Even Jay-Z is weighing in.

America’s legal marijuana industry has a huge diversity problem—and it couldn’t be more ironic.

The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that less than 1% of the market to grow legal weed is owned or operated by people of color, a startling statistic considering millions of African-American and Hispanic men have been sent to prison for selling the same drug. This has been a trend since the national war on drugs began more than 40 years ago.

“Cannabis Curious?” That’s the billboard my children and I see every day on our after-school drive on Ventura Boulevard. The questions from my kids, who are 11 and 13, have come spilling out: “What is cannabis? What's curious about it? Why does it have different names? What does it look like? Why do people use it?”

If you are a parent, no matter how you plan to vote on Proposition 64 — the California initiative that would legalize marijuana for adult use — you need to be prepared to talk about marijuana with your kids. Even without legalization, access to marijuana has significantly increased over the last few years, as has its popularity with youth.

Cannabis as a medicine has an ancient history with anecdotes dating back to the Vedic period (c.1500 BCE) in India and Nepal. It wasn’t until 1839 that William Brooke O’Shaughnessy introduced the therapeutic potential of cannabis to the western hemisphere, and another 75 years after that until Sir William Osler, the father of modern medicine, proposed its use for the treatment of migraines and headaches. The criminalization of cannabis has since hindered our ability to research its potential; to-date, much of what we understand is largely anecdotal or based on animal or tissue culture experiments.

It’s no secret that yoga and cannabis often work in tandem. In Colorado, Washington and Oregon, the states where cannabis is legal (along with some medical marijuana states like California), yoga studios are ramping up ganja-friendly classes. Colorado yoga teacher and cannabis advocate Rachael Carlevale recently opened a yoga business called Ganjasana that uses yoga to tap into what she says are innate connections humans share with the cannabis plant.

Should California decide to legalize recreational marijuana this election, it will cause a flood of venture capital to enter the market for cannabis startups, investors said Tuesday speaking at a conference for marijuana companies in Oakland.

Nashville’s Metro Council made history Tuesday by approving the city’s first measure to allow lesser civil penalties for people caught with small amounts of marijuana, but it may set the stage for a confrontation with the state.

Meanwhile, some Nashville judges are now raising concerns that moving minor marijuana possession cases from criminal to civil court may give people fewer options to later erase those encounters from the public record.

Nearly half of the US has already legalized marijuana for either medical or recreational use. This November, nine states could continue the trend.

Of those nine states, five have ballot initiatives that could result in legal recreational use. Most significantly, California could legalize recreational use — thus making the entire West Coast a legal enclave for recreational cannabis.

All the initiatives below will be voted on this November, alongside the presidential election. Here's everything we know:

Flying a bit under the radar in August, the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse wrote an explainer to a significant longitudinal study involving young twins and marijuana pointing out that marijuana did not cause a decrease in IQ.

In the explainer titled "Study Questions Role for Marijuana in Teen Users' IQ Decline," the agency wrote:

One of the things I love most about our industry is that it’s constantly being shaken up. Everywhere you look, there’s an individual or a company taking things to a previously unprecedented level. What’s even more amazing is the pace at which things are moving; a pace that’s only going to increase in speed as the industry becomes more open and recognized. 

To help illustrate what I mean, think about this: If you have kids that are, say 5 years old or younger, there is a good chance that you won’t need to teach them how to drive. At least not the way you or I learned. It’s entirely possible that our kids will never have to grab a steering wheel or press a gas pedal. 

Don’t worry, I’ll wait while you go ahead and put your brain back together. 

In the evolving field of medical marijuana, ensuring the proper dose can be a challenge. hmbldt’s dose pen is designed to offer consistent medication delivery to patients.

While medical marijuana is now legal in the majority of the U.S., the industry is new and still finding its footing in terms of standardization. With a wide variety of products and delivery forms (including inhalable, edible and topical products), patients can have trouble with dose consistency.

But strides are being made to provide patients with dosage control and consistency across batches, such as with encapsulated cannabis oil and vaporizer pens.