Since recreational cannabis shops in Oregon started selling edibles and concentrates earlier this month, some dispensaries are already seeing sales increase between "20 and 40 percent," according to local news outlets.

For the first eight months of legal recreational cannabis in Oregon, dispensaries were only permitted to sell bud. Still, according to data from the State Legislative Revenue Office, the state collected $15-million in revenue. This exceeded projections for the entire year by $13-million - between January and May alone.

“Budtender” Michael Rose introduced himself to me at the LoDo Wellness Center in downtown Denver last week.

Don’t let the business name mislead you. This is not a place filled with treadmills and barbells, and Rose is not a fitness trainer. This is a retail store filled with recreational marijuana in many forms — the kind you smoke, the kind you nibble, the kind you rub on your body — all legally sanctioned for sale by the state of Colorado for use within the state.

It’s what the Denver TV anchors call a "pot shop" and the state calls a "dispensary."

And Rose’s title is a derivative of the word “bartender,” his counterpart in the world of serving people who want to, frankly, get high.

The decision by Washington voters to legalize marijuana as medicine took root in the fall of 1998 — the season when Initiative 692 became law. 

That makes the state’s experiment with legal medical marijuana almost 18 years old, a tumultuous age for humans and, as it turns out, an industry being forced to go legit as the state folds medical pot into the regulated system for recreational marijuana Friday. 

The pot dispensaries and the green crosses that marked many of those stores are going away as the state works to regulate the dispensaries’ share of the market — a market variously described by its detractors as “gray” and having the traits of “the wild West.” 

The next time you want to get something completely off your chest, use the Jake Plummer scale of honesty. If your words don't measure up to the words the former Broncos and Cardinals quarterback used to talk about the NFL and Jerry Jones, then you're not doing it right.

Speaking with BSN Denver, Plummer (wait for it) EVISCERATED the league for its marijuana ban and the Cowboys' owner for his CTE stance. He even called Jones a "billionaire a--hole."

In the marijuana reform conversation, one of the grandest boogeymen is “Big Marijuana.” Reform advocates, opponents of marijuana legalization, patients, consumers, media, and many others worry openly that the marijuana industry will consolidate into a corporate beast and a bad market actor reminiscent of Big Tobacco companies. 

There's an unmistakable scent in the air. It's the smell of marijuana and money.

ArcView Market Research projects demand for cannabis in legal markets will surpass $22 billion by 2020. ArcView CEO Troy Dayton says the growth presents an opportunity for a select group of celebrities.

"One of the few ways for a brand to get ahead is to attach themselves to someone who is already known," says Dayton. "This is only likely to work if the celebrity has a strong and longtime connection to cannabis before it was popular."

If the outdoor farmer is to prosper in a regulated market, now is the time to start educating the public about the benefits of sustainably grown cannabis.

If you have ever walked into a field of sunflowers, then you can imagine the hypnotic beauty of a sun grown cannabis garden. 

The sunlight flickers between the broad leaves as resin sparkles on the flowers, and the sounds of nature are almost in congress with the good energy such a field evokes. Most of these fields are in remote and secret places, amongst the pines in the north, in the swamps further to the south, hidden between the rows of corn in many a farmer’s field, and on the sides of mountainous hills further west.  

Just four years after Washington and Colorado led in legalizing recreational uses of marijuana, the pot train has left the station.

Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia allow legal marijuana access in some form, with legislatures in Ohio and Pennsylvania approving medical marijuana in 2016. Full legalization measures are polling well in California and Nevada. Nationwide, a majority of Americans now support tossing out the drug-war ban on cannabis.

But Congress hasn’t gotten on board. Despite small tweaks in the law and promising cracks in the prohibition regime, leadership in the Republican-controlled U.S. House have again blocked meaningful changes needed to facilitate the state-level experiment on marijuana.

A group of local doctors plans to open a medical marijuana testing facility in Columbia to ensure product quality in anticipation of a burgeoning therapeutic cannabis industry in Maryland.  

Testing is required by state law for cannabis growers, and this provided an opportunity for the group of four doctors, led by Dr. Andrew Rosenstein, chief of the division of gastroenterology at University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center.

He said they were mindful of potential threats to some of their sickest patients from contaminants that could complicate conditions rather than alleviate pain and other symptoms.

A board for the Democratic National Committee approved a proposal that will allow the Democratic Party to include marijuana reform in its official 2016 platform.

This come despite anti-pot commentary made earlier this year by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Shultz suggesting that the United States should avoid marijuana legalization, like the plague, because it would provide citizens with a gateway to addiction.