Bill Blair, the former police chief of Toronto, slides into his restaurant chair and twinkles at the waitress. He’s 6ft 6in, white-haired now but perky. Bill has 120 years of policing behind him. He, his father and his grandfather all served 40 years in the force. Now he’s an MP and he’s legalising cannabis in Canada.

The restaurant has been here since early in Bill’s father’s time on the beat. It claims to have invented the bacon cheeseburger. We sit round a plastic-topped table and Bill tells me how he ended up pushing drug reform.

Pot will regulated in the city of Los Angeles.

That’s because Measure M was approved Tuesday by voters.

With all precincts reporting, 192,054 voters voted for the measure, giving it 79.36 percent of the total. The measure garnered 49,964 “no” votes for 20.64 percent, according to the L.A. County Registrar’s Office.

At stake was regulation of the pot business in L.A., where there is perhaps 1,000 retail shops, with untold numbers of cultivators, delivery services, testing labs, edibles bakers and concentrate makers operating in the city.

Supporters of the measure were touting it as groundbreaking.

Cannabiz Consumer Group’s (C2G) research findings predict thatlegal marijuana will “canna-balize” 7.1% of revenues from the existing retail beer industry. Those purchases will take many forms, infused beverages among them. If cannabis were legalized nationally, the beer industry would lose more than $2 billion in retail sales, predicts C2G. Twenty-seven percent (27%) of beer drinkers state that they already have substituted cannabis for beer, or would substitute their beer retail purchases with cannabis in the future if legal. Other segments of the alcohol industry including wine and spirits and on-premise sales are also being impacted as are other CPG categories, brands, and retailers.

The Alaska Marijuana Control Board met Tuesday afternoon in Anchorage, discussing everything from its on-again, off-again relationship with marijuana cafes to whether or not cultivators can keep rolling joints before delivering them to shops.

Here are the most important takeaways:

The board will try again to write rules for marijuana cafes.

The control board will try again to write rules for on-site consumption areas at marijuana retailers, a project that it shot down at its last meeting. 

The U.S. cannabis market could generate $2.3 billion in state tax revenue from retail sales by the year 2020, according to New Frontier Data’s newly released annual report on the industry.

This figure was forecasted in the report – titled The Cannabis Industry Annual Report: 2017 Legal Marijuana Outlook – under the assumption that all currently legal states continue their projected growth.

“During this tough economy states are looking for any way to close their budget shortfalls and it appears that cannabis may hold an answer for them,” said New Frontier Data CEO Giadha Aguirre De Carcer in a statement.

The momentum behind legalizing the cannabis industry has never been greater.  With 28 states and Washington, DC having legalized cannabis for either medical and/or adult-use, we are finally in a position where market-based facts and governmental and scientific studies are proving the cannabis industry is both responsible and thriving. 

We are relearning that cannabis is a healthy alternative to opioid pain pill prescriptions and the concerns of some are based on mis-information that produced outdated and unjustified policy. In fact, the more people learn about cannabis the more they support the end of its prohibition. 

Colorado officials say it could be necessary to prevent a federal crackdown.

Colorado lawmakers are pushing to restrict the number of cannabis plants cultivated at home for personal use.

According to the Associated Press, a House committee approved a measure on Monday in a vote of 11-to-2 intended to inflict a 12 plant limit on home grows in residential areas.

Presently, Colorado law allows medical marijuana patients to cultivate as many as 99 plants, while giving the recreational sector the freedom to grow up to six plants on personal property.

Idaho license plates line the parking lots of Huntington's pot shops.

Idaho Governor Butch Otter hates weed. Not only is his state one of the last without any sort of medical or recreational marijuana program whatsoever, Otter has even recently gone on record urging Trump to pursue a federal crackdown on states with legal marijuana laws. But despite the governor’s disapproval, Idaho’s residents are getting their hands on the marijuana they want elsewhere, and it’s bringing much needed financial relief to one struggling Oregon town.

THE STONERS HAVE spoken: Recreational marijuana is now legal in eight states and Washington, DC. Thanks to the passage of Proposition 64, California is one of them, making it the country’s largest cannabis market—the state will start issuing sales licenses by January 1, 2018. Now, as long as the Trump administration doesn’t confiscate our stash, regulators, lawyers, and scientists have some big hazy questions to navigate, from how to keep digital tabs on up to 25,000 licensed growers to how to evaluate THC-­related DUIs.