The new commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Robert Califf, told a panel of FDA advisers last week that he will do "everything possible under our authority" to help the federal government curb an epidemic of drug overdoses.

A report released by the US Centers for Disesase Control and Prevention (CDC) in January revealed that drug-overdose deaths reached a new high in 2014, totaling 47,055 people. Opioids, a type of powerful painkiller that requires a prescription, were involved in 60% of those deaths.

For the week ended Friday, March 11, the spot price index for a pound of cannabis was essentially unchanged from $1,920 in the prior week to $1,918. The simple average price for a gram slipped a penny from $4.57 to $4.56.

The futures price for the near month (April) rose 1% from $2,010 to $2,030. For the month of May, the forward price remained flat at $2,110 a pound. The six-month forward price for September also remained unchanged at $2,200.

About two-thirds of the past week’s transactions occurred in a range of $1,564 to $2,577 per pound, according to the analysts at Cannabis Benchmarks. The analysts also commented on the forward price curve:

When Logan Bowers opened his marijuana retail store Seattle Hashtag in April 2015, he entered an arena far different from his tech-industry background.

Bowers, co-owner of Hashtag and president of the Cannabis Organization of Retail Establishments (CORE), had the same task as other marijuana license holders in the state: bring an industry relegated to street corners and sidewalks into a legal and regulated retail environment.

"We get a lot of local traffic," Bowers said. "A lot of folks kind of walking by who are like, 'What's this about?' And they come in and checked it out and realize we're just a normal business."

Steamboat Springs — A unique marijuana education curriculum created and piloted in Steamboat Springs through the past year is gaining the attention of schools across the country.

The Marijuana Education Initiative offers four types of school curriculum to address prevention of marijuana use, intervention for self-identified habitual users, alternative to suspension and athlete awareness.

The initiative acknowledges that marijuana is a legal recreational and medicinal substance that many adults are using and no longer an illegal drug that should be lumped together with opiates, methamphetamine and other drugs during health class.

Starting your first cannabis garden can be overwhelming -- there are endless opinions on what equipment to use and which techniques yield the best results. Fortunately, there are a lot of ways to grow great cannabis. With a little homework, a spirit for problem solving, and some memory of your high school science classes (don't worry, just some), you'll find that growing cannabis is one of the quickest and most impactful ways to deepen your understanding of this unique plant.

Leafly visited five different gardens to get a behind-the-scenes look at how the professionals are growing cannabis. We'll bring you to indoor facilities in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington to study the steps successful growers use to produce some of the finest flowers in the country.

SEATTLE, WA - The reliability of cannabis testing has become a challenge in an industry that GreenWave Advisors believes could reach $35 billion by 2020. With tens of thousands of products recalled for illegal pesticide use, cannabis consumers face a lot of uncertainty when buying products off dispensary shelves. Separate studies have shown that THC and CBD concentrations are regularly mislabeled and could create problems for medical and recreational users alike. There is no quick, easy, or affordable way for consumers to test cannabis safety and composition.

For all the successful reforms and increasingly marijuana-friendly attitudes among politicians — not to mention a relentless, nation-wide cultural backlash against the failed policies of prohibition — most legal cannabis companies have remained stuck in a cash-focused industry, forced to tread a disastrously unfortunate line in regards to mainstream bank services.

In case you’ve missed it so far, this is a big deal: perhaps the biggest obstacle preventing cannabis from going irrevocably mainstream.

‘Dude, where’s my 401k?’

Since legalization first touched down in Washington and Colorado, there have been countless reports of cannabis companies waking up to realize their bank account had been shut down, or their credit cards canceled.

Federal cannabis prohibition is a buzzkill on many levels, but for cannabusinesses in legal states, it’s an especially frustrating hurdle to expansion. When a brand outgrows its home turf, it can’t just start shipping packages of product to the next state over. 

Despite the difficulty, a number of companies have managed to cross state lines. Colorado’s Dixie Elixirs has products in Washington, California, and Oregon. They recently launched in Nevada, and Chief Marketing Officer Joe Hodas says the brand is close to inking a deal in Arizona. 

As legal cannabis business grows larger, states are realizing standards need to be set.

In the latest step toward standardizing cannabis cultivation, the Washington State Department of Agriculture released formal recommendations called the “Worker Protection Standards (WPS): Requirements for Marijuana Growers.”

Standards in the regular world of agriculture are created by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). However, USDA inspection or certification of cannabis is prohibited because USDA employees must abide by federal laws. Over half of U.S. states have legalized medicinal or recreational marijuana use, but since the USDA cannot get involved, there are no set standards for cannabis cultivation.

As the federal Liberals map out their plan for legalizing marijuana, they can look at how — and how successfully — a handful of other jurisdictions have overturned the prohibition of pot.

In 2012, Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize marijuana. Within two years, each state set up a framework governing how retailers could start selling. 

But although the two states have much in common, they have different takes on key questions that Canada will have to consider, like whether residents will be able to grow their own plants as they can in Colorado, or whether laws should put limits on non-residents who buy marijuana here, like in Colorado — or leave the market open as Washington does.