Market analysts are predicting every state will have a medicinal or recreational marijuana law on the books by 2021.

Marijuana could be legal across the entire United States by 2021, according to the latest research by GreenWave Advisors.

Last year, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada joined Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska in legalizing marijuana in a manner similar to alcohol. In addition, more than half the nation has legalized the leaf for medicinal purposes.

John Huffman, 84, created a synthetic version of cannabis - now known as Spice - in his lab.

A DRUG at the centre of an epidemic where addicts are left wandering the streets like ‘zombies’ was innocently invented by an American scientist while examining the effects of cannabis on the brain.

John Huffman, 84, created a synthetic and extremely potent version of the drug – now known as Spice – in his lab at Clemson University in South Carolina in the 1990s.

But years later variations of his compound are blighting the lives of young people across the UK as shocking pictures have shown users slumped on pavements and reduced to trance-like states.

For three years, recreational pot has been legal in Colorado, but using it in public is still against the law. That will change this summer when pot clubs are slated to open.

A blinking "open" sign hangs on the outside of an old building in a dark industrial zone just outside the Denver city limits. When the front door opens, smoke billows out.

Inside is one of the state's few pot clubs, called iBake. Recently, members celebrated the anniversary of its opening.

Glassy-eyed patrons bounce off each other in the small space.

People can smoke pot in here because the club is private; you have to be a member. And it's outside city limits, away from city police.

It's not the easiest way to make money, but Steve Nelson Jr. started iBake to fill a need.

Canada’s “Princess of Pot” flew home to Vancouver Monday to cut ties with the cannabis empire she and her husband spent decades growing.

Jodie Emery returned to her Chinatown apartment for the first time since being released from custody earlier this month in Toronto, where she, her husband Marc Emery, and three other associates in the Cannabis Culture business were arrested and charged with a range of offenses including drug trafficking.

“I am so grateful to be back where the nature and the forest and the mountains can soothe my soul, after that concrete jungle,” she said Monday in her first interview since returning to Vancouver.

Lawmakers made their first public revenue estimations since marijuana was legalized last fall.

Massachusetts revenue officials are expecting a pretty high return when retail marijuana sales begin next summer.

The Legislature’s Joint Committee on Marijuana Policy held its inaugural hearing on Monday, and officials estimated that taxes on recreational pot could bring in more than $100 million annually, The Boston Globe reported. 

The marijuana industry has been practically unstoppable for the better part of four years.

Since 2012, eight states (along with Washington, D.C.) have legalized recreational, adult-use pot, including residents in four states who voted in favor of doing so in the November 2016 election. In fact, if not for Arizona, which had its adult-use proposition fail in the November elections, marijuana would have had a clean sweep.

Just as impressive, since 1996 -- which is when California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis for compassionate use in select ailments -- 28 states have legalized medical marijuana. Two states (Ohio and Pennsylvania) did so in 2016 entirely through the legislative process.

Longmont's City Council will hold a Tuesday night public hearing on an ordinance that would regulate and limit the growing of marijuana inside homes for residents' medical or recreational use.

Also on Tuesday, the council is to decide whether to provide Longmont water and sewer service to a commercial indoor marijuana growing facility that's been proposed for a building on a property northeast of the St. Vrain River and 119th Street, which is outside the city's boundaries.

A bill proposed Friday by Sen. Tick Segerblom would kick-start recreational marijuana sales in Nevada.

But a statement out of Gov. Brian Sandoval’s office could spell doom for the bill.

Senate Bill 302 would let medical marijuana dispensaries forgo the medical card requirement and sell cannabis to anyone 21 and older. The measure would allow for some sales for the drug while the Nevada Department of Taxation crafts permanent business regulations.

If passed, the bill would go into effect as soon as it is signed into law.

But therein lies the rub.

A task force created by Sandoval last month is working on essentially the same thing.

The man widely regarded as the front-runner for South Carolina's top federal prosecutor job is a Republican state representative who gave early support to Donald Trump's campaign in this early voting state.

But Rep. Peter McCoy — whose name frequently circulates in legal circles as a likely top contender for the job, in part because of his Trump support — has introduced comprehensive medicinal cannabis legislation here, which appears to contradict his would-be boss' statements on drug policy. U.S. Attorney Jeff Sessions has made no secret of his plans to take a hard line on drugs, reminding reporters just weeks after being sworn in that marijuana distribution remains a federal crime, regardless of what states may do to legalize it.