Wine has long flowed through the heart of our state. Whether you’re a connoisseur or a casual sipper, tasting California’s world-renowned wines offers the chance to practice mindfulness, exhibit your adept preferences, and appreciate the artful idiosyncrasies that spring from each vineyard. Wine tasting isn’t (usually) about getting hammered. And at the inaugural Emerald Exchange farmers market, a group of Mendocino farmers descended upon Malibu’s bluffs to prove that cannabis consumption is no longer about dirty bongs and debilitating highs. 

Melissa Etheridge is diving headlong into the marijuana business. Her company, Etheridge Farms, will soon be making cannabis products available for California medical patients.

As cannabis becomes more mainstream, we as cannabis users have a responsibility to represent the growing cannabis community in a positive way. While there are so many who are working hard to show that there is a classy side, a business side, a responsible side to the cannabis industry there are still many who are putting the majority of us in a negative light by carrying on old stereotypes. While it’s all fun and games to go party out in the desert with a free dab bar and an expert budtender, it doesn’t do much for trying to legitimize the industry and deplete the fears of those who have never been a part of it.

When we speak of legalizing marijuana we are really speaking of the Great Cannabis Debate. Come November, Californians will vote on Proposition 64, the Adult Use of Marijuana Act, which could bring safety and security for both cannabis consumers and farmers, and the sales taxes accrued could provide much-needed revenue to our state. Let’s look at a short list of possible unforeseen ramifications.

There will be more than Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the ballot this November, voters heading to the polls in nine states will also be deciding on Marijuana.

Collectively, these marijuana measures mean more voters will be weighing in on cannabis issues than any other year in American history.

Rabbi Jeffrey Kahn and his family opened Takoma Wellness Center, a medical marijuana dispensary in the District of Columbia three years ago.

CANNDESCENT, a California cannabis cultivator, closed a $6.5 million seed round led by Texas investor, Lee McPherson, and CANNDESCENT CEO Adrian Sedlin. The seed round represents the largest on record for a Southern California cannabis cultivator.

Canopy, a cannabis industry investor, is currently hosting a 16-week entrepreneurial bootcamp in Berkeley for nine cannabis ancillary startups.

Canopy chose startups it identified as having high potential for growth within the cannabis industry and aims to prepare these companies for investment opportunities within the next four months. According to CEO and co-founder Patrick Rea, Canopy had an interest in having its business in Berkeley because of the prominence of cannabis-related business in the East Bay.

“Well before we launched our first class in 2015, we made the strategic decision to be in California during the time of (the potential) legalization of marijuana,” Rea said.

The Game has bought into one of 10 licensed Santa Ana, California marijuana dispensaries, The OC Register reports. He is now co-owner of the weed shop The Reserve.

The Compton, California rapper is also cultivating specific strains of marijuana flowers and concentrates that will first become available at his Tech Center Drive shop with more to come by the end of 2016.

The Game is best known as a hip-hop artist, handpicked by Dr. Dre to join the rap group G-Unit. He’s also taken on the title of actor, with roles in several films and his own reality TV show. Now he has a new role: “potrepreneur.”

The Los Angeles rapper, whose real name is Jayceon Terrell Taylor, has become part owner of The Reserve, one of 10 licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in Santa Ana.

He’s also developing branded strains of marijuana flowers and concentrates that will be available first at his Tech Center Drive shop, then at other licensed dispensaries by the end of the year.

“Our mission as a community is simple: safe and legal access to a plant that saves lives and changes futures,” The Game said in a statement.

In his sunny office on the edge of town in Arcata, California, Scott Greacen pulls up a slideshow on his large high-resolution monitor. As wildflowers sway in the wind outside a window, a woodsy guitar solo starts to play along with the pictures. Greacen mutes it; he wants to focus on destruction. Aerial images of clear-cut plots within the coastal forest, bounded by dusty roads and dotted with trucks, show the intrusion of industrial marijuana cultivation into redwood groves and hillsides. Some plots are small, barely detectable. Others cover hundreds of acres with row upon row of oblong structures covered with white tarps, blighting the landscape like giant predatory maggots.