As hemp makes a comeback in the U.S. after a decades-long ban on its cultivation, scientists are reporting that fibers from the plant can pack as much energy and power as graphene, long-touted as the model material for supercapacitors. They’re presenting their research, which a Canadian start-up company is working on scaling up, at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world’s largest scientific society.

Although hemp (cannabis sativa) and marijuana (cannabis sativa var. indica) come from a similar species of plant, they are very different and confusion has been caused by deliberate misinformation with far reaching effects on socioeconomics as well as on environmental matters.

HARLEM — There are a lot of ways to make money from pot that don't involve the drug itself.

That was the message from three former Wall Street analysts who spoke Wednesday night to those gathered at the monthly meeting ofHigh NY, a group dedicated to changing the way people use cannabis.

“Now is the time to get involved if you are serious about getting in this industry. Public opinion has never been higher, we’ve never had this much momentum,” High NY co-founder Michael Zaytsev, who worked as a financial analyst for J.P. Morgan and then as a salesman for Google, told the 50 people gathered at the Harlem Garage.

QUEENSBURY — Warren County Supervisers voted in support of Amy and Hillary Peckham’s proposal to develop a marijuana-growing facility south of Chestertown, an operation that is expected to provide dozens of well-paying, stable jobs in the northern sector of the county.

The unanimous vote was cast by the supervisors following a detailed presentation of plans by Hillary Peckham, 23, and her mother Amy — the wife of John Peckham, CEO of Peckham Industries. The firm operates a gravel quarry across state Rte. 9 from where the marijuana-growing and processing plant would be located, about one mile south of Chestertown. The operation, independent of Peckham Industries, would be operated by Etain, Inc. — led by Hillary and Amy Peckham.

New York’s Compassionate Care Act contains a provision that appears to protect certified medical marijuana patients from enforcement of zero tolerance drug policies in the workplace. The law was widely criticized when it was enacted in July 2014 because it covered so few conditions and specified vaporization as the only legal means of ingestion.

A pioneer of Colorado’s medical marijuana industry is leaving the state for greener pastures – in New York.

Josh Stanley, who helped get legislation passed to legalize marijuana and opened the Peace in Medicine Center, Denver’s first medical marijuana dispensary, said he’ll completely relocate to New York.

He plans on opening four medical marijuana clinics and two marijuana farms there.

“I got tired of looking in the paper and seeing ads for joints,” Stanley said. “You see companies getting in on the ‘Green Rush’ … They’re peddling dope.”

Stanley said he wants to focus on cannabis-based pharmaceuticals.

Perhaps no factor has enabled the much-heralded urban renaissance more than declining crime rates. Through much of the 1970s to 1990s, inner cities were widely perceived as war zones, overwhelmed by addiction-fueled property crime and violence between drug dealers. This was not all just perception. The murder rate in now-thriving cities was much higher 20 years ago than it is today. In New York, there were 2,245 murders in 1990 versus 328 last year. Washington, D.C., went from 479 in 1991 to 105 in 2014.

On February 28 some 75 tribal leaders from across the country met to discuss forming the first “Tribal Cannabis Association” at the Tulalip Resort Casino on the Tulalip Reservation in Washington State.

This followed a packed day on February 27 of “Tribal Marijuana Conference” presentations and panels with speakers as diverse as former U.S. Attorney Troy Eid (current chair of President Barack Obama’s National Indian Law and Order Commission) to the city attorneys of both Seattle and Boulder, Colorado, who gave in-depth overviews of how implementation of state laws legalizing marijuana possession and usage is proceeding in their respective cities.

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Murders are up nearly 17% from last year [PDF], shootings have increased by 23%, and the marijuana trade is to blame, according to NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton. "In this city, people are killing each other over marijuana more so than anything that we had to deal with an '80s and '90s with heroin and cocaine," Bratton told reporters yesterday. "The seemingly innocent drug that's been legalized around the country."