijuana cultivation on reservation lands. Seen as the next economic windfall for tribes, but for one it’s a roll of the dice.

RELATED: Groundbreaking Conference to Discuss Legalizing Marijuana in Indian Country

Troy Eid, a former United States Attorney now in private law practice in Denver, Colorado, chair of the Indian Law and Order Commission, was on of several from across Indian country in attendance.

Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Brooklyn in 2009. Officials discovered this week that its chief was growing marijuana in the basement. By VIVIAN YEE February 26, 2015

Arthur Mondella’s alternate life was buried behind a roll-down gate, behind a fleet of fancy cars, behind a pair of closet doors, behind a set of button-controlled steel shelves, behind a fake wall and down a ladder in a hole in a bare concrete floor.

February 27, 2015

Dispensaries and retail cannabis stores in Colorado sold nearly 150,000 pounds of marijuana flower last year as overall demand for MJ soared in the nation’s first recreational market, according to a new report by the state’s Department of Revenue.

The report shows that Colorado’s marijuana sector grew rapidly across the board in 2014, from the number of cannabis business licenses and industry employees to the volume of edibles sales.

February 27, 2015

Recreational marijuana has dominated headlines out of Washington DC this week, as the use, possession and home cultivation of cannabis became legal in the city on Thursday.

But lost in the all the hype is a serious issue for DC’s existing medical marijuana industry: Dispensaries can’t seem to find enough MMJ to meet demand.

Marijuana legalization may soon spread nationwide with two Congressmen trying to strip the drug of its Schedule 1 classification and instead regulate the drug the same way as alcohol. Representatives Jared Polis of Colorado and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon are pushing for a bill that would repeal marijuana prohibition nationwide while also providing an opportunity for the cannabis industry to grow nationwide. Polis wants the federal government to treat marijuana the way it does alcohol — and even named his bill the “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act.” The bill would set parameters for the Bureau of Alcohol. Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to create regulations for the sale of marijuana nationwide. A second bill would set a federal tax for marijuana.

The best sauce to use on your chicken at Nando’s Peri-Peri is the lemon and herb.

Today between 4:20 and 5:20 PM, the Portuguese-by-way-of-South-Africa chicken chain’sfour DC locations are running a promotion in celebration of a different kind of herb: Any dine-in customer will receive a complimentary quarter chicken, sandwich, pita, or wrap. If the timing doesn’t make it obvious, this is how Nando’s is applauding the District’s new legalization of marijuana.

Everything else on the menu, including sides, will be regular price. And remember to leave the pot at home—Initiative 71 only allows consumption in private residences, not places of business or other public venues.