Legal marijuana commerce - to some extent a reality in 24 states and the District of Columbia - may be the fastest growing industry in the United States. Regardless of what we think about pot use, these facts beg the question: if voters continue to push for legalization, what is the best way to end prohibition of a popular business activity?

A convention focused on medical marijuana drew several thousand people to downtown Boston over the weekend, as Massachusetts gears up for a likely ballot fight over legalizing the substance for recreational use.

Fifty national and local vendors hawked their wares, which included pipes, lights aimed at helping marijuana grow, and a $150 machine that can make edibles infused with the substance, along with salves.

The convention, held inside the Castle at Park Plaza, also highlighted an industry in its infancy in the Bay State, as some young men in T-shirts laid out their pipes on the table and not much else. They stood alongside older men in suits promoting medical marijuana dispensaries and software meant to help manage dispensaries’ business.

BOSTON - When Cristina Barbuto of Brewster took a job with a marketing firm, she told the company that she used medical marijuana to treat symptoms of Crohn's disease.

Barbuto says she worked for only one day for Advantage Sales and Marketing, promoting products in a supermarket, and then the company fired her. The reason they gave was that Barbuto failed a required drug test by testing positive for marijuana.

When she complained, she said a human resources representative told Barbuto that the company, which has offices nationwide and in Massachusetts, follows federal, not state law.

Barbuto's claims were laid out in a complaint she filed in Suffolk County Superior Court accusing Advantage Sales and Marketing of discrimination and invasion of privacy.

David Noble, president of In Good Health, discussed opening day with media outside his facility.

By Felice J. Freyer Globe Staff  September 04, 2015

BROCKTON — The state’s second medical marijuana dispensary opened Friday morning, receiving what its president described as brisk but orderly business.

“Overall, our patients are very happy today,” said David B. Noble, president of In Good Health, which was granted a 90-day waiver on Wednesday that allows it to sell marijuana that has not been fully tested for pesticides and other contaminants.

Massachusetts is moving forward, step-by-precarious-step toward a ballot initiativenext year that would legalize marijuana for recreational use. In the meantime, the state’s regulators are struggling, as they are in other states, to create a regulatory infrastructure that actually works and protects patients on the medical side. They are also creating repeated delays in the name of formulating such regulations.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she is open to legalizing marijuana for recreational use.

Two separate advocacy groups pushing for the legalization of marijuana in Massachusetts have begun collecting voter signatures aimed at a statewide ballot measure next year, reported The Republican, a news outlet based in Springfield, Massachusetts, Thursday. The groups have significant differences in thought regarding the regulation and taxation of legal weed, and both aim to have their proposals featured on the November 2016 ballot.

HADLEY, Mass. (WWLP) – 22News has uncovered that a new non-profit organization is interested in opening a medical marijuana dispensary in Hadley.

Hampden Care Facility is a non-profit based in Chicopee. They’ve submitted an application to the Department of Public Health to operate a medical marijuana dispensary somewhere in Hadley.

Hampden Care Facility says they would offer marijuana in multiple forms. HCF also says they would give opportunity for public comment and work cooperatively with their neighbors.

“I don’t have any objections to it,” said Pat Coombs. “As long as it isn’t in a residential area. I think it does a lot of good for a lot of people who have problems.”

Customers waited for the state’s first medical marijuana dispensary to open in Salem, on June 24.

The executive director of the state’s first and only medical marijuana dispensary said this week that in just two months of operation, it provided cannabis to 1,500 patients — the first measure of consumer demand for the product in Massachusetts.

That dispensary, Alternative Therapies Group in Salem,was granted permission by state regulators on Wednesday to expand its offerings, receiving permission to fill orders for first-time products such as marijuana oils and baked goods, which many patients prefer over smoking marijuana.

World economies can be mind-boggling systems made up of complex chains of supply and demand, buoyed by commodities and fueled by different currencies.

Owen Cornec and Romain Vuillemot, data visualization fellows at Harvard Kennedy School, wanted to reimagine the global spread of goods in a new visualisation. Dubbed the “Globe of Economic Complexity,” Cornec and Vuillemot’s colorful 3D world portrays cold economic fact as “clouds of confetti.”