Many marijuana advocates are saying 2016 will be the year for marijuana legalization, thanks in part to a new poll which finds that a majority of voters in several swing stats support legalizing marijuana.

According to the Quinnipiac survey,  55 percent of voters in Florida, 52 percent in Ohio, and 51 percent in Pennsylvania, are in favor of allowing adults “to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”

As for Medical Marijuana the numbers are even more staggering, with 84 percent of the voters in Florida and Ohio and 88 percent in Pennsylvania stating that they believe medical marijuana should be legal.

Published: Apr 10, 2015, 2:49 pm

By Ricardo Baca, The Cannabist Staff

Colorado sold a record amount of recreational marijuana in February 2015, according to new data released by the state on Friday.

“How did I anticipate this question?” President Barack Obama joked during a Q&A event in Jamaica on Thursday when a Rastafarian man in the audience asked about the legalization of marijuana and hemp industry’s potential ability to lift Jamaicans out of poverty.

Obama resisted the urge to pander to the friendly crowd, but rather explained the situation as it stands in the U.S. now and how he think it might develop in the future.

In “Weed the People,” Bainbridge Island author Bruce Barcott delivers a thorough and entertaining survey of the burgeoning legalization of marijuana in the U.S. Barcott appears April 15 at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co.

‘Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America’ by Bruce Barcott Time, Inc., 400 pp., $22.95

SAUGET, Ill. (KMOV.com) -Help wanted advertisements have appeared online, claiming to be for the first marijuana dispensary set to open in the Metro East, but the company who owns the dispensary is worried the postings are a scam.

The dispensary, owned by The Green Solution, is set to open in Sauget in October and has nothing to do with the ad recently posted on Craigslist.

The Craigslist ad seeks positions ranging from bud tenders to security guards and bakers and promises pay of $25 an hour.

Vice President of Operations Tanya Griffin of The Green Solution, a Denver based company, said she is worried the unknown group who posted the ad could be trying to scam people.

Colorado lawmakers started work Thursday on a proposal to allow people on probation or parole to use medical marijuana.

The state has allowed medical marijuana use for 15 years — but not for people on probation or parole.

A bill facing its first test Thursday in the state House would change that policy by saying that pot use doesn't amount to a probation violation for people with medical clearance to use the drug.

"If it's in the constitution, you should have the right to use it on probation," said Rep. Joe Salazar, D-Thornton and sponsor of the bill.

The change wouldn't apply to probationers whose crime was related to marijuana.

When recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado in January of 2014, it promised to be a boom for those who were ready with their brick and mortar stores and new licenses. Growing as rapidly as weed are ancillary businesses that cater to these new marijuana pioneers. You only need to walk inside the massive grow operation at establishments like Medicine Man to realize that marijuana demands sophisticated lighting and cooling systems as well as excellent soil and fertilizers to keep the plants happily budding. To protect the plants, growers and retailers need elaborate security systems. Once harvested, marijuana needs to be sold in specialized packaging. Ancillary products are flourishing as the marijuana economy takes off.

When Carbondale’s GreenHill Laboratoriesopened this week, it became the only facility on the Western Slope offering microbial testing on cannabis.

The lab is one of just three certified by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for potentially dangerous mold such as Aspergillus and bacteria including E. coli and Salmonella, which are commonly regulated in commercial consumables.

After a year of build out, documentation and review, GreenHill received its certification on March 24 and had its first customer Tuesday. Validation for potency and homogeneity testing is pending.

A federal banking official took the unprecedented step Thursday of meeting with marijuana business owners, as the pot business awaits word on setting up its own bank.

Kansas City Federal Reserve President Esther George held a closed-door meeting with about 20 representatives of the marijuana industry.

The meeting was arranged by two Colorado congressmen who have tried unsuccessfully to pass laws expanding banking access for the marijuana industry, Democratic Reps. Ed Perlmutter and Jared Polis.

Online searches for Denver hotel rooms around the marijuana celebration date of April 20 are soaring, according to data from booking website Hotels.com.

Search totals also spiked last April, during the first year of legal retail weed in Colorado.

Hotels.com said the numbers suggest that the oft-asked question — does legal marijuana generate an increase in tourism? — has been answered affirmatively.

Marijuana enthusiasts hold so-called 4/20 rallies each spring that attract thousands of publicly-smoking participants, even though Colorado’s statute prohibits public consumption.