With the legalization of marijuana as a recreational substance in Colorado and Washington state, enterprising marijuana growers and sellers are ready to enter the world of legitimate business. The most important thing for a new product is advertising so let me save these budding businessmen a trip to Don Draper's office with five wonderful ads for their newly legal companies.

Cannabis cultivation across Finland is increasing, according to police in eastern Uusimaa, who recently raided a marijuana-growing site.

Last week police in Porvoo, southeastern Finland, confiscated around 250 cannabis plants from an apartment in the town centre. They revealed that such raids were becoming more common as Finns were opting to grow the drug domestically rather than import it.

Porvoo police’s Janne Levalampi said he did not have the exact figures but that it appeared domestic cultivation had increased dramatically.

Canadian securities regulators have issued a warning to investors about claims being made by would-be medical marijuana companies, saying a review has concluded many are providing deficient information when announcing plans to join the sector.

Securities commissions in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec teamed up to review press releases issued by 62 publicly traded companies announcing plans to become marijuana producers under a new federal program that opened last April. The program will permit private-sector companies to grow and sell marijuana under license from Health Canada.

To be a good investor you have to know about the company, the industry, the macro-economics, and the legal context in which the investees operate.

If you’ve been following the MMPR (Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulations) licencing story, you know it’s been a confounding morass of stumbling fits and starts. No jurisdiction in the world has gotten it right from the beginning, and we can add Canada to that list. Investments in public MMPR applicants or licence holders have been frustrating at best, a shocking loss of capital at worse.

TORONTO, Feb. 23, 2015 /CNW/ - Members of the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) today released CSA Staff Notice 51-342 Staff Review of Issuers Entering Into Medical Marijuana Business Opportunities, which summarizes the CSA's findings and disclosure expectations for reporting issuers contemplating involvement inCanada's medical marijuana industry.

The CSA's review aimed to determine if reporting issuers were meeting the requirements of National Instrument 51-102 Continuous Disclosure Obligations, in providing sufficient and balanced disclosure on their intent to enter the medical marijuana field.

The decision of whether a Colorado credit union created just for the marijuana industry can open its doors ultimately could come from the nation's top financial policymakers.

Although the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, D.C., typically does not involve itself with local issues handled by the nation's 12 regional reserve banks, a bank solely for marijuana money appears to be a different matter.

Whether the state-chartered Fourth Corner Credit Union gains a critical master account to operate is a determination already removed from bureaucratic hands at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, the regional banking home of several states, including Colorado, according to several people familiar with the process.

In the hazy halls of marijuana folklore, one name reigns supreme: Nevil Schoenmakers.

The reclusive Australian/Dutch dual national's work breeding and improving the genetics of plants made him a legend among cannabis users in the 1980s, as his potent and hardy varieties become the basis for most of the strains widely used around the world today.

But after fleeing United States government attempts to extradite him from Australia to face a raft of drug-related charges, Schoenmakers vanished - until now.

BALRAM Vaswani chairman and 'chief ganja officer' of Ganja Labs USA and the University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) on Monday, February 16 signed a three-year agreement to develop high-quality ganja strains.

It forms the latest drive to formalise the medical ganja industry. The strains would grow under controlled indoor and outdoor conditions. But both parties offered no immediate plans to sell the drug as it still awaits clearance to grow it legally.

When it comes to marijuana laws, the Justice Department is now treating American Indian tribes the way it treats states that have legalized pot: by backing off on enforcement.

The move, announced in December, has inadvertently sparked interest in the marijuana business. While many see dollar signs, others worry about contributing to the impact substance abuse has already had on Indian Country.

The last time Derrick Bergman came to Amsterdam to buy cannabis, he did so behind a locked door with a long, thick curtain obscuring his activity from the canal-lined residential street outside, in the quiet Lastage neighborhood. The secretary of the Netherlands’s Union for the Abolition of Cannabis Prohibition, Bergman comes here to weekly gatherings of a two-month-old—and seriously clandestine—“cannabis social club” called the Tree of Life, because it’s the only place in town he can find one of his favorite strains: Super Silver Haze.