FLORENCE - Cassie Alegria looked on as her 4-year-old daughter Ava Rose zigged and zagged around kids and adults at a picnic area Sunday afternoon.

Ava, wearing a padded helmet and a onesie pajama, repeatedly tried to stick her face in a small kiddie pool, distressing Alegria.

Ana has Dravet syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy that begins in infancy. After years of using prescription drugs, the two moved to Colorado from Arizona in February to begin treatment with cannabis oil.

"We're just so isolated. Just the disease itself is isolating," Alegria said. "Being around families that get it is everything."

At a farm in the foothills of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Corey Young tucks his client’s marijuana into a shoe box-sized container in an unmarked white van and heads out on the road.

“We don’t want to be going through a small town and have someone see bins in the back,” said Young, a founder of courier service CannaRabbit LLC. “We do not want to stick out at all.”

The SP MP Koco Kokedhima has not forgotten his idea to legalize cannabis. "Marketwired", in an article published a few days ago writes that Albania's Socialist MP, has contacted the US officials to legalize and start the export of cannabis. 

"Kokedhima has been in touch with the Commission of Eurasian Affairs in Washington DC (CCEA), regarding a meeting scheduled to be held later this month, to discuss the next phase of this program", writes "Marketwired".

This ain’t your dad’s seedy dope den.

Illustrating the rapid professionalization of the cannabis industry thanks to its legalization, the Minerva Canna Group dispensary project in Albuqueque, NM and its interior designer Megan Stone — head of The High Road Design Studio — just took top honors in the Designer Dozen Award by Visual Merchandising and Store Design Magazine (VMSD). The Designer Dozen award showcases the best and brightest emerging retail designers under 35.

The Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. offshoot that targets young, urban gardeners has acquired a Santa Rosa, California-based hydroponics company popular with marijuana growers.

Hawthorne Gardening Co., a Scotts subsidiary formed in October, purchased General Hydroponics Inc. and Bio-Organic Solutions Inc.

Terms were not disclosed, but the acquisition should position the company in the growing marijuana market.

Four decades after Richard Nixon declared drugs “public enemy No. 1 in the United States,” the tide has turned on marijuana legalization. States are racing to follow Colorado and Washington in ending prohibition, and national politicians are scrambling to get out of the way.

An Alabama Senate bill introduced last week would allow patients to legally possess and use marijuana prescribed by a medical doctor.

The Alabama Medical Marijuana Patient Safe Access Act would apply to “qualifying patients” with serious medical conditions, ranging from severe nausea to AIDS. The bill was read Thursday and is being considered in the Senate’s judiciary committee.

SB-326 is sponsored by Sen. Bobby Singleton, D- Greensboro, and a companion bill is expected to be filed Monday by Rep. John Rogers, D- Birmingham.

“There are doctors that want to prescribe marijuana for their patients because it works,” Singleton said in a written statement last week. “It just makes sense to let them.”

The UpTake: Casey Craig isn't much different from any other startup founder, except that he's out on the frontier of legalized marijuana.

C asey Craig works 85 hours a week at his new business, a pace that's familiar to nearly every startup founder. He has his life savings, at least $300,000, tied up in the venture. He quit his stable job and struck out on his own. He spent months searching for the best team to give his business a chance of success.

But there's one big difference between Craig and the thousands of other startup founders in the state.

Rush of growers expected, but only 5 will be approved

Gary Smith grows millions of pounds of tomatoes in a greenhouse in Niagara County, but he is fighting the clock to rotate in a different crop soon so that he can harvest in time for sale next January. His new crop: marijuana.

Or, at least, he hopes it will be.

Smith is among hundreds of people poring over regulations the state Department of Health released last week that paves the way for medical marijuana to be sold in New York State by early next year.

The complex set of rules sets in motion an application period that is expected to see a rush of businesses trying to get a foothold in the state’s medical marijuana industry.

Twice a week at the office of Patrick Fasusi, District residents line up to ask the pain specialist to approve their use of medical marijuana. For most, the brief wait in the lobby is longer than their consultation.

As marijuana, which became legal for recreational use in the nation’s capital in February, continues to morph from contraband to commonplace, Fasusi’s clinic is a window into the ease with which some residents have been buying officially sanctioned pot for more than two years.