NEW YORK (TheStreet) --  For investors who want to put the cannabis industry into their portfolios, one investment firm is holding the first ever cannabis investment seminar. Scott Greiper, president of Viridian Capital, which is hosting the seminar Thursday at New York City's Javits Center, said there's tremendous upside in the space, but retail investors still need to be careful.

ALBANY, N.Y. --  With time running out in Albany, the Senate and Assembly approved a bill to give quicker access to medical marijuana for patients who need it, even before the Compassionate Care Act is scheduled to go into full effect -- but there is still one more hurdle before advocates start celebrating. 

"This is a huge win. You have a situation where you have bipartisan strong, strong bipartisan agreement," said Gabriel Sayegh, of the Drug Policy Alliance.

"If these kids who are having in some cases dozens of seizures a day have to wait until the system is up and running, optimistically sometime in 2016, that's an awful lot of torture to these children," said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan.

ALBANY, N.Y. — A bill that would expedite access to medical marijuana for severely ill patients in New York will head to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's desk.

The Republican-controlled Senate passed legislation Monday night that would create a "special certification" for patients with a "progressive and degenerative" disease or whose life or health is at risk without the drug. Those patients would be allowed access to medical marijuana before the state's program officially launches in January.

The bill would allow the state Department of Health to suspend certain requirements, allowing it to immediately award a license to grow and distribute the drug, which critics have said may open the state up to a lawsuit.

DENVER – Marijuana entrepreneurs rushing into the booming market are running headlong into a patchwork of state-by-state regulations that make it hard to transfer their expertise, brands and staff— and even their profits.

Because the federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, states that have legalized medical or recreational marijuana have developed widely divergent rules governing their semi-legal marketplaces.

In Colorado, for instance, retailers until recently had been required to grow the majority of the marijuana they sell to customers. But Washington state bans retailers from growing their own cannabis, forcing them to buy from state-licensed farms.

A group of lawyers have launched the National Cannabis Bar Association to help clients navigate the conflicting maze of local, state and federal laws that govern cannabis businesses.

In New York City, misdemeanor marijuana possession arrests were dramatically lower between January and March 2015 than in the same period of 2014—2,960 compared to 7,110, respectively—but stark racial disparities persist among those arrested, new data obtained by Newsweek indicate. 

During the first quarter of 2015, African-Americans were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession 1,494 times: That’s 50.47 percent of the total. Hispanics were arrested 1,130 times, or 38.18 percent, and together these two groups accounted for 88.65 percent of the total. Meanwhile, whites totaled 228 of these arrests (7.70 percent) and 79 (2.67 percent) of the arrestees listed as Asian/Indian, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services.

Today state officials in New York will close the application process to open a dispensary.

According to numbers from the New York Post, the state has already brought in $3 million from the selection process by charging 300 perspective dispensary owners $10,000 a pop to file their bid to attain one of the five permits being distributed in the state.

New York's attempted ban on soft drinks over 16 ounces didn't go through last year, but I do wonder who actually orders these super-sized drinks. Looking at the many negative health effects of regularly drinking soda, this comic really illustrates how illogical it is to ban a plant that has so many medicinal properties.

BONUS: Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg with a soda cup he tried to ban:

In New York, one of the most liberal states in the country, why is the governor doing everything in his power to water down sensible marijuana reform?

hen New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation opening the door to medical marijuana last July, supporters of marijuana-policy reform were optimistic that change was finally coming to the Empire State. But the bill Cuomo signed was typical of New York's strange and troubled history with marijuana policy. Scheduled to launch next January, the medical-marijuana program contains so many gratuitous restrictions and baffling regulations that supporters remain unsure whether the new law is a tentative first step toward meaningful change, or a halfhearted measure doomed to kill sensible marijuana policy.