This past January marked the first month that the state of Oregon collected taxes on the sale of recreational marijuana, marking another milestone in the state’s unfolding experiment with legalized pot.

But it was the amount collected in taxes in January that raised eyebrows in Salem and around the state: The Oregon Department of Revenue pegged the amount at $3.8 million.

Let’s put that number into perspective: Obviously, no one knew for sure what sort of sales would result from the voter-mandated decision to make recreational use of marijuana legal, so state economists admitted that their estimates were little more than guesses. But they figured that Oregon would collect somewhere between $3 million and $4 million in tax revenue a year.

Does your state make the list?

Which are the marijuana-friendliest states in the nation? Where would a pot person want to buy a home and settle down?

The online national real estate search site Estately has taken a crack at answering those burning questions. The site's blog's Ultimate Lists cranks out all sorts of creative comparative data—cities with the most romantic homes for sale, states with the most pizza—and now it's done the same with weed. 

Yesterday we witnessed the release of Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, a highly anticipated movie depicting an unstoppable force and the proverbial immovable object. But what many people might overlook is that we've been witnessing a real-life battle for years beyond the confines of the movie theater between a seemingly unstoppable force known as marijuana, and the federal government which has maintained its position as the immovable object.

A group of lawmakers want to make it easier for banks to just say yes to the booming business for legalized marijuana.

Four Democratic U.S. senators from Washington, Colorado and Oregon, asked a group of regulators Thursday to clarify how lenders can help finance the industry and still comply with the law so that companies in states that permit pot sales don’t have to run their businesses solely on cash.

Ever wonder how your state stands up to the others in terms of marijuana tolerance? We don't mean how much your state can smoke, but how tolerant the locals are toward cannabis. The real-estate website Estately has the answer. 

Using specialized metrics, they put together rankings for all 50 states in their "Marijuana Enthusiasm Index." The criteria are: the percentage of monthly marijuana users, the average price of cannabis, the average number of marijuana-related Google searches, the legal status of marijuana and expressions of public interest (based on Facebook user data). 

Here are five interesting findings.

With the movement to repeal marijuana prohibition spreading across the United States and the Jewish holiday of Passover fast approaching, a husband-and-wife team in Oregon have produced a cannabis-themed Haggadah [ha-GAH-dah] to help see this old tradition in a new light.

The couple, Roy and Claire Kaufmann, are urging Jews all over the world to download the custom Haggadah and host an adults-only Cannabis Seder to explore the Jewish spiritual connection to the plant, and the need for Jewish engagement in ending the horrific War on Drugs and its resulting culture of mass incarceration.

Marijuana sales in the United States reached a record high in 2015. Legal in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and the District of Columbia, a whopping $3.4 billion of the green stuff was sold last year. The best way to give that figure some kind of perspective is by comparing it to the sales of well-known and established brands.

While Senate Republicans have said that federal district court judge Merrick Garland, President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, will not get an up or down vote on his appointment, that has not squelched comments on some of Garland’s positions. One sector that is guardedly optimistic about Garland is the marijuana industry.

Ironically, perhaps, that dab of optimism is based on a 2012 case in which Garland voted with the majority that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) did, indeed, have the authority to maintain marijuana’s rating as a Schedule I drug. Garland, who has often sided with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), used a similar argument in the case involving loosening the restrictions on medical marijuana.

Oregon brought in more than three times the expected amount of recreational marijuana tax money in the first month it was collected from dispensaries, ­potentially moving up when the state distributes revenue to ­cities and counties.

Officials estimated that January might bring in about $1 million in taxes, said Derrick ­Gasperini, communications manager for the state Department of ­Revenue. Figures released Wednesday by the department showed that the state collected $3.48 million in taxes for recreational marijuana sales in January. “It does exceed ­projections,” he said.