In a white-walled room deep inside a southwest Santa Rosa building once used to manufacture heart stents, 11 specialized machines to extract concentrated cannabis rumbled, hummed and popped in production for California’s largest legal marijuana manufacturing operation. 

Five months ago, law enforcement officers hauled away extraction machines and other equipment worth about $3 million from the Circadian Way facility, halting production and forcing the company, CannaCraft, to address a series of code violations. One of its founders, Dennis Hunter, was briefly jailed.

United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Wednesday set new cannabis extract laws by amending the Schedule I Controlled Substances Act to include tighter regulations for marijuana extracts, including cannabidiol (CBD).

It is now legal to possess, use, and home-grow marijuana for Massachusetts residents over the age of 21.

It’s official.

Marijuana is legal for possession, use, and home-growing starting Thursday for adults 21 and over.

The Governor’s Council, a Colonial-era body that vets judges and accepts election results, formally certified the results of Question 4 Wednesday afternoon. The initiative passed last month with 1.8 million people voting for the measure, despite the opposition of top politicians, the Catholic Church, doctors and business groups, and an array of other civic leaders. About 1.5 million people voted against it.

Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito gaveled in the pro-forma session of the council to certify all state election results.

The nexus of Wall Street and recreational cannabis has always been looming on the sidelines, attracting would-be investors curious about the new market and repelling enthusiasts who would rather keep operations small and local. Yet the recent passage of Proposition 64 is ushering in a new, seemingly inevitable era of big money as Wall Street financiers prepare to enter the country’s largest marijuana market. 

Two years after legalizing recreational marijuana in the state, Colorado is nearing another milestone: 3,000 business licenses for pot.

The number of marijuana business licenses has increased by about 70 percent in the two years since recreational marijuana was legalized in Colorado.

A professor at The University of Denver has spent a lot of time in 2016 compiling data about Colorado's marijuana industry.

His main finding is that active marijuana business licenses are at the highest number they've ever been – 2,913 – as of Dec. 1, 2016.

Assistant Professor Paul Seaborn of DU’s Daniels College of Business says the majority of those licenses are for medical marijuana businesses.

North of Las Vegas's bustling, fluorescent strip sits the Paiute Nation tribe. Like many other Native American tribes across the United States, they've suffered from and struggled with poverty, depression, and alcoholism. With dwindling numbers—only 56 adult members currently remain as a result of blood quantum laws—the Paiutes are facing the reality of losing their culture forever.

The Internet was abuzz last week over Dr. Daniel Amen’s new studysuggesting cannabis use increases Alzheimer’s risk. The media quickly took the bait.

Colorado has approved another round of marijuana research. The projects range from one year to three years of study.

Dr. Sara Qualls at the University of Colorado Springs is heading one of the studies. Dr. Qualls is a professor of Psychology and of Aging Studies along with the director of the Gerontology Center. Dr. Qualls' study focuses on Older Coloradans and Marijuana: A Public Health Problem or Policy Alternative.

The state Department of Public Health and Environment awarded $2.35 million in grant funding for a total of seven research studies looking at potential public health and safety impacts of marijuana use. The grant was announced Tuesday.

You’d have to be high to take on a cannabis client, right?

Portland’s licensing bureaucracy, often a challenge for the sternest of businesses, is taking a heavy toll on cannabis entrepreneurs in the city, a new report argues.

The report's authors maintain the system potentially costs nascent businesses more than $22 million in lost revenue each month.

The City Council is set to consider changes, but it’s unclear how far they might go in ending the industry’s frustration.