Somebody's got to be the first state to free the weed through the legislature.

Four states, including California, the nation’s most populous, voted to legalize marijuana on November 8. That doubles the number of legal states to eight, and more than quadruples the number of people living in legal marijuana states, bringing the number to something around 64 million.

Every one of those states legalized marijuana through the initiative process, but we’re not going to see anymore initiatives on state ballots until 2018, and perhaps 2020. That means that if we are to make more progress on spreading marijuana legalization in the next couple of years, it’s going to have to come at the state house instead of the ballot box.

I’m in Mellow Yellow, Amsterdam’s oldest coffeeshop. Beneath a thin veil of smoke, groups of men and women - young, old and of various nationalities - sit at wooden tables, chatting, joking and sharing spliffs. Reggae flows from nearby speakers, while a coffee machine noisily grinds beans behind the bar.

After finding fertile ground in a decidedly grey area of Dutch drug law, Mellow Yellow opened in 1967, blazing a trail for hundreds of other coffeeshops to follow.

Next year this historic establishment should be celebrating its 50th anniversary, but instead it will be pulling down the shutters for the final time: by order of the mayor, Mellow Yellow is to cease trading on January 1, 2017. This joint is going out.

A Nevada lawmaker is working on a plan to make retail marijuana available to adults 21 and over long before the recreational cannabis industry launches in the summer of 2018.

Although marijuana is about to enter into legal status all across the Silver State at the first of the year, people are still going to be forced to lean on the black market for smoke because the cannabis trade is not expected to be ready for at least another year.

It is for this reason that State Senator Tick Segerblom would like to see the state pass legislation that would allow recreational reefer to be sold temporarily through the medical sector – a concept that was successfully implemented last year in the state of Oregon.

The marijuana industry gets a lot of headlines because of the large dollar figures involved. This year Colorado alone is on its way to selling more than one billion (with a B!) dollars worth of marijuana. Marijuana sales figures are climbing in Washington, and with the exception of the recent slowdown in Oregon due to marijuana testing issues, Oregon’s sales have grown steadily too. Alaska just started marijuana sales, and eventually the ‘2016 class’ of legalization states will start sales.

State regulators on Friday tried to calm the troubled Oregon marijuana industry, revising testing rules that had stifled the market and thrown businesses into jeopardy, but the move was met with doubt by industry players.

The Oregon Health Authority called the revisions, which took effect immediately, “temporary rules aimed at lowering the testing burden on producers and processors based on concerns and input from the marijuana industry.”

A consultant to marijuana businesses, however, said the revisions fell far short of what the troubled industry was hoping to see.

Justin Trudeau isn’t legalizing marijuana to please the people who smoke it.

“People are right now breaking the law,” the prime minister told the Toronto Star’s editorial board on Friday. He called the recent flood of new storefront dispensaries in cities like Toronto, “frustrating.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a conference for elementary school teachers in Toronto on Friday.

Marijuana legalization is now a foregone conclusion. Over half of U.S. states have enacted laws that have legalized marijuana for recreational or medical use. That means American capitalism has kicked into high gear, with estimates that the domestic legal cannabis market will reach $50 billion by 2026, according to Bloomberg.

New research by a national marketing strategy firm has turned up some surprising findings about Gen X and Millennial cannabis consumers.

Researchers at New York-based Miner & Co. Studio recently took a deep dive into the background, opinions, and buying habits of cannabis consumers in their twenties and thirties who live in legal states. Their survey of 800 brand-aware consumers in Colorado, Washington State, and California found that 90 percent of them use cannabis as part of their wellness and self-care regimens. Only one in ten used cannabis purely to get high or stoned.

James Slatic isn't a drug dealer. The owner of Med-West Distributors in San Diego was a successful entrepreneur in California's legalized medical marijuana industry, refining cannabis extractions and providing them to nine local dispensaries. His business was housed in a 14,000-square-foot industrial property that the company owned and which the city had inspected; he says his workers had employer-matched 401(k) retirement accounts and health insurance, and that he spent thousands of dollars to have his products tested by a city-licensed lab.

A Nevada lawmaker is working on a plan to make retail marijuana available to adults 21 and over long before the recreational cannabis industry launches in the summer of 2018.

Although marijuana is about to enter into legal status all across the Silver State at the first of the year, people are still going to be forced to lean on the black market for smoke because the cannabis trade is not expected to be ready for at least another year.

It is for this reason that State Senator Tick Segerblom would like to see the state pass legislation that would allow recreational reefer to be sold temporarily through the medical sector – a concept that was successfully implemented last year in the state of Oregon.