by Carimah Townes Posted on March 3, 2015 at 10:12 am Updated: March 3, 2015 at 11:24 am

Syracuse, N.Y. - The first U.S. public company allowed to raise money on the stock market to produce and sell medical marijuana wants to grow pot in Central New York.

Terra Tech Corp., of Irvine, Calif., plans to apply for a state license to cultivate and dispense medical marijuana in New York, said Derek Peterson, the company's CEO.

"We're looking at Central New York for cultivation," Peterson said. "If you want a retail footprint around the state, you want cultivation and production centrally located adjacent to major arteries to provide access to all the retail locations."

The company has not picked a Central New York location yet, he said. Peterson said dispensaries would be scattered around the state in places such as Ithaca, Albany, Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Dell’s Maraschino Cherries Company in Brooklyn in 2009. Officials discovered this week that its chief was growing marijuana in the basement. By VIVIAN YEE February 26, 2015

Arthur Mondella’s alternate life was buried behind a roll-down gate, behind a fleet of fancy cars, behind a pair of closet doors, behind a set of button-controlled steel shelves, behind a fake wall and down a ladder in a hole in a bare concrete floor.

NEW YORK CITY — A Church of Scientology-backed anti-drug program is spreading its message to students in dozens of city public schools, DNAinfo New York has learned.

The Foundation for a Drug Free World, which was founded in 2006 by the controversial church, visited 30 city public schools last year, providing free anti-drug programs to elementary, middle and high school students in all five boroughs, according to its Facebook page.

The city's Department of Education denied any partnership with the group and said it did not recommend its services.

The Foundation's materials claim cocaine use leads to murder and suicide and that heroin use causes spontaneous abortions in women — claims not endorsed or are widely rejected by doctors. 

BOULDER, Colo. — Recreational marijuana is both illegal and controversial in most of the country, and its relationship to food does not rise much above a joke about brownies or a stoner chef’s late-night pork belly poutine.

But cooking with cannabis is emerging as a legitimate and very lucrative culinary pursuit.

In Colorado, which has issued more than 160 edible marijuana licenses, skilled line cooks are leaving respected restaurants to take more lucrative jobs infusing cannabis into food and drinks. In Washington, one of four states that allow recreational marijuana sales, a large cannabis bakery dedicated to affluent customers with good palates will soon open in Seattle.