When he opened a medical marijuana shop in Kingston earlier this year, Trevor Hands had little idea who his customers would be, how much they would buy or how his business would grow simply through word of mouth.

He does now.

Business is booming for Hands, thanks in large part to an influx of business from a single demographic: former Canadian Forces soldiers.

If pot laws were colors, a map of the U.S. map would resemble a tie-dye T-shirt.

In some states, marijuana is illegal. In others, it's legal for medical purposes. And still in others, it is even legal for recreational use.

Recreational pot has been legal in Oregon now for a year, but it was a long time coming. Voters approved medicinal pot 20 years ago. Arizona is voting on it this fall – along with California, Nevada, Maine and Massachusetts. It was only six years ago that Arizona approved marijuana for medicinal use.

The Arizona measure is making some voters nervous. A group that includes two county attorneys even sued, unsuccessfully, to get it off the ballot.

Wine has long flowed through the heart of our state. Whether you’re a connoisseur or a casual sipper, tasting California’s world-renowned wines offers the chance to practice mindfulness, exhibit your adept preferences, and appreciate the artful idiosyncrasies that spring from each vineyard. Wine tasting isn’t (usually) about getting hammered. And at the inaugural Emerald Exchange farmers market, a group of Mendocino farmers descended upon Malibu’s bluffs to prove that cannabis consumption is no longer about dirty bongs and debilitating highs. 

​More Americans than ever believe that marijuana poses little to no risk to their health - just as scientists are discovering it's more dangerous than they previously believed, a report said.

From 2002-2014, the number of Americans who think that smoking marijuana once or twice a week poses a 'great risk' dropped from one half to one third, according to an article in Lancet Psychiatry.

That runs counter to scientific research about pot, said Dr Wilson Compton, lead author of the study, which looked at the views of more than 500,000 US adults.

State's tightly controlled program has seen high costs and low enrollment. Pain patients might turn the tide. 

Minnesotans seeking pain relief have quickly become the second-largest group of patients in the state’s medical marijuana program, even though they became eligible just one month ago.

One out of three patients enrolled in the program is seeking relief from chronic pain, according to figures released this week by the Office of Medical Cannabis.

The Minnesota Department of Health added intractable pain to the shortlist of qualifying conditions for the program on Aug. 1. By Aug. 31, there were more pain patients — 847 — than patients with cancer, epilepsy and terminal illnesses combined.

The world of agricultural technology, or agtech, is rapidly evolving.

It’s automating laborious tasks and providing farmers and growers with greater knowledge and insight into their crops than ever before. As technology evolves so does the needs of the farmer and the growing environment. Around 20% of the world’s food production is grown within cities rather rural areas and inherent in this is the multi-billion dollar industry of indoor growing and hydroponics.

Melissa Etheridge is diving headlong into the marijuana business. Her company, Etheridge Farms, will soon be making cannabis products available for California medical patients.

You can still buy a gun if you're on the no-fly list in America, but if you smoke marijuana in a legal state, don't expect the same treatment: A federal appeals court recently upheld a ruling that bans gun sales for medical marijuana cardholders, which the court said doesn't violate the Second Amendment.

The founder of Latinos For Trump has been widely mocked for warning of a future with "taco trucks on every corner" in the US if Hillary Clinton wins the presidential election.

Marco Gutierrez was explaining why he supports Donald Trump, a day after the presidential candidate's visit to Mexico.

"My culture is a very dominant culture and it's imposing and it's causing problems," he told MSNBC.

"If you don't do something about it, you're going to have taco trucks on every corner."

His warning led to ridicule on social media as people suggested the prediction sounded like a utopian vision of the US.

Marijuana abuse and dependency are becoming less common, even as states roll back restrictions on the use of the drug, according to a new federal report.

In 2014, the number of Americans aged 12 and over meeting diagnostic criteria for marijuana abuse or dependency stood at 1.6 percent, a decline from 1.8 percent in 2002, according to the report released Thursday by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Declines in marijuana abuse and dependency were greatest among teens (37 percent decrease) and young adults (18 percent decrease) over that period. The change in marijuana abuse and dependency among adults age 26 and older was not statistically meaningful, according to the CDC.