The business of marijuana is attracting thousands of professionals from across the country to Osceola County for a national cannabis trade show.

• Marijuana Business Conference and Expo in Kissimmee through Wednesday
• Floridians learning more about marijuana in case medical marijuana becomes fully legal
• Miarjuana businessman said group of investors would do better as a new marijuana business

It’s also attracting Floridians who may jump into the medical marijuana game if it is legalized by Florida voters in November.

Raymond Weisbein, who runs PMS 4 DOCS LLC in South Florida, is inspired to step into the industry by his friends in Colorado.

Cannabis consumers are turning to more discreet concentrates and oils.

Smoking pot will soon be as retro as smoking a cigar or enjoying a fine wine.

As the legal market for marijuana expands, product offerings have diversified from the standard dried flowers and cannabis-infused edible items like cookies and gummy bears to vaporizable oils and concentrates. They have become a major portion of legal marijuana sales, allowing consumers more potent and less overt forms of consumption. “Patients don’t want to be stigmatized or ostracized, they don’t want to be obvious,” says Rob Hunt, a general partner at cannabis-focused private-equity firm Tuatara Capital. “It’s important for people to have alternative forms of consumption, to consume in a way that’s anonymous.”

Entrepreneurs are revitalizing their businesses by focusing on the growing cannabis industry.

An embarrassing experience trying to get medical marijuana gave Mark Hadfield, chief technology officer of HelloMD Inc., the idea he needed to stimulate his business.

Weedmaps, the initial and largest tellurian record and media association in a cannabis space, announced a new partnership with cannabis record company Green Bits, a personality in point-of-sale (POS) and register management solutions.

A group that advocates for medical marijuana is ratcheting up pressure on Louisiana lawmakers by paying for billboards depicting sick children and their mothers who want the state to pass legislation that would allow access to the drug.

Sensible Marijuana Policy for Louisiana, a nonprofit group that was behind a medical marijuana bill filed by state Rep. Ted James, D-Baton Rouge, is planning a news conference Tuesday (May 10) to announce the billboards. Each ad will appear on digital billboards, one of them in Baton Rouge and the other in Shreveport.

Since she was 9 months old, my daughter, Mary Louise, has suffered from seizures — sometimes up to 200 an hour. Watching my daughter, now 8, suffer has led me — as a parent — to seek any treatment possible.

We have tried multiple medications, special diets, and seen specialists around the country. All of these treatments had been largely unsuccessful; however, upon learning of cannabis oil, and the success that other epileptic patients have experienced, we were filled with a new hope.

In 2014, we helped support a bill that ultimately was passed by the South Carolina General Assembly which allowed patients with severe epilepsy to access CBD oil for treatment.

Providing a quick statistical snapshot of the fast growing marijuana industry within the US, Marijuana Business Daily reported in its 2016 Marijuana Business Factbook; a majority all marijuana-related businesses – think cultivators, dispensaries, collectives, and the ever popular brick-and-mortar recreational pot shops – reported they were able to “Break-Even” or were “Modestly Profitable,” during the first part of 2016.

Orlando attorney and legal magnate John Morgan is giving the keynote address at the Marijuana Business Conference and Expo, which opened today at Gaylord Palms Meeting Center, 6000 W. Osceola Parkway.

The event costs $800 for the full conference and $400 for meals and exposition only. It began today with a reception and a separate "crash course" for beginners that costs extra. It continues Tuesday and Wednesday with a full schedule.

Morgan, founder of Morgan & Morgan law firm, is also chairman of United for Care, an advocacy group for the legalization of medical marijuana in Florida.

THIS sports convertible brings new meaning to “high-performance” vehicle.

Made from the chassis of a Mazda, the car is made from cannabis hemp — and is touted as possibly leading the charge in making carbon-neutral vehicles, Barcroft Media reported.

Bruce Michael Dietzen from Florida, the mastermind behind the “green machine,” hopes his environmentally friendly car will weed out the taboo behind the cannabis plant.

“Cannabis hemp is still considered a dangerous drug according to the government. It’s considered as dangerous as heroin or cocaine — it’s insane!” he said. “This green machine is made from three plies of woven hemp, making it lighter than cars made from fibreglass.”

Six states that allow marijuana use legal tests to determine driving while impaired by the drug that have no scientific basis, according to a study by the nation's largest automobile club that calls for scrapping those laws.

The study commissioned by AAA's safety foundation said it's not possible to set a blood-test threshold for THC, the chemical in marijuana that makes people high, that can reliably determine impairment.

Yet the laws in five of the six states automatically presume a driver guilty if that person tests higher than the limit, and not guilty if it's lower.

As a result, drivers who are unsafe may be going free while others may be wrongly convicted, the foundation said.