Investors interested in getting into the cannabis market have become more comfortable with the idea of putting their money into businesses that “touch” marijuana, a new study has found.

The 2016 Cannabis Investment Study, conducted by New Frontier Data and Arcview Market Research, found that 68 percent of investors have become interested in investing either in companies that directly grow and sell marijuana or ancillary businesses that do not directly deal with cannabis.

The former is considered businesses that “touch marijuana,” while the latter does not.

On Thanksgiving, most people show their appreciation for the year’s harvest by gluttonously stuffing it down their own gullets. But not the staff at 4:20 Friendly, a cannabis shop in Spokane, Washington. This year, these marijuana heroes are giving thanks for their green bounty by giving away $36,000 worth of free weed.

Marijuana legalization is spreading throughout the United States, triggering a gold rush — or “green rush” — among investors seeking ways to profit from a growing cash crop.

California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, North Dakota, Arkansas, and Montana this month approved measures to allow the medical or recreational use of marijuana. The drug remains illegal under federal law, presenting a risk that investors need to consider before buying stocks in the burgeoning industry.

Investor skittishness means than some marijuana-related stocks have been undervalued in comparison with their money-making potential. But that also makes them potential acquisition targets.

Cannabis is hugely popular. 182m people use cannabis across the world and, with this level of exposure, the way cannabis is regulated matters. As does the evidence of risks and benefits to health which underpins regulation.

Sometimes saying nothing is as telling as saying something. Silence can suggest retaining the status quo. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been silent about the international regulatory controls on cannabis since its inception in 1935. The past 80 years have brought dramatic advances in scientific knowledge about cannabis, so it is odd that it has not provided updated advice about its legal status. 

Your boss may not care if you smoke weed when you’re not at work. But then again, you might get fired.

While marijuana is now legal after the passage of Proposition 64, Northern California businesses are taking widely different approaches to testing to see if you use the drug.

If you design computer chips at Intel or web pages at Google, you won’t be tested. But if you drive a Samtrans bus or operate a crane for a construction company, you will be.

At UC Berkeley, professors aren’t tested, but campus police officers are. The network company Cisco Systems doesn’t test; the construction company Cisco does.

With voters legalizing recreational marijuana last week, Massachusetts lawmakers are already planning how they’ll tinker with the law. Others who are also thinking about the change? Garden centers.

The first real change — coming December 15th — will be the ability for adults in Massachusetts to grow up to six pot plants, inside, legally. At the Hadley Garden Center in Hadley, Massachusetts, owner Tom Giles says he is taking a wait-and-see approach to ordering and stocking additional items people could use to grow marijuana successfully.

California growers may want to take a page from their neighbors to the north when it comes to upholding cannabis quality standards.  

A new study from Steep Hill Labs suggests that much of California’s cannabis supply wouldn’t meet the stringent testing standards recently introduced by the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC).

Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican that represents Alabama, is decidedly not chill when it comes to legalized weed. It’s going to be a huge problem for legalization advocates if he becomes Attorney General, as he is poised to do, not least because his emphatic statements about drug use are entirely unsupported by science. Has nobody told this guy that the ‘gateway drug’ argument has been repeatedly refuted by research?

On Monday night, New Jersey Governor and Donald Trump transition team member Chris Christie did his monthly “Ask the Governor” radio show on WKXW-FM in Trenton. Never one to mix words, the governor made a number of colorful comments, but none more so than when a caller asked him about his role as New Jersey’s foremost obstacle to the legalization of recreational marijuana. Christie not only had no qualms about admitting that he’s standing in the way of the pro-marijuana efforts, but admonished his opponents for pushing legislation that would bring in “blood money.”

Duke Rodriguez brought a three-week-old pot plant to the State Fair, touching off a silly kerfuffle that highlights the absurdity of our current marijuana laws.

Rodriguez is president and CEO of Ultra Health LLC, based in Scottsdale, Ariz. The plant he displayed to fairgoers is just one of 450 Ultra Health is permitted to grow on its 11-acre pot ranch in Bernalillo.

For publicly exhibiting a marijuana plant, the state demands Ultra Health suspend sales for five days, a penalty Rodriguez says will cost him $100,000.

There’s serious money in the legal marijuana trade, and a lot more still on the horizon.