Trichrome Institute courses are modelled after a wine sommelier program: Level one is a $220 lecture, while Level Two costs $335 and includes a sight-and-smell workshop.

 A marijuana aficionado in Colorado has launched a program he hopes will make the title of cannabis interpener as familiar as wine sommelier, cheesemonger and chocolatier.

Max Montrose, the 29-year-old president and co-founder of the Trichrome Institute in Denver, said he designed the niche curriculum, which teaches students how to become marijuana experts, after he became fed up with the inconsistent quality and improper naming rampant in the blossoming industry.

An illegal pot shop on Bank Street recently had a sale on peanut butter cookies. The cannabis-laced sweets  were $5, a third of the regular price of $15.

“For this price, you can’t go wrong,” said a customer snapping up 10 of them. “Might as well stock up.”

The store had traditional dried weed for sale in glass jars, but half the display cases were filled with cookies, gummy candies shaped like teddy bears, tea, cannabis concentrates and vape pens loaded with cannabis oil.

It’s a reflection of a broad shift among marijuana users away from smoking.

In cannabis cutting-edge Colorado, dried weed makes up a steadily shrinking proportion of sales. And edible products like chocolate bars, candy and lemonade are taking a growing bite out of the market.

The federal government is preparing a backup plan that would see it regulate the distribution and taxation of legal marijuana in provinces that are not ready in time for Ottawa’s July, 2018, deadline.

Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau outlined the plan Monday following a two-day meeting with his provincial and territorial counterparts. Some provinces are expressing concern with the federal government’s deadline for legalization, given that important details, such as how the products will be taxed, have yet to be worked out.

Speaking with reporters, Mr. Morneau said a backup plan will be in place that would see Ottawa regulate a legal cannabis market based on mail delivery in provinces that have not yet established a regime to regulate sales at the retail level.

Taking advantage of an impending boom in industrial space for marijuana growers — notably class-B and class-C warehouses — isn’t as simple as just snatching up properties and signing up tenants.

Does the growing legalization of recreational and medical marijuana represent a pot of gold for industrial real estate? It could, experts say, but only if investors quickly and carefully pounce on opportunities.

Being a pothead is so en vogue right now, probably because it also can be totally healthy. Healthy enough that there's a spa devoted to the plant. Thank god, because we were tired of trying to claim smoking weed is healthy if you use coconut water instead of regular old tap in our bongs (and we were never quite sure if that was actually healthy for you in the first place). 

Taxation isn't the only factor in the quest to undercut black market prices.

Provincial finance ministers are getting a clear message from the federal government this week: Keep taxes on legal marijuana sales consistently low across Canada, or risk undercutting the government's goal of ending black market cannabis sales.

But provincial governments may find that enticing consumers to buy legal marijuana over illicit weed will take more than just tweaking tax rates. The question of how provinces allow marijuana to be sold could also play an important role in pricing.

We are almost halfway through 2017 and the year has been a year to remember (or forget) for many companies.

From Germany introducing legal medical marijuana legislation to Canada introducing a plan to legalize recreational marijuana, new opportunities continue to emerge.

One of the major differences between the cannabis sector today and this time last year is the strength of the companies from a capital standpoint. More than $1 billion has been raised over the last year and much of this has been done by Canadian cannabis firms.

Nine months after Oregon issued the toughest rules in the nation to keep pesticide-tainted marijuana off store shelves, the state acknowledges that some contaminated products continue to reach consumers.

The admission underscores the tricky work of effectively regulating a plant long tied to illegal pesticide use.

Oregon, like other states with legal marijuana, wrote its own rules to crack down on pesticides in cannabis production. But it has faced a backlash from parts of the state's nearly $320 million industry over the expense and inefficiency of the requirements and the inconsistency of the results.

Witnessing the incredible output of Colombian drug makers is a highlight of the Netflix series Narcos. It boggles the mind trying to fathom how much cocaine Pablo Escobar and rival crews carried across American borders. And when it comes to drugs America has long provided a captive and willing market... be they pharmaceuticals or illicit substances. 

There is quite a bit of debate about the use of different strains of cannabis in edibles. This is particularly true in the United States, where many commercial kitchens still make edibles out of the mixed clippings and endings of all of their weed.

That said, when cooking at home, you can certainly impact what kind of strain you use, and in turn this will also affect the potency and strength of your edibles.