We know many folks in the marijuana nation won't shed a tear for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, which has a record of cracking down on medical marijuana in California.

But its latest move to track marijuana extracts with a new code number has sent unnecessary shock waves through the pot industry. It was interpreted by some cannabis publications as a lone-wolf move by the DEA to create law on its own and criminalize beloved cannabidiol (CBD), a medicinal oil that does not get patients high.

The Cannabis industry soared in 2016 in the US and Canada. Here's an outlook for what's in store for the market in 2017.

It goes without saying that the cannabis industry reached a new high point in 2016. The US voting in favor of legalization (in four states) on November 8, and the Canadian government releasing its task force  for recreational use of marijuana on December 13 were certainly two of the year’s biggest moments.

Even for a puppy, Kat Donatello's black lab, Austin, was hyperactive. After experimenting with natural supplements on her older dog, Brady, Donatello slipped the puppy a special biscuit. "It just kind of took the edge off of him," she recalled.  

The treat contained Cannabidiol, better known as CBD, a chemical compound extracted from the marijuana plant. 

The CBD supplements were expensive, and options for pet treats were limited, Donatello said. "So I started spending my winters baking dog biscuits." She tinkered with the recipe before launching her CBD-laced biscuit company, Austin + Kat, earlier this year. 

Scale-out and tape firm knows how to adapt.

Analysis Pot plant cams in a Colorado marijuana farm feeding Quantum’s StorNext multi-tiered and scale-out, file virtualisation and data services software with surveillance camera footage show the substantial market changes to which Quantum is having to adapt.

CEO Jon Gacek told a visiting press crew in December: “I feel like the captain of a small boat in a rough sea.” His company has navigated the rough seas of the tape-based data protection market downturn when it had an ocean of debt from buying ADIC, and when the nirvana of a vastly profitable deduplicating disk backup market was hijacked by Dell EMC’s Data Domain unit.

A study released this week shows that Oregon residents, by an overwhelming majority, feel working with the marijuana industry does not damage the reputation of financial institutions. The survey also indicates banks and credit unions might enhance their standing and attract new customers in Oregon by working with the cannabis industry.

The survey, conducted by LT Public Relations (LTPR) and DHM Research, suggests financial institutions could bolster their image by making loans to marijuana businesses in Oregon. LTPR works with financial, healthcare and professional services organizations. DHM is an opinion research company. Both are based in Portland, Ore.

Even as more states move to legalize marijuana use, the plant’s genetic makeup remains a relative mystery.

“It’s still quite an undeveloped species from the perspective of genetics,” Canadian botanist Jonathan Page told Vocativ. 

Page published the first paper with a draft sequence of a single cannabis strain, but federal laws against pot have long made academic research on the plant a challenge.

IN NOVEMBER 57% of Californians voted to legalise the growing and use of marijuana for recreational purposes. Americans in seven other states and Washington, DC, are now, or soon expect to be, free to puff away at leisure, but liberalisation in the most populous border state will be felt acutely down south. Mexico has just marked the tenth anniversary of a war on drugs. It has spent millions of dollars on eradicating cannabis. Now it will abut a huge regulated market for the stuff—and one where 30% of the population is Mexican or Mexican-American. Changes in the United States may be prompting a rethink in Mexico, too—among ordinary people, policymakers and purveyors of pot alike.

New medical marijuana laws go into effect across Michigan on Tuesday.

The laws center around creating a new structure and set of businessregulations for the still-budding industry.

Matt Abel, executive director of Michigan NORML, a pro-pot group, says the changes include a new category of marijuana-infused products.

“In addition to dried leaves and flowers being legal to possess for patients, the legislature has added the words resin and extract, so now concentrated forms of cannabis will be legal in Michigan … and topical oils and ointments, tinctures, which are a liquid that someone might put under their tongue, beverages and edibles.”

Like a corndog or a Doritos Locos taco, a pod of Brewbudz illustrates that two great things become better when combined. Here, cannabis meets caffeine: Each compostable pod of coffee is laced with THC, giving the sipper a single brew of a liquid edible. Brewbudz is the latest in the Keurig-ifcation of marijuana, but even science can’t predict what its effects will be.

In 2010, when husband and wife team Scott Palmer and Kristi Knoblich were looking for just the right legal marijuana high, they found a real gap in the market. Edibles either tasted bad, were poorly labeled or just didn’t do it for them.

So they decided to make their own.

Noticing that cannabis went especially well with chocolate, the duo worked with a chocolatier to create a “cold water” method that used no butter or any other solvent to create weed chocolates. 

For the duo, who were both cannabis users, or “patients,” as they refer to legal users, it was a turning point. (“Patients” is how brands refer to legal users of medical marijuana who use it to treat ailments from joint pain to anxiety. It also sounds better than “stoners.”)