When Brendan Kennedy told his family he was leaving his job at the Silicon Valley Bank to go into the marijuana industry, they thought he was crazy.

Kennedy, who has an MBA from Yale, does not fit the classic image of a marijuana operator. Sharply suited and softly spoken, he is more likely to quote Schumpeter than Bob Marley, and except for the occasional high-resolution photograph of bright green leaves, his company’s airy Seattle office feels more like the headquarters of a Silicon Valley incubator than anything to do with weed.

Do you grow these for medical use? Major changes are coming your way. Kelly O

Vancouver, British Columbia, April 13, 2015: Wildflower Marijuana Inc. (CSE:SUN) (the “Company”) has signed a Letter of Intent with a manufacturer of cannabis e-juice. The Joint Venture is established to develop a line of e-juice products for Wildflower. The Joint Venture partner is currently a licensed Tier 3 producer and processor in the State of Washington.

The Superior Court for Spokane County recently held that Washington’s sales tax does not apply to sales of medical marijuana. Late last month, the Washington Department of Revenue (“DOR”) appealed that decision to the Washington State Court of Appeals.

Seattle, WA – Coinciding with the release of the Apple Watch on April 20th, a Seattle-based multi-media company, Higher Ground, has created a parody ad to bring attention to marijuana legalization. The ad (“WeedWatch”) features a photo of the iWatch with the simple text, “Time for a Change: Legalize It.” A variety of marijuana-related icons and apps are featured on the device’s face.

High cigarette taxes fuel a surging black market in smuggled cigarettes, notes Americans for Tax Reform's Patrick Gleason in the Wall Street Journal. New York smokers are the greatest beneficiaries of that black market, burdened as they are with the most ridiculous cigarette taxes in the country. There's a huge flow of smuggled smokes from relatively low-tax states like Virginia. And some smokers are turning to an alternative to which marijuana fanciers facing legal pressures of their own have resorted for decades: growing their own.

We know the end is coming, but pot prohibition is going to have to be undone state by state. Here are the ones least likely to jump on the bandwagon.

Marijuana prohibition in the US is dying, but it isn't going to vanish in one fell swoop. Even if Congress were to repeal federal pot prohibition, state laws criminalizing the plant and its users would still be in effect—at least in some states.

And it's probably a pretty safe bet that Congress isn’t going to act until a good number of states, maybe more than half, have already legalized it. That process is already underway and is likely to gather real momentum by the time election day 2016 is over.

Last year, The Weed Eater column debuted on 4/20 with a promise to take readers on “a cannabis-fueled culinary journey.” Since then, we’ve made a gourmet marijuana meal at Hunter S. Thompson’s house, sampled Melissa Etheridge’s weed-infused wine, brewed up some pot-fueled bulletproof coffee, explored the Joy of Cooking (while really stoned), concocted strain-specific cannabis cocktails, examined the Grateful Dead’s lasting influence on how we eat, and even shared a meal with Nonna Marijuana, the 92-year-old queen of cannabis cuisine. But perhaps, amid all the munchies and merriment, we’ve failed to make clear something vitally important: Marijuana edibles aren’t safe.

While Oregon’s first recreational marijuana sales are expected in early-2016, the retail program’s pot-infused edibles might not hit shop shelves until early-2017 if the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has its way.

In an April 1 letter to the lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Implementing Measure 91, the liquor commission made a case for delaying the sale for the edibles “due to concerns regarding the complexity of developing rules and procedures that would allow processors to safely produce edible products under the timelines described in Measure 91.”

Picture the kind of person who hauls the fruits of the marijuana trade from place to place. In times past, maybe it would have been a questionable character in an aging sedan, eyes peeled for any signs of undue attention from cops, grifters or mischievous teens. Nowadays, in yet another still-kinda-hard-to-believe byproduct of pot legalization, the task is increasingly falling to ex-law enforcement officers manning armored vehicles.