SAN FRANCISCO — A simmering battle among California's marijuana legalization advocates is getting new focus as Gov. Jerry Brown considers three laws laying the groundwork for legal recreational pot next year.

It's a topic that's previously attracted the financial backing of some of tech's best known and wealthiest founders, such as Napster co-founder and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and they're expected to jump into the ring this time, too.

Brown is considering legislation creating very basic marijuana regulations in the state, where recreational marijuana remains illegal.

Most of us want to know where our money's going before paying top-dollar for goods and services, but cannabis consumers aren't usually able to access that kind of info. 

Historically, you talk to the dealer that's available, then buy whatever they have. Period. 

Fortunately, that's changing. Companies like Flow Kana are emblematic of a shift in cannabis culture that's defying stoner stereotypes and empowering people to source their herb ethically. The San Francisco-based delivery startup - with its farm-to-table philosophy, sun-drenched profiles of independent famers, and product delivered in Pinterest-worthy mason jars - is giving consumers more say in how they participate in the cannabis industry.

A couple of weeks after the 2014 Election, during which Oregon, Alaska, and Washington D.C. voted to legalize marijuana, all eyes turned to California. California is, and has always been, the ‘top prize’ for marijuana reform efforts. It’s estimated that almost half of the marijuana industry in America is located in California. Think about that for a minute. The marijuana industry is MASSIVE, and getting bigger everyday, and half of that industry is located in one state.

Step aside, Comedy Central. Beat it, MTV. Eat your heart out, Food Channel.

A new media darling is tapping into the wants and needs of an emerging social culture: people who smoke pot, both medicinally and, in a growing number of states, simply to get high.

It's called Cannabis Club TV, or CCTV, the brainchild of Danny Keith and Pete Biggam. The two Santa Cruz partners with tattoos and hipster get-ups happen to be pot consumers themselves for, you know, those nasty aches and pains.

Their goal is to provide a platform for marijuana advertisers to reach potential customers — a burgeoning pot business community that is now, unlike the large U.S. pharmaceutical firms, precluded from such conventional outlets as TV and newspaper advertising.

The City of Oakland filed a petition on October 5 for rehearing en banc in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The filing follows a federal ruling in August that Oakland couldn’t challenge the federal government’s forfeiture action in July 2012 against Harborside Health Center. The continued court case against Harborside is in violation of last year’s congressional passage of the Farr-Rohrabacher bill, which bans the use of federal funding for enforcement against state-legal medical cannabis operations.

The most highly anticipated marijuana initiative in California—perhaps even across the entire United States—was finally submitted earlier this week to the state attorney general. ReformCA, the financially endowed coalition working to legalize recreational marijuana in the Golden State during the 2016 election, recently announced that their proposal, the Control, Regulate, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2016, was simply waiting for the approval of state officials before they launched a mega-campaign that could change the course of prohibition for the entire nation.

The following is an excerpt from the new book  The Cannabis Manifesto: A New Paradigm for Wellness  by Steve DeAngelo (North Atlantic Books, 2015):

I’m sometimes asked why I chose to spend my life advocating for cannabis reform, instead of working on more urgent issues like climate change, species extinction, or nuclear weapons.

Jacob SullumThis week Reform CA, the leading campaign to legalize marijuana in California next year, filed the proposed language of its ballot initiative. Like the initiatives in the four states that have legalized marijuana so far, the Control, Regulate, and Tax Cannabis Act of 2016 would allow adults 21 or older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana in public. Like three of those initiatives, it also would let people share up to an ounce at a time with other adults and grow marijuana at home.

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Oct. 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Santa Cruz Bakeware™ announces launch of the Greenskeeper project on Indiegogo, ending the home storage nightmare for medical and recreational cannabis consumers.

"Effective storage options remain surprisingly limited given the growth in medical and recreational use," says Michael Jessup, co-founder of Santa Cruz Bakeware.

"To extend the freshness and potency of marijuana, smart storage is crucial. What you see on the market, though, are a lot of repurposed products originally developed for storing food or tobacco," he continues.