Booming Alberta company supplies nearly 4,000 customers, and demand is climbing.

Tucked into the rolling hills of Alberta's ranch country, just down the road from the small town of Cremona, lies one of Canada's biggest medical marijuana operations.  

Just over an hour from Calgary, the Aurora Cannabis production facility is set back from the road, and ringed by barbed wire. 

Security is tight, inside and out.

​Inside the sprawling 55,000-square-foot facility, key cards are needed to enter and exit each room, and security cameras perched above doors monitor everything that goes on.

In July, Italy's parliament will begin debating historic changes to cannabis laws that could see the drug legalized.

On July 25th, the draft legislation will be presented in Italy's lower house for the first time. The following day, politicians will begin voting on whether or not to send the bill through to the upper house for final approval.

If new laws are passed, how will things change?

Obviously, the proposals being debated will probably undergo some amendments if they are to make it into law. However, in their current form proposals would allow:

Possession: Citizens will be able to hold up to 15 grams of herb at home and take up to five grams with them when they go out and about.

It’ll probably give him a bump in the polls back in Oregon.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), a high-profile supporter of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, has been caught on video with $70,000 in drug money. The footage, provided exclusively to The Huffington Post, also captures Rep. Earl Blumenauer, another Oregon Democrat, as well as a prominent local businessman, Tyson Haworth. 

The video, however, was not a sting operation run by the Drug Enforcement Administration or FBI. Instead, it’s an effort to highlight a gaping and dangerous hole in national cannabis policy, if such a thing even exists. 

Liberal government hopes to introduce legislation to legalize marijuana in 2017.

Canada is lurching toward marijuana legalization, but the Liberals aren't being blunt about what the new law will mean for the average pot-friendly Canadian.

Justice Minister Wilson-Raybould announced on Thursday the launch of a task force to advise the Canadian government on how best to map its plan to legalize marijuana.

The task force report could give us a better sense of what the Liberals' law will look like. Still, the panel is just offering recommendations and the Liberals could always take another route.

What we know

When are we going to see new laws around marijuana in Canada?

High hopes among cannabis activists for an interim measure to decriminalize pot also goes up in smoke before serious work on legalization has begun.

With the feds scheduling a pot announcement on the day before the Canada Day long weekend, there were high hopes among cannabis activists. Last time the government made a major announcement on marijuana, it chose 420 as the date.

There is no guarantee California will vote to legalize recreational marijuana in November, but political operative and father of four Daniel Conway has already staked his future on it.

Conway left his job as chief of staff to Sacramento's celebrity mayor, former Phoenix Suns NBA basketball star Kevin Johnson, to help start the marijuana investment company Truth Enterprises.

He is one of hundreds in the most populous U.S. state already pushing ahead with plans to enter a market experts say will be worth $4 billion by 2020.

"I'm someone of an age and of a demographic that sees the legalization and normalization of marijuana as inevitable," said Conway, 35. "This was a chance not just to build companies but to build an industry."

Ohioans looking for medical marijuana this fall may not be able to get the drug as soon as it becomes legal in September.

Doctors in the state will be able to give patients written certification that they can use marijuana in certain forms starting in September.  However, actually finding the drug through legal channels will be a challenge.

State Sen. Kenny Yuko has been working for more than a decade to legalize medical marijuana and says the state needs to get moving soon on the rules for who can get the drug, and where.

"Let me tell you how the big pharma industry works," said the DEA lawyer, picking up a glass of chardonnay and swirling it around. We were having lunch at Shutters on the Beach, and the wine, which I would pay for, cost $150 a glass. But he had promised to answer some questions from readers of my controversial article entitled "US Gov't Will Legalize Marijuana August 1."

"I'll tell you how this industry works. The big pharma people take the DEA people to dinner to discuss the legalization of Marijuana, how it's going to really work. They say:

Marijuana has expanded like a weed over the past two decades, but 2016 could be its greatest year yet.

In November, residents in up to a dozen states could vote on whether or not to legalize medicinal or recreational marijuana. Five states have secured marijuana initiatives on their ballots, while signature collection and verification continues in the remaining states.

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap announced June 27 that the initiative to regulate marijuana like alcohol will appear on the state ballot as Question 1. Historically, the first measure on a ballot gets more votes and has a higher chance of passage.

The final wording of the ballot question reads, “Do you want to allow the possession and use of marijuana under state law by persons who are at least 21 years of age, and allow the cultivation, manufacture, distribution, testing, and sale of marijuana and marijuana products subject to state regulation, taxation and local ordinance?”