Colorado farmer Ryan Loflin, who began harvesting hemp in 2013, sells his crop to a foam-insulation company and to a paper company. Loflin operates Rocky Mountain Hemp Inc. in Springfield. On Saturday, he spoke to more than 50 people at the Four States Ag Expo in Montezuma County.

An attentive audience of more than 50 local farmers and residents quizzed America’s first modern-day industrial hemp farmer at the Four States Ag Expo.

As the three-day event came to a close Saturday, Ryan Loflin fielded dozens of questions during a hemp awareness event. Loflin, a third-generation Colorado farmer, owns and operates the Rocky Mountain Hemp Inc. farm in Springfield.

In 2013, he became the country’s first hemp farmer in nearly six decades.

Employers are getting sued for not accommodating their employees' use of legal medical marijuana. Here's how to deal with this delicate issue.

With medical marijuana legal in 23 states and Washington, D.C, there are now millions of card-carrying cannabis users working at companies across the U.S. But pot is still illegal under federal law, and many business owners still subscribe to the plant'sReefer Madness stigma and don't want to allow people to smoke on the job. For some of those owners, that can mean getting sued for failing to accommodate an employee who has a medical condition.

QUEENSBURY — Warren County Supervisers voted in support of Amy and Hillary Peckham’s proposal to develop a marijuana-growing facility south of Chestertown, an operation that is expected to provide dozens of well-paying, stable jobs in the northern sector of the county.

The unanimous vote was cast by the supervisors following a detailed presentation of plans by Hillary Peckham, 23, and her mother Amy — the wife of John Peckham, CEO of Peckham Industries. The firm operates a gravel quarry across state Rte. 9 from where the marijuana-growing and processing plant would be located, about one mile south of Chestertown. The operation, independent of Peckham Industries, would be operated by Etain, Inc. — led by Hillary and Amy Peckham.

SILVER SPRING, Md., March 27, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc. (OTCQB:PMCB), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing targeted treatments for cancer and diabetes using its signature live-cell encapsulation technology, Cell-in-a-Box®, today announced that the genetically modified cells that are required for its three planned clinical trials have been fully tested and are in the process of being propagated to produce all of the cells necessary for the clinical trials.

The cells being produced came from a fully characterized single-cell clone of the cells that were used in the previous clinical trials in pancreatic cancer. These cells are being grown under conditions that comply with current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) standards.

The cannabis industry is rapidly growing and there are no signs that it’s slowing down anytime soon. According to ArcView Research, the market for legal cannabis is the fastest-growing industry in the United States, growing to $2.7 billion in 2014.

Many publicly traded companies have sought to capitalize on this growth by growing medical cannabis, pursuing clinical trials with cannabinoids, developing vaporizers and other accessories, or providing generic consulting services to the space. While many of these companies are involved in the industry, no clear market leaders have yet to emerge as conglomerates.

Medical cannabis faces a double standard for safety and efficacy compared to prescription pharmaceuticals.

The most recent illustration of that fact is a story from the Wall Street Journal, which reported this week that at least a third of children with previously untreatable epilepsy got better on extracts of cannabis - a non-toxic botanical.

Of 75 children who took cannabidiol (CBD), the second most common active molecule in cannabis, “33% of them had their seizures drop by half,” the Journal reported.

In this article, Mike Zappy transcribes the contents of a talk on cannabis and how it's going to change 'life as we know it' that he had intended to deliver at a Tedx event in Boca Raton. The text was approved by the organizers and Zappy was scheduled into the event but a few days later he received an email from the same organizers cancelling his talk. They said that 'Boca Raton was not ready for a talk about cannabis'. 

Zappy wants to take a stand against what he believes is the hypocrisy of Tedx, an event that is supposed to break barriers, and is publishing his talk in full here.

There will be branded bongs and stores, too, as Willie gets out ahead of big industry in states where pot is legal.

Willie Nelson takes a hit of the cigarette-sized vaporizer in his gnarled hand, exhaling a small cloud, before placing it on the foldout table in front of us. We’re seated in the cool enclave of his tour bus, at the entrance to his sprawling property just outside Austin, Texas, which he has dubbed the town of Luck. Up a hill and around a corner, people are rocking out at Willie’s own Heartbreaker Banquet, an annual fundraiser/music festival held concurrently with SXSW.

People share marijuana seeds at the swap event at Libertine, in Adams Morgan. (WTOP/Michelle Basch)

WASHINGTON — Some ordinary-looking seeds were in high demand Thursday at D.C.’s first-ever legal marijuana seed sharing event.

Adam Eidinger, chair of the DC Cannabis Campaign, welcomed those who came to share and receive seeds at Libertine, a bar on 18th Street NW in Adams Morgan.

“The RSVP list when we closed it today was at 2,000,” he announced. At one point, the line of people waiting to get in snaked down 18th Street and around the block.

“I hope that from the seeds that we plant this week, (that) this fall … we have a great crop, and people are really generous in sharing, and we actually bring the price of underground marijuana down,” Eidinger added.

The fact that drug arrests in Colorado have dropped since the state began legalizing the recreational use of marijuana with the passing of Amendment 64 is not surprising. However, new data released by the Drug Policy Alliance reveals just how significant the state’s drug policy has unburdened Colorado’s courts and shaped the local criminal justice system.