States with medical marijuana laws have a quarter less painkiller overdose deaths, and less painkiller prescriptions as well.

Now, leading research institution UC Berkeley, and a cannabis technology company HelloMD, hope to learn more about why.

UC Berkeley and HelloMD announced this week a study of how cannabis affects opioid use. The team will survey HelloMD’s patient database of around 100,000 regarding cannabis and how it affects patients’ use of opioids.

This November, nine states will consider ballot measures related to marijuana. The big one is California, where voters could make pot legal for recreational use. Considering that the Golden State’s economy is around the sixth biggest in the world, the move could be the tipping point for legitimizing the cannabis market.

As weed has gone more mainstream, it’s attracted more conventional investors. Some of them could be found at the recent Cannabis World Congress & Business Expo in Los Angeles.

“Cannabis Curious?” That’s the billboard my children and I see every day on our after-school drive on Ventura Boulevard. The questions from my kids, who are 11 and 13, have come spilling out: “What is cannabis? What's curious about it? Why does it have different names? What does it look like? Why do people use it?”

If you are a parent, no matter how you plan to vote on Proposition 64 — the California initiative that would legalize marijuana for adult use — you need to be prepared to talk about marijuana with your kids. Even without legalization, access to marijuana has significantly increased over the last few years, as has its popularity with youth.

Should California decide to legalize recreational marijuana this election, it will cause a flood of venture capital to enter the market for cannabis startups, investors said Tuesday speaking at a conference for marijuana companies in Oakland.

Nearly half of the US has already legalized marijuana for either medical or recreational use. This November, nine states could continue the trend.

Of those nine states, five have ballot initiatives that could result in legal recreational use. Most significantly, California could legalize recreational use — thus making the entire West Coast a legal enclave for recreational cannabis.

All the initiatives below will be voted on this November, alongside the presidential election. Here's everything we know:

In the evolving field of medical marijuana, ensuring the proper dose can be a challenge. hmbldt’s dose pen is designed to offer consistent medication delivery to patients.

While medical marijuana is now legal in the majority of the U.S., the industry is new and still finding its footing in terms of standardization. With a wide variety of products and delivery forms (including inhalable, edible and topical products), patients can have trouble with dose consistency.

But strides are being made to provide patients with dosage control and consistency across batches, such as with encapsulated cannabis oil and vaporizer pens.

Two years ago, the city of Adelanto, a crumbling outpost in California’s Mojave desert, was facing a bleak future as it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and struggled with double-digit unemployment.

“We were about to vanish, to be incorporated into another city,” says councilman John “Bug” Woodard Jr. “The place was dying and in total despair.”

Today, however, the once-desolate town is firmly back on the map, having joined a handful of communities in California in embracing large-scale commercial cannabis cultivation—a move that smells of success as the state prepares to vote in November on legalizing the use of recreational marijuana.

As California edges closer toward cannabis legalization for adult recreational use in November, a marijuana-focused business accelerator program has announced a new Berkeley-based boot camp for entrepreneurs.

Based out of the WeWork building on University, the accelerator called Canopy has agreed to invest a total of $180,000 investment in nine startups — though none of them are tied directly to the cultivation, refining, or sale of the drug. The 16-week program aims to refine the businesses, and ultimately help fledgling organizations raise additional capital, according to Canopy CEO Patrick Rea.

As California voters mull whether to legalize recreational marijuana for adults, both sides have argued over what advertising would appear and where should Proposition 64 pass.

That includes Northern California where Shasta Lake's medical marijuana dispensaries, which already run advertisements on various platforms, express different views on what, if any, recreational commercials they'd run.

Proposition 64 establishes rules for recreational ads that, among other things, bars advertising and product labels geared toward minors, supporters say. It establishes those rules in case the federal government OKs recreational marijuana advertising, according to the Yes on 64 campaign.

Two years ago, the city of Adelanto, a crumbling outpost in California's Mojave desert, was facing a bleak future as it teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and struggled with double-digit unemployment.

'We were about to vanish, to be incorporated into another city,' says councilman John 'Bug' Woodard Jr. 'The place was dying and in total despair.'

Today, however, the once-desolate town is firmly back on the map, having joined a handful of communities in California in embracing large-scale commercial cannabis cultivation -- a move that smells of success as the state prepares to vote in November on legalizing the use of recreational marijuana.