The Apple retailer is taken into account a main instance of a killer retail store–a fantastically designed area that draws clients to come back in, hang around and purchase costly merchandise. Every Apple retailer, on common, makes about $four,799 per sq. foot, a latest report finds. However some marijuana dispensaries are catching up with, and in some instances besting, Apple. Blum, a dispensary in Oakland, California, owned by husband and spouse duo Derek Peterson and Amy Almsteier (who each personal public marijuana firm TerraTech and marijuana model IVXX) brings in about $7,000 per sq. foot, Almsteier says. 

After the first five months of the year, Colorado is on pace to reach $1 billion dollars in cannabis sales during 2016. The Colorado Department of Revenue released data Wednesday showing that Colorado cannabis shops reeled in nearly $98.6 million in sales during May, bringing the year-to-date tally for 2016 to just over $486 million. 

The city of Denver will again host an educational symposium for other governments charged with “implementing marijuana policies and regulations at the local and state levels,” the city’s Office of Marijuana Policy announced Wednesday.

The “Supporting Youth Development with Marijuana Tax Revenue” panel at the Denver Marijuana Management Symposium in 2015 at the Colorado Convention Center. (Photo by Joshua Duplechian, courtesy of the City of Denver)

Colorado pot businesses are increasingly coming under scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service due to the industry's focus on cash, according to a report Tuesday from Marijuana Business Daily. 

Marijuana businesses such as dispensaries are known to deal predominantly in cash due to continued U.S. banking restrictions that make it difficult for them to have bank accounts with federally chartered financial institutions. And those cannabis businesses with bank accounts sometimes have accounts closed once the bank learns about the marijuana-related activities.

A group of Nevada lawmakers and industry leaders recently traveled to Denver where Marijuana has quickly grown into a billion dollar business.

But with the successes come challenges and Colorado regulators are still working with lawmakers to shape the state's marijuana industry.

Regulators there are trying to combat some of the same issues they faced a year ago, including some new ones.

When you ask state regulators and industry insiders in Colorado what the biggest issues are related to legal weed in their state, there are two that come up consistently.

One of them is a problem that plagued Nevada's fledgling medical marijuana industry -- regulating pesticides.

Something Colorado's Director of Marijuana Policy, Andrew Freedman knows all too well.

Nevada takes lessons from Rocky Mountain State.

One billion dollars in marijuana was legally sold in Colorado in 2015. Colorado has become a case-study for states, including Nevada, facing ballot initiatives this November to legalize recreational marijuana. A contingent of industry representatives and lawmakers recently traveled to Denver on a fact-finding trip. 8 News NOW also made the trek.

Nevada, California, Maine and Florida have recreational marijuana on the ballot in November. Other states like Arizona are waiting on signatures to be verified to qualify for the ballot.

These states are all watching Colorado. Medical marijuana has been legal there since 2000, and voters approved recreational use in 2012.

Coloradans weigh whether the more liberal legal environment has freed pot users from one of marijuana’s worst side effects.

If you ask certain pot aficionados here, marijuana is “not a drug.” It certainly isn’t sold like one, now that pot legalization has swept through these spruce-dotted valleys like smoke through the neck of a gravity bong.

The tiny downtown area of this resort city, population 6,700, is home to six street-facing, bonafide pot shops. A gondola that ferries skiers up and down Aspen Mountain is referred to, lovingly, as the “ganjala.”

Colorado growers working with musicians to develop one-of-a-kind marijuana strains.

Pot is going the way of sneakers and snowboards.

As cannabis fights for a foothold in the U.S. economy, innovative weed growers are taking cues from a variety of industries — footwear, musical instruments, skis and snowboards, for example — and working with superstar musicians to develop signature marijuana strains, pro-model cannabis that sails off the shelves.

Colorado’s growers — captains of the state’s maturing cannabis scene — are leading the charge in this next stage of marijuana marketing that’s more partnership than endorsement deal.

The recent killing of a marijuana store security guard in Colorado and the wounding of another guard in San Bernardino are the latest examples of the crime lure posed by cash-only pot dispensaries, industry observers say.

But while those armed robbery attempts and a pot store shootout in Walnut Park in Los Angeles County were unfolding last month, Democratic-sponsored legislation that could have led to more dispensaries offering plastic and electronic payments in lieu of cash was blocked by House Republicans.

When three Colorado marijuana entrepreneurs made a presentation to 40 Silicon Valley investors last year, it was as though they were discussing something dirty.

“There was an uncomfortable chuckle in the room, kind of like you’re talking about porn,” says Fulton Connor, the Sand Hill Angels Inc. member who arranged the meeting. His fellow venture capitalists just couldn’t get past the fact that marijuana remains prohibited under federal law.