Canada's medical marijuana industry has recently become a battleground between the nation's "gray market" dispensaries - illegal storefronts selling marijuana in cities like Vancouver and Toronto - and licensed producers such as Tilray and OrganiGram

Travis Lane has been growing marijuana since high school, when his first pot plant swiftly withered and died in his bedroom closet. By the time he was 20, he had cultivated a small basement grow-operation.

Now in his mid-thirties, Lane owns an online dispensary and runs two 390-plant operations on Vancouver Island. He employs two growers and raises his plants without pesticides or liquid fertilizer.

"I don't want to hide what I do. I'm good at what I do. I'm proud of being good at what I do," he said. "I've been proactive my whole life in trying to move towards a time where I can openly be a cannabis professional."

The marijuana industry is blossoming, and 2016 could wind up being its best year yet in a number of ways.

Marijuana keeps expanding despite federal inaction

Since California first approved Proposition 215 in 1996 to provide certain patients with medical marijuana on the basis of compassionate use, the marijuana industry has been trudging forward. Today, two dozen states have approved medical marijuana, while another four, along with Washington, D.C., have legalized the use of marijuana for recreational purposes.

Many veterans who struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have found relief from their symptoms in the form of cannabis. Although this treatment shows a lot of promise in dealing with a very complex and debilitating disorder, it would appear that the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Medical Center is not interested in sharing information about the subject with the people who could be helped most by it.

Tomorrow evening, June 14 at 6:30 p.m., at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Michael Sutton will lead a discussion on whether Californians should vote “yes” on an initiative this November that would legalize the cultivation and sale of marijuana.

Following a resounding marijuana initiative defeat last November, this state seemingly defied the odds to become the 25th to legalize medical marijuana.

Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, but it's been growing by leaps and bounds at the state level. This has both industry enthusiasts and investors believing that we're on the cusp of witnessing a major expansion of the industry in 2016.

Depending on which state you're in, getting caught with marijuana could mean getting a ticket, a criminal charge or no punishment at all. And there is no Mason-DIxon line dividing legal from illegal jurisdictions, so you often see states like Idaho - where no use of marijuana is legal - nestled among states that have legalized medical and/or recreational use.

Speaking Wednesday at an economic conference, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made one of the more buttoned-down, straight-edged arguments for marijuana legalization I've heard in recent years. It's worth quoting at length so I've done that below:

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Look, our approach on legalizing marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenue, it's based on two very simple principles:

A psychiatrist who will help run a federally approved study of the use of medical marijuana to treat veterans has urged Floridians to pass Amendment 2 in November.

Organizers of the amendment, United for Care, held a press conference in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday with Dr. Suzanne Sisley and two veterans who have used medical marijuana. The press conference was held at a Westin hotel, the site of a Viridian Cannabis conference about investing in the marijuana industry. 

There are many legal activities we can partake in that aren’t exactly healthy decisions, but our government has no say in how frequently we do them or if we’re doing them to excess. 

For instance, as Americans, we can buy and consume as much alcohol as we want, we can smoke as many cigarettes as we want, and we can eat as much fast food as we want. As an American citizen, you have the right to literally drink, smoke, and eat yourself to death, but when it comes to consuming marijuana, that’s off the table, even though it is impossible to die from smoking pot to excess.