Jake Heimark never really smoked pot.

Even now, as Heimark launches the second product from his marijuana edibles company, Plus, he indulges only when testing his own product— a kind of medicated gum.

Despite his lack of firsthand experience, he is well prepared to enter the budding marijuana marketplace. A two-year stint on Facebook's risk management team taught Heimark how to build a great product and how to cultivate a company culture that values "moving fast" (though maybe not "breaking things," as the social giant's mantra goes).

By most accounts, the marijuana industry is growing like a weed.Since California became the first state to legalize medical cannabis in 1996, two dozen additional states have also legalized medical pot, and four states -- Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska -- along with Washington, D.C., have legalized the sale of recreational marijuana.

This is pretty exceptional considering that public support for the nationwide legalization of marijuana stood at just 36% in 2005. Today, according to Gallup's most recent poll, 60% of Americans approve of the idea of fully legalizing marijuana.

Although the sale of marijuana is a federal crime, the number of U.S. banks working with pot businesses, now sanctioned in many states, is growing, up 45 percent in the last year alone.

Still, marijuana merchants say there are not nearly enough banks willing to take their cash. So many dispensaries resort to stashing cash in storage units, back offices and armored vans.

Proponents believe the Nov. 8 election could tip the balance in favor of liberalizing federal marijuana laws, a move seen as key to getting risk-averse banks off the sidelines.

Nearly 60 million Americans may wake up Nov. 9 to find voters in their states have abolished long-standing marijuana prohibitions, a three-fold expansion for legal cannabis across the country.

Another 24 million Americans could find themselves in states with newly legal medical marijuana use, a smaller but still significant expansion of legalized pot around the United States. Already, half of the states permit some form of medical marijuana use, and more than half of all Americans live in a state that has approved medical marijuana.

How well do you know your weed? A Berkeley laboratory recently found that 84 percent of medical marijuana samples contained large amounts of pesticides. Steep Hill, a Northern California-based cannabis testing lab, says their findings were much higher than expected and “are cause for concern for California cannabis consumers.”

“Those in the cannabis community who feel that all cannabis is safe are not correct given this data – smoking a joint of pesticide-contaminated cannabis could potentially expose the body to lethal chemicals,” says Jmichaele Keller, president and CEO of Steep Hill. “As a community, we need to address this issue immediately and not wait until 2018.”

This year’s presidential election has revealed how divided most Americans are on many issues. However, there is one area where supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton agree: marijuana policy.

Laura Costa’s son and husband moved quickly with pruning shears as they harvested the family’s fall marijuana crop, racing along with several workers to cut the plants and drop them in plastic bins ahead of an impending storm.

The farm, hidden along a winding mountain road in a remote redwood forest, is just one of many illegal "grows" that make up Northern California’s famous Emerald Triangle, a marijuana−producing mecca at the intersection of Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties.

FIRST BITCOIN CAPITAL CORP. (OTCmarkets: BITCF), a leading bitcoin and cryptocurrency developer, specializing in both blockchain and online merchant payment solutions for medical marijuana dispensaries and other high-risk merchant accounts and services, today announced the signing of a merchant account processing agent agreement with a credit card processor for the states of California and Oregon. Under the agreement, BITCF will provide a full suite of financial services for the medical marijuana industry: merchant processing and POS solutions through its alliance network, a fully compliant, user friendly solution to accept Credit and Debit Cards through traditional Merchant Card Processing networks.

The movement to legalize marijuana, the country’s most popular illicit drug, will take a giant leap on Election Day if California and four other states vote to allow recreational cannabis, as polls suggest they may.    – “Election May Be a Turning Point for Legal Marijuana,” The New York Times, Oct 24, 2016