The growth prospects for the U.S. marijuana industry are phenomenal. Investment company Cowen & Co. anticipates that today's $6 billion in legal sales could turn into $50 billion in legal sales by 2026, while cannabis research ArcView has suggested that compound annual growth for the industry could average about 30% through 2020.

The impetus behind this rapid growth is the dramatic shift in public opinion toward marijuana. National pollster Gallup has shown that in roughly two decades, support for nationwide legalization has jumped from just 25% to an all-time high of 60%.

Krishna Andavolu makes a show about weed. Two whole seasons of it, with a third on the way.

But he's not some sandal-wearing hippy with a blunt fuming between finger and thumb. Andavolu is a pretty ordinary dude - American, Gen Y, a dad, bearded, a hipster in kind of a loose sense. He might describe himself, modestly, as "woke" (a slang term for someone aware of the big social issues).

He smoked pot in college, and says it was fun but hardly life-defining. He still takes an occasional puff of the devil's lettuce, and has a prescription for medicinal marijuana to help with some kind of back problem.  

"It's just weed, but it's so much deeper than it appears at first blush," Andavolu says.

A group representing a number of quasi-legal pot shops in the city of L.A. will throw its considerable weight behind a City Hall–sponsored effort to make those dispensaries fully legal. The organization, the United Cannabis Business Alliance, is scrapping its own measure, which already had qualified for the March ballot.

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Located in the heart of the Palermo neighbourhood, the epicentre of candombe, and a few minutes from the centre of Montevideo, the Museo de Cannabis de Montevideo (Cannabis Museum Montevideo) will open its doors to the public on December 9. This remarkable project is as a way to celebrate the rich history of liberties that Uruguay has enjoyed in the past and continues to develop in the present. 

Global circuit

Managing the museum is the Uruguayan agronomist Eduardo Blasina, who earned one of the two legal growing licenses in the country. He points out that the museum places the country in a global circuit that includes Amsterdam, Barcelona and California. “It’s a way of connecting people who love nature, art and science,” concludes the director.

Düsseldorf City Council on Wednesday took the next step in its plan to legalize the regulated sale of recreational cannabis to over 18-year-olds, taking advice from experts in psychology, crime and economics during a consultation at City Hall.

Representatives from other city councils interested in pursuing similar schemes, including Cologne and Münster, were also present at the meeting.

Dr Armin Claus, a child psychologist specializing in youth addiction, voiced concerns that legalization could reduce young people's awareness of the dangers involved in taking this drug.

"The more people who take the drug, the more socially acceptable it becomes, and the less it is seen as a possible danger," Claus said.

MILegalize, the group attempting to bring a vote on recreational marijuana use in Michigan, has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to put the issue on the 2018 ballot.

The group is arguing the 345,000 petition signatures they turned in this year are valid, and they were unfairly stymied from putting the issue on the November 2016 ballot. 

They are asking the U.S. Supreme Court "to remand the case with an order to fairly canvass and qualify MILegalize's petitions for inclusion at the next regular election -- the 2018 gubernatorial race," according to a press release.

Longtime marijuana event producer Tim Blake has sober advice for first-timers partaking of newly legal pot at the Emerald Cup, a cannabis county fair in Santa Rosa expected to draw 30,000 people this weekend.

In the Drug Enforcement Administration's annual survey of the nation's law enforcement agencies, heroin remained the top concern in 2016 -- head-and-shoulders above all other illicit drugs -- while marijuana was a drug of negligible concern. Only 4.9 percent of law enforcement respondents named it their top drug of concern, down slightly from 6 percent last year.

Concern or not, marijuana remains illegal for all purposes under federal law, a policy the DEA emphatically reiterated this past summer. To that end, the DEA devoted 22 pages of its Drug Threat Assessment to pot -- considerably more real estate than it devoted to, say, prescription painkillers (16 pages), which kill more than 14,000 people per year.

It’s July 2016. At Los Angeles art gallery Blum and Poe – the same venue that hosted Kanye West’s Famous sculpture – the air tingles with the sweet smoke of cognac-brined hotdogs and marijuana. Reggae plays on the patio, and the sprinkling of guests seems outnumbered by the security guards hulking against the dusk.