With legal allowances for both medical and recreational use on the rise all over the US, the favored illegal drug of Americans has never looked more professional.

That's because the business of legal marijuana has never been better. We're talking about a $7 billion market, according to ArcView Market Research (a firm that tracks the legal cannabis trade).

This story starts with a stay-at-home-mom from the Denver suburbs.

Her name is Abby McLean. She's 30 and lives in Northglenn, Colo. She was driving home from a late dinner with a friend two years ago when she came upon a DUI roadside checkpoint.

"I hadn't drank or smoked anything, so I was like, 'Let's go through the checkpoint,' " she recalls.

McLean is a regular marijuana user but she insists she never drives while high.

Still, the cop at the checkpoint tells her he smells marijuana and that her eyes are bloodshot. Eventually he whips out handcuffs and McClean freaks.

"Like, massive panic attack. And, 'Oh, my God, I have babies at home. I need to get home. I can't go to jail!' "

In a blip in time, marijuana’s image has been rebranded from sketchy to consumer-friendly, largely thanks to female executives disassociating the plant’s positive attributes from its historically bad rap. Women dominate from a consumer standpoint, too—from Apothecanna’s ganja-infused moisturizers to Whoopi & Maya’s THC-laced bath soaks, it seems there are no lucrative opportunities left unturned. In the midst of this canna-commodity boom, one company is gaining an edge by taking marijuana a little farther south than it’s used to. 

Colorado's weed is getting much cheaper.

In October, the cost of a wholesale pound of cannabis was around $2,400 to $2,600. That price has almost been cut in half to between $1,400 and $1,600 last month, according to data from Tradiv, an online marijuana-distribution platform.

"In less than a year, we've seen wholesale prices drop to nearly half of their previous totals," John Manlove, director of sales at Tradiv, told Business Insider in an email. "We've never seen prices like this."

Marijuana activist Emmett Reistroffer, right, and cannabis consultant Kayvan Khalatbari hand deliver more than 10,800 signatures for a public cannabis use ballot initiative to Denver Elections Division officials in early August.

Days after rejecting a competing measure for the November ballot, the Denver Elections Division on Thursday approved a proposed initiative that would allow social use of marijuana in some businesses.

The butter shortbread and oatmeal raisin cookies from Better Baked in Denver look like cookies in any supermarket. But take a few bites and you might get high. The cookies are infused with marijuana.

Beginning in October, the wholesale distributor of marijuana edibles will need to mark the bottom of the cookies, which they will do using a powdered sugar-like substance, with a diamond and the notation "THC," indicating that they contain the active ingredient in marijuana.

That is just one of the latest regulatory changes Colorado is making as its recreational marijuana industry grows and the market for edible products like pot brownies and candy has taken off.

The “Good to Know” campaign is hoping to curb underage cannabis use by keeping parents and educators informed.

As someone who lived in Boulder for a short stint before moving to my current residence in New York City, I can tell you first-hand that the state of Colorado is majestically evergreen, a landscape packed with towering trees and beautiful buds. It’s one of the most cannabis-friendly regions around, and has a high-caliber culture that represents all of the best things that marijuana and hemp has to offer the world. But, not everything is all peachy in the green wonderland of Colorado, and although cannabis is widely accepted statewide, the potential for underage cannabis use remains a prevalent issue to some. 

The state of the Denver industrial market in one word, according to the speakers at our Denver Industrial Investment & Development Conference: hot. Hot as it's ever been. Cannabis is one reason, but not the only reason.

A number of metrics show just how red-hot the market is, our speakers said. There have been 25 quarters of positive absorption in a row, vacancies below 5% since 2012, and every submarket is seeing record rental rates. Marijuana's been a piece of the story, but there's a diverse set of drivers, including population growth—after all, about 5,000 people a month are moving to metro Denver—and expanding ecommerce.