Jay Schlauch’s conviction for peddling pot haunted him for nearly a quarter century.

The felony prevented him from landing jobs, gave his wife doubts about tying the knot and cast a shadow over his typically sunny outlook on life.

So when an opportunity arose to reduce his record to a misdemeanor under the voter-approved law that legalized recreational marijuana last year, Schlauch wasted little time getting to court.

“Why should I be lumped in with, you know, murderers and rapists and people who really deserve to get a felony?” he asked.

Adelanto, California, is what’s known as a “drive-through town.” It’s a dusty plot of desert surrounded by Joshua trees and dilapidated factories. Few outsiders stay long.

Now, the sleepy city in San Bernardino County wants to establish itself as a hotbed for large-scale cultivation and innovation in weed.

There are 360 acres zoned for growing medical marijuana in Adelanto (recreational marijuna is newly legal and California has yet to give licenses for growing it). It’s among the first struggling desert cities to turn to weed as a cure for its economic woes, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Illinois is well into its second year of sales for medical marijuana and in that time, the state has decriminalized the drug and there have been serious talks of legalizing recreational weed.

Medical cannabis has been legal in Illinois since 2013, but it hasn't always been and still isn't, perceived in a positive way.

"You know there probably are some uses for it," recovering addict Elizabeth Price said. "I think we could be creating addicts where we don't need to. Marijuana has always been called the gateway drug and now we're going to have doctors dispensing it. That's how the heroin epidemic got so bad, is doctors were dispensing [opioids]."

In Washington, it is now as easy to get marijuana delivered to your front door as pizza. Really expensive pizza.

More than two years after the District of Columbia allowed residents to legally cultivate and possess cannabis for personal use - but not buy it - a growing grey market of companies has sprung up that will bring orders of high-priced cookies, juice, clothing or even artwork to your house, along with the "gift" of a few fat buds.

Those who want to imbibe can also pay to attend dance parties and craft fairs where vendors sell edibles and smokables at what one regular terms a "farmers market for weed".

Budtenders are half bartender, half pharmacist, offering recommendations for cannabis products to suit each customer.​

When she was 14, Sandra Andrade first learned about marijuana from her brother who had an outdoor garden. Today, the 36-year-old works at downtown L.A. dispensary Kushmart, where she helms the point-of-sale contact for those who want to purchase cannabis products. In weed industry terms, she's a budtender.

Why should investors like marijuana stocks? For some, the rationale might be the enormous market potential. For others, it could be simply that many marijuana stocks have soared over the last year or so.

There are plenty of reasons for investors to like three marijuana stocks in particular -- GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH), Insys Therapeutics (NASDAQ: INSY), and Aphria (NASDAQOTH: APHQF). In fact, there are at least 661 million reasons. That's the amount of cash in U.S. dollars that the three companies have combined. Here's why the cash stockpiles held by GW, Insys, and Apria are important.

It’s hard to imagine an analytical test without lab work, but that’s just what dry labbing means. In some cases—increasingly few—samples of cannabis get certified, as if they were tested, when nothing was really done, no wet-lab science was performed. Instead, these samples get labeled with characteristics that no one really measured. Put very bluntly, dry labbing is lying—making up data about what’s in a product rather than testing it. For medical use, dry labbing is dangerous, because someone could get a higher dose than expected or not enough of the medicine they rely on. On top of that, it’s fraud for both medical and recreational cannabis products.

In a first for the legal marijuana industry, a prominent venture capital firm has made moves to cash in.

On May 23, Hound Labs, an Oakland-based startup that makes a breathalyzer for marijuana, announced a new $8.1 million round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. In the past, the Silicon Valley venture firm made early bets on Uber, Snap, Dropbox, and WeWork, among other technology giants.

Founded in 2014, Hound Labs is on a mission to make a reliable breathalyzer that detects and measures THC — a chemical compound responsible for marijuana's psychoactive effects. The device is moving into clinical trials and is expected to launch by the end of the year.

Lost to most in the flurry of legislation at the end of the South Carolina General Assembly’s session earlier this month was a bill legalizing the growth of industrial hemp. Not pot, but hemp.

Industrial hemp is different from its cousin marijuana in that it contains 0.3 percent or less of the psychoactive chemical that will get you high. Marijuana, a separate variety of Cannabis sativa, can contain up to 40 percent.

Hemp is used for myriad purposes, from food to clothing to composites for car and airplane parts to oils for dietary supplements. Soon, perhaps this summer, the S.C. Department of Agriculture and the State Law Enforcement Division will issue 20 licenses to grow crops on up to 20 acres as a pilot program.

As cannabis expands into medical and various recreational products, manufacturers apply a variety of methods to extract the essential components. Cannabinoids make up the key active components, and cannabis contains about 80 of them. The most well-known cannabinoids are cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). THC is the main psychoactive component, and CBD could be useful for a range of medicinal applications. To prepare the various products—from edibles and liquids to smokables and lotions—the crucial chemical components must first be obtained from the plants.