For 24 years, Adelanto tried unsuccessfully to sustain its economy through prisons, but now it will be hosting a very different kind of business—cannabis cultivation.

A tiny California desert town is making a drastic change to reverse its downward spiral and embrace an enlightened future. For 24 years, Adelanto tried unsuccessfully to sustain its economy through prisons, but now it will be hosting a very different kind of business—cannabis cultivation.

Created to destigmatize cannabis and the people who use it, The 420 Games athletic event has experienced great success in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for the past two years. This March, The 420 Games will debut in Los Angeles, the first leg of a four-state, six-city tour. Participants are “Going the Extra Mile for Cannabis” in this 4.20 mile race that is longer than a typical 5k.   The course takes runners from the Santa Monica Pier to Venice Beach and finishes back at the pier.  Tickets can be purchased at420Games.org

Each year, the world devours its way through 300 million tons of paper. Not a big deal — until you consider the fact that paper comes from deforested bio-diverse woodlands. It disturbs fragile ecosystems and contributes to atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming. Recycled paper accounts for 38 percent of the world’s total fiber supply, yet plants like hemp, one of the most sustainable fibers on the planet, account for only seven percent.

One California-based company, Restalk, intends to change that.

While it's still controversial, medical marijuana is edging toward normality. Forty states (and the District of Columbia) now have some form of law on the books that allow the drug to be used for a variety of ailments, and sales are soaring— reaching $5.4 billion in 2015.

That doesn't mean it's widely available in all of those states, of course. Some, like Alabama and South Carolina, have extremely strict circumstances under which cannabidiol products can be prescribed, and still forbid the production and distribution of the drug. And even in states where it's easier to come by, there are differences in how it's handled.

One year ago, I was 30 years old, leading a $100-million-plus business as head of an Asia-Pacific-wide sales team for Google, and making more money than I ever imagined. I had lived in New York, San Francisco, Bangkok and Singapore, and travelled to over 50 countries. All this because six years before, I landed my dream job at Google in corporate strategy.

I found myself on a secondment in Ghana developing national Internet infrastructure. On my way to a voodoo ceremony with a Ghanian tour guide, I reflected on my career path, admitting to him that I’d lost focus and felt unfulfilled. What he told me changed the course of my life: “You either work on something you love, or work because it supports the people you love.”

That’s when I quit Google.

Vouchers for free marijuana are being handed out Friday evening in San Jose.

The so-called Weed for Votes program is part of the push to legalize marijuana in California.

The free pot is being handed out at the corner of Fourth and East Santa Clara streets, right across the street from City Hall. It is the brain child of long-time medical marijuana advocate Dave Hodges.

By 8 o’clock Friday evening, Hodges expects to have given away some 2,000 vouchers. The goal is to legalize marijuana, says Hodges, the right way.

“I’d like to see (marijuana) legalized across the state and done in a way that promotes business and allows the current industry to move into a regulated market,” Hodges said.

Marijuana delivery is efficient. Marijuana delivery is convenient. Marijuana delivery is illegal.

At least that's the case in the city of Los Angeles, where voters passed a measure, 2013's Proposition D, that outlaws delivery of otherwise legal medical cannabis except by "primary caregivers" such as home nurses.

"There is no lawful delivery service under Prop. D," L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer has said.

Yet delivery services have, er, mushroomed, and SpeedWeed is the local big daddy of them all. Prosecutors say it has 25,000 customers.

As the state of California ventures into a new regulatory effort to track all marijuana grown and sold in the state, one of the key decisions before state officials is what kind of system it should deploy.

The Board of Equalization last week held a stakeholder hearing in Sacramento to explore the different systems currently being used by Colorado, Washington, Oregon, New Mexico and Illinois to regulate the cannabis industry.

“As a taxing agency, we’re concerned that taxes are applied correctly, and there’s really no way for us to do that correctly if we don’t have the ability to trace,” board member George Runner said at the hearing.

San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is one of the most expansive and widely used public spaces in the country, so when on August 15, 2015, a competitive long-distance run was held featuring among its festivities a Lagunitas-sponsored beer garden and a live concert, it was just another Saturday in the park. But this wasn’t any old fun-run: It was an event of the 420 Games, an organization that hopes to illustrate that “cannabis users are not lazy, unmotivated or ‘stoners’ and to de-stigmatize the millions who use cannabis in a healthy and responsible lifestyle.” 

My husband and I didn’t know quite what to expect as a petite woman in neon green scrubs escorted us to a small tent.

Waiting at a folding table was a gray-haired plastic surgeon from Los Angeles in a white lab coat. Large headphones covered his ears, and he was snacking on nuts.

“What is your condition?” he asked without making eye contact. His pen was poised above a medical marijuana referral form.

I was about to experience firsthand a process the state is working to reform: how Californians get medical marijuana cards.