• On January 1, laws making legal the use of recreational marijuana went into effect in Colorado and the state of Washington. Fifty-six percent of Americans now favor legalization and regulation of marijuana.

  In the meantime, there are 20 states plus Washington DC where medical marijuana is legal, and four states with pending legislation.

  “Medical marijuana” is something of a misnomer. A physician does not write a prescription for a specific compound at a specific dosage that a patient fills at a pharmacy. Indeed, the physician’s only involvement may be in issuing the requisite medical marijuana card. 

  The card allows users to shop at marijuana dispensaries. It also amounts to a “get out of jail free” card

BOULDER, Colo. — Recreational marijuana is both illegal and controversial in most of the country, and its relationship to food does not rise much above a joke about brownies or a stoner chef’s late-night pork belly poutine.

But cooking with cannabis is emerging as a legitimate and very lucrative culinary pursuit.

In Colorado, which has issued more than 160 edible marijuana licenses, skilled line cooks are leaving respected restaurants to take more lucrative jobs infusing cannabis into food and drinks. In Washington, one of four states that allow recreational marijuana sales, a large cannabis bakery dedicated to affluent customers with good palates will soon open in Seattle.

Move over, Amsterdam and Vancouver (sometimes known as “Vansterdam” for its notoriously loose, yet still illegal, pot culture): There’s a new plume of cannabis tourism locales on the rise in the U.S.

Amsterdam has long topped lists of destinations for travelers seeking legal recreational marijuana, but new laws across the U.S. are producing a fresh crop of hot pot spots.

Why Washington State's Pot Industry Could be the Most Profitable

The dominos are starting to fall.

Just six months ago the state of Colorado became the first jurisdiction to legalize the recreational consumption of marijuana. This week it was the state of Washington’s turn to drop its pot prohibition, handing-out its first recreational marijuana retail licenses this Monday. And there are at least eight other states lined up behind them that are either considering or are already in the process of doing the same.

Local butcher bringing home the bacon with 'marijuana fed pigs'

Pike Place Market butcher William Von Schneidau calls his latest creation the "pot pig."

And it's exactly what it sounds like: Von Schneidau, owner of BB Ranch Meats, has teamed up with local marijuana grower Top Shelf Organic to raise pigs fed on pot plants.

The so-called "pot-bellied porkers" are then turned into marijuana-infused bacon.

"It just got so popular we ran out of meat," von Schneidau recalled.

Though the weed does produce "redder and more savory" pigs, von Schneidau says the bacon itself won't get you high.