Eric Howard takes great pride in his “ladies,” each of which can yield up to 16 ounces of medical cannabis in a 16-week life cycle.

“They get so heavy, they fall over right at the end,” said Howard, master grower at an 11-acre growing facility in Bernalillo owned by Ultra Health LLC. A trellis system is needed to support the heavy flowering branches of the mature plants.

Howard urges a visitor to feel one of the dense flowers, which leaves a sticky resin on the fingers.

The ordinance that allows commercial cultivation of medical marijuana in Adelanto requires growers to make every effort to hire at least half of their workers in the city.

Adelanto needs all the jobs it can get. Its unemployment rate soared to 22 percent during the recession, and it's still 9.7 percent, compared with a statewide rate of 5.8 percent.

Freddy Sayegh, a Los Angeles lawyer who represents three cultivation projects, estimates the new industry will generate 3,000 jobs for the town. His three facilities might account for 500, he said, with workers tending and trimming the plants and providing security, sales and research.

Dr. Joycelyn Elders, our nation’s first African American Surgeon General was the keynote address this morning at the International Cannabis Business Conference (ICB) and Congressmen Earl Blumenauer and Dana Rohrabacher followed her. Having Elders and two sitting Congressmen speak helped provide an overview of how far the United States has come nationally, where we are now, and where we are heading in the near future.

Legal marijuana means big profits that no longer go to criminals and cartels. So who is going to get those legal cannabis profits? Obviously those with the drive and foresight to navigate a new and evolving industry; also, being a celebrity doesn’t hurt.

Celebrities are flooding into the “dope game.” There are those you would expect; well-known cannabis users who have been preaching the awesomeness of Mary Jane for decades who now plan on cashing in on being absolutely right.

Sprawling 70-acre campus is listed for $85M

The campus was put up for sale in June for an asking price of $85 million, following the listing of Amgen’s 300,000-square-foot Boulder facility. That property was purchased for $14.6 million by AstraZeneca in September.

Marijuana legalization is a huge and hot topic right now, and yes, the United States is making progress in it all, but some think it is moving too slow. Bill Maher is one of those people and he knows there is still a long way to go before it is legal everywhere, and it is no secret that he loves to smoke a bit of weed now and again. Well, smoking it legally indoors and on the set of Real Time with Bill Maher is something up for question, but that’s exactly what he did last night.

During a segment on Real Time on Friday night, Maher totally blasted the hypocrisy of the marijuana laws in the United States. In order to push his point and make an entirely huge statement, he lit up a joint and smoked weed on television.

Weed has gone legit. Gone are the days of seedy back-alley deals and surreptitious deliveries. (Unless -- do you know a guy?) As legalization expands, clandestine dealers are being replaced by respectable mom-and-pop shops, glossy grow-ops, and tourist-friendly "weederies." To solidify its position, the industry is looking to hire a crop of new young professionals. But it will make those hires on just one condition: They have to take this job -- deep breath now -- actually quite seriously.

Four years ago BioTrackTHC, which is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., had fewer than 20 customers for its “seed to sale” marijuana tracking software. Now the company serves more than 1,600 businesses and five state governments, offering inventory management software for individual companies, and industry-tracking systems to state governments to monitor the legal marijuana production and sales activity in their state.

The cash-only marijuana industry has long posed problems for banks, until now.

Although selling marijuana is now legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia, doing business as a legal marijuana company is a logistical nightmare. That's because marijuana is still federally illegal, and banks open themselves up to potential seizure by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. if they take money that is the result of a federally illegal act.

In most corporate settings, it's standard for employees to file into meetings with a cup of coffee in hand before sitting down to strategize on how best to move the business forward. But at least one Denver-based company has taken a different approach by allowing its staff to use another stimulant of sorts to get the creative juices flowing.

"When we have a company brainstorm session, we usually go to the rooftop or Red Rocks Park, and if people want to consume cannabis, they can smoke," said Isaac Dietrich, the co-founder of MassRoots, a tech startup social platform for cannabis users, about their Friday-afternoon meetings.