Earlier this month, Mark Kleiman – the doyen of public health academia – shared his Transatlantic Lessons, a stark warning of the potential perils of over commercialising cannabis.  Today, we have republished what is, essentially, a bold response to Kleiman’s concerns from Troy Dayton, Co-Founder of The Arcview Group with the following ‘profit-positive’ approach to the coming commercial cannabis wave.

Information that could help you cope.

"I don’t like hallucinating anymore,” my partner lamented.

I hugged him and proceeded to take a bath. He curled up on the bed, smiling and staying warm.

“Can’t we just have some CBD and come down?” he mumbled through heavy birch walls.

After my bath I squirted a few droppers of Luminous Botanicals Earth Blend under his tongue, and watched him carefully as he swished it around like mouthwash, letting it rest in his mouth before swallowing it down. I swallowed two dropperfuls, too.

Marijuana cultivation is estimated to use one percent of America’s electricity output. That’s enough juice to power 1.7 million average homes.

And as more states make the drug legal in some form, that power consumption is expected to soar. Northwest energy officials project cannabis grows will suck up three percent of the region’s power by 2035. 

Now, efforts are underway to get growers to reduce their energy use.

John Kagia cuts right to the chase.

“Indoor cannabis cultivation is extraordinarily energy intensive,” he flatly states.

Kagia is Director of Industry Analytics for New Frontier, a Washington DC-based cannabis industry consulting firm. For example, he says:

Nic Balzer is using his savings to start a marijuana-related business – before the drug is even legalized in Ohio.

It’s a risk Balzer and partner Robert Ryan started taking on last year, prior to a failed ballot initiative to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

Dear future nominees:

Eight months from today one of you will be inaugurated the 45th President of the United States. There is much to think about between now and then, but one issue with a penchant for falling between the cracks is marijuana policy. Marijuana policy is no longer just a punchline, reserved for the attention of activists. Marijuana policy will be a serious part of the next administration’s domestic policy, and it is critical that you create a strategy accordingly. 

ROUGHLY HALF OF the money raised to oppose a ballot measure to legalize recreational marijuana in California is coming from police and prison guard groups, terrified that they might lose the revenue streams to which they have become so deeply addicted.

Drug war money has become a notable source of funding for law enforcement interests. Huge government grants and asset-seizure windfalls benefit police departments, while the constant supply of prisoners keeps the prison business booming.

Iowa senator Charles Grassley is fighting back after one of his challengers claimed that he’s blocking a bill that would create meaningful medical cannabis legislation.

Last Friday, State Senator Rob Hogg joined supporters of a bill that would move cannabis from a schedule one drug to a schedule two.

Hogg claims that by not taking action on the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respects Act — Grassley is keeping medicine out of the hands of families that need it.

Grassley says if cannabis is a schedule two drug, we could end up with 50 states, with 50 different laws on the matter.

In Colorado, it’s usually the education budget, law enforcement, and infrastructure that see the most benefit from legal marijuana tax revenue.

The state’s third largest city, Aurora, just changed that in a big way. The city will divert a third of its marijuana tax revenue to organizations that help the homeless. The city faces a growing number of displaced citizens, including a large number of families that occupy the city’s motels but can’t afford other day-to-day necessities like food or clean clothes. By comparison, the chart below will show you how the entire state of Colorado allocated their tax revenue from legal marijuana sales in the fiscal year 2014-15.

After years campaigning for the right to use a medical-marijuana extract to treat her daughter’s seizures, Dana Haddox-Wright is now planning to wean Ella, her six-year-old, off of the potentially dangerous pharmaceuticals she’s been taking for years. 

At the same time, marijuana producers across the state are making liquified and edible forms of marijuana that children will be able to use. And state officials are creating an expedited application process to help those patients under 18 years old get signed up for the program. 

This year marks the 20th anniversary of marijuana receiving its first state-level approval, when California gave cannabis the green light with Proposition 215. Since that 1996 approval, cannabis has spread like a weed, gaining legalization into other states and giving both patients and consumers hope that they would soon have access to both medical and recreational marijuana.

As we look at the marijuana industry today, a number of amazing facts and figures stand out. As objective observers, and investors, let's take a closer look at nine fast facts about marijuana, including one telling statistic.

1. 24 states have legalized medical marijuana