Retired Silicon Valley engineer Angelo Mallol, 56, turned out Sunday for a seminar on how to start a small business – in the pot trade.

He asked questions as instructor Gerry Bedore of the Cannabis Career Institute spoke about emerging opportunities for entrepreneurs wanting to enter California’s medical marijuana market and cash in on a likely 2016 state ballot initiative to legalize recreational pot use.

The Cannabis Career Institute, founded by a Los Angeles marijuana activist and pot deliveryman known as “The Cannabis Warrior,” held a daylong Sacramento program on how to open cannabis businesses, from niche bakeries and organic gardens to marijuana distribution services.

Many marijuana advocates are saying 2016 will be the year for marijuana legalization, thanks in part to a new poll which finds that a majority of voters in several swing stats support legalizing marijuana.

According to the Quinnipiac survey,  55 percent of voters in Florida, 52 percent in Ohio, and 51 percent in Pennsylvania, are in favor of allowing adults “to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”

As for Medical Marijuana the numbers are even more staggering, with 84 percent of the voters in Florida and Ohio and 88 percent in Pennsylvania stating that they believe medical marijuana should be legal.

In “Weed the People,” Bainbridge Island author Bruce Barcott delivers a thorough and entertaining survey of the burgeoning legalization of marijuana in the U.S. Barcott appears April 15 at Seattle’s Elliott Bay Book Co.

‘Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America’ by Bruce Barcott Time, Inc., 400 pp., $22.95

Over the past year, Washington, D.C. has become a lot more marijuana-friendly. Last summer, the District Council decriminalized the drug. Then, in November, voters in the nation’s capital passed a ballot measure completely legalizing possession and cultivation.

Now, a local falafel joint is offering a a special line of sandwiches it says pair well with specific cannabis strains.

Describing one new creation, for example, the Amsterdam Falafelshop menu says, “The root vegetables and tahini complement the earthy pine scent and woodsy undertones of the OG Kush strain.”

Well that didn't take long. Only a couple months after D.C.'s marijuana legalization laws took effect, investors are already planning a convention to figure out how they can get in on the green rush. (No, not that Green Rush, but if any investors are interested in investing in that column, I'm willing to sell out in .01 seconds. Growing weed is expensive).

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.

Last November District of Columbia citizens voted to legalize recreational use of marijuana, joining those of Colorado, Washington state, and Alaska. Since then debate continues about where and when it’s okay to ingest the weed, how to regulate and tax it, and the moral implications of approving use of a drug that is illegal under federal law.

You can go for a ride with the Pineapple Express - or any other strain of cannabis - while visiting friends in D.C., but you might get fired from work back home in Virginia as a result.

Legalized marijuana is closer than ever, now that adults can smoke, grow and share it in the nation's capital. But some local companies are sticking with tests that screen employees for the drug because it's still illegal in Virginia.

A local employment law expert said businesses must be more cautious about dismissing workers for positive drug tests now that marijuana is legal in some parts of the country - but users with a prescription likely have more protection than those who smoke just because, well, they like getting high.

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 District is about to witness a massive, public drug deal on Thursday — and for those involved, it will be quite a bargain.

Over 800 people have confirmed attendance at a giveaway of marijuana seeds Thursday night at an Adams Morgan restaurant. The event appears unprecedented and likely to scatter the makings of more than 16,000 marijuana plants across the nation’s capital.

D.C. police plan to stay clear of the spectacle — except to direct traffic, if needed.