Santa Rosa focuses on the companies involved in cannabis now that the sought-after drug has been legalized in the state of California. The city of Santa Rosa and its business-minded residents have only two priorities in mind. These priorities include building a vast empire of new housing or engaging in the real estate and marijuana business.

However, with these two top priorities of the business-minded folks of Santa Rosa, a feud has ensued. Marijuana business can mean growing your pot in a land that you either lease or own. On the other hand, farming marijuana can also mean occupying a huge part of the area to make room for the plants to grow.

Adding cannabis to everything from iced coffee to breath mints, local startups are jockeying for a bite of California’s growing marijuana edibles market as the state gears up to allow recreational pot sales.

The industry that barely existed 10 years ago — apart from a few bakers making pot brownies in their home kitchens — now shows no sign of slowing down.

“There’s a brand boom going on right now, particularly in preparation for adult use legalization here,” said Troy Dayton, CEO of The Arcview Group, a research and investment services firm focusing on marijuana businesses. “Not all of them are going to do well, but there’s just so many different types of edibles hitting different market segments.”

Recreational marijuana use has now been legal in California for six months and counting. On the surface, you’d never know that anything has changed. Since the passing of Prop. 64 in November, there have not been red-eyed, burnout bohemians strewn across the lawns of Griffith Park, nor masses of wasted youth in irreversible states of hysteria. Instead, on a hot Saturday afternoon in May, a group of lithe twenty-somethings clad in the kind of spandex that doesn’t leave much room for snacking gathered on a rooftop in the shadow of the Hollywood hills to practice yoga, and get high.

The legal marijuana industry brought in upwards of $4 billion in sales in 2016, according to a new report from the Marijuana Business Daily. And small-town America is riding the high.

In the eight US states where recreational marijuana is legal, the marijuana "green rush" has breathed new life into the rural communities that welcome it. Cultivation facilities, dispensaries, and infused products companies create jobs and tax revenue for the cities and states, which then supports public infrastructure and community efforts.

Here are five towns that came back from the brink thanks to legal weed.

Jay Schlauch’s conviction for peddling pot haunted him for nearly a quarter century.

The felony prevented him from landing jobs, gave his wife doubts about tying the knot and cast a shadow over his typically sunny outlook on life.

So when an opportunity arose to reduce his record to a misdemeanor under the voter-approved law that legalized recreational marijuana last year, Schlauch wasted little time getting to court.

“Why should I be lumped in with, you know, murderers and rapists and people who really deserve to get a felony?” he asked.

Adelanto, California, is what’s known as a “drive-through town.” It’s a dusty plot of desert surrounded by Joshua trees and dilapidated factories. Few outsiders stay long.

Now, the sleepy city in San Bernardino County wants to establish itself as a hotbed for large-scale cultivation and innovation in weed.

There are 360 acres zoned for growing medical marijuana in Adelanto (recreational marijuna is newly legal and California has yet to give licenses for growing it). It’s among the first struggling desert cities to turn to weed as a cure for its economic woes, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Budtenders are half bartender, half pharmacist, offering recommendations for cannabis products to suit each customer.​

When she was 14, Sandra Andrade first learned about marijuana from her brother who had an outdoor garden. Today, the 36-year-old works at downtown L.A. dispensary Kushmart, where she helms the point-of-sale contact for those who want to purchase cannabis products. In weed industry terms, she's a budtender.

It’s hard to imagine an analytical test without lab work, but that’s just what dry labbing means. In some cases—increasingly few—samples of cannabis get certified, as if they were tested, when nothing was really done, no wet-lab science was performed. Instead, these samples get labeled with characteristics that no one really measured. Put very bluntly, dry labbing is lying—making up data about what’s in a product rather than testing it. For medical use, dry labbing is dangerous, because someone could get a higher dose than expected or not enough of the medicine they rely on. On top of that, it’s fraud for both medical and recreational cannabis products.

In a first for the legal marijuana industry, a prominent venture capital firm has made moves to cash in.

On May 23, Hound Labs, an Oakland-based startup that makes a breathalyzer for marijuana, announced a new $8.1 million round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. In the past, the Silicon Valley venture firm made early bets on Uber, Snap, Dropbox, and WeWork, among other technology giants.

Founded in 2014, Hound Labs is on a mission to make a reliable breathalyzer that detects and measures THC — a chemical compound responsible for marijuana's psychoactive effects. The device is moving into clinical trials and is expected to launch by the end of the year.

A drug addiction treatment centre claims to be helping patients give up heroin and cocaine with medical marijuana.

Cannabis is more frequently associated with getting high than getting sober – but the directors of one rehab facility in Los Angeles say it can reduce overall harm caused by drug use.

“Some say it's hypocritical because, you know, you're supposed to go to rehab to get off drugs,” Joe Schrank, founder of the High Sobriety clinic, told CNN.