Sales of marijuana products in Washington state have for the first time surpassed $200 million in a quarter.

Other news outlets report that residents and visitors bought more marijuana than ever before in the second quarter of 2016, based on an analysis of purchase and tax records from two state agencies.

In the first quarter of 2016 - January, February, and March - people spent $54.8 million more on spirits than marijuana, which includes the cost of the products and its associated taxes. By the second quarter - April, May, and June - that gap closed to nearly $37 million. Those amounts include taxes levied by the state on those products. Spirits sales do not include wine and beer. Marijuana sales include all cannabis products, but not paraphernalia.

Unless you were living under a rock this week, then you are aware that the number of legal states in America doubled after the election. The states that legalized were of course California, Nevada, Massachusetts, and Maine. According to the most recent census numbers, those states have a combined population of 49,714,000 people, with California of course making up the bulk of the statistic (38.8 million people live in California).

With nine states voting on different forms of marijuana legalization on Election Day, the red and blue map U.S. residents are used to watching on election nights should have a little green on it.

Alaska, Colorado, Oregon and Washington have passed recreational marijuana laws in the last four years. California, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona and Nevada have legalization initiatives on the ballot in November. Florida, Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota also have forms of medical marijuana legalization on the ballot next month.

The Puget Sound Business Journal looked back at Washington's recreational marijuana industry since the passage of Initiative 502 in November 2012 and the opening of the first retail store – Cannabis City – in July 2014.

Interra Oils, a Washington state-based company that sells marijuana concentrate products–those that can be inhaled using a vaporizer or added to edibles–has to wait until it’s ready to deliver orders to customers before it adds a 16-digit sublot code to each individual package. Each time it gets an order from a store–even if it is the same order that same store made the previous week–it has to create a new manifest and generate a new 16-digit code.

Edibles producer Spot is trying to keep first-time marijuana eaters from biting off more than they can chew.

"Well, you know the Maureen Dowd story," sighed Tim Moxey. "And it's just not a good story."

True, Dowd's experience was less than ideal: She ate a couple bites of a pot-infused candy bar, then curled into a ball in her Denver hotel room and had a panic attack. The next day she discovered the bar was supposed to have been broken into 16 pieces, not munched on bite by bite.

Yes, Washington was part of the vanguard when it came to legalizing marijuana. And yes, voters in even more states might approve legalization in November for recreational use.

But if you think drug tests have fallen out of fashion in Tacoma, Olympia and elsewhere in this state, think again.

Now that the economy has improved post-recession, companies are fishing from a smaller pool of job seekers who can pass mandatory drug screenings, said Hans Kueck, an economic development specialist with Pierce County.

The marijuana grow-light story sits at the intersection of semiconductor cost curves, cutting-edge indoor botany, utility efficiency incentives, outlaw pot growers, and the slow societal acceptance of a newly legal intoxicant.

And it's a very big business.

When Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012, opponents of the measures warned that ending the longstanding prohibition on weed would wreak havoc on society. The fiscal benefits associated with taxed and regulated marijuana wouldn’t be worthwhile, they said, because more children would end up using the drug and high drivers would terrorize the roadways.

Washington State Department of Agriculture The Washington State Department of Agriculture has proposed a new program to certify organically grown marijuana. A separate certification would be required since marijuana is still illegal under federal law and the organic program is a federal program.

The Washington Department of Agriculture has proposed hiring a “cannabis coordinator” to direct the agency’s expanding role in regulating and promoting the state’s billion-dollar marijuana industry.

The coordinator’s duties could include overseeing a new program to certify organically grown marijuana, for the health conscious pot buyer.

“There seems to be consumer interest in that,” WSDA spokesman Hector Castro said. “We have done this for other commodities, obviously.”

For This Cannabis Entrepreneur, Opening Up Close to Home Isn't About the Commute. It's About Community.

Seattle's recreational cannabis stores don't often have much in the way of ambience. At worst, they feel like a sterile strip-mall dental office or a dimly lit Walmart.

But Maryam Mirnateghi wants to change that. Her new store, Canna West Seattle, set to open in October, is housed in a 1920s Craftsman-style house on California Avenue Southwest and will be worlds away from those impersonal pot shops.

"It's going to be clean and classy, but it's not going to be pretentious," Mirnateghi says. "It's going to be really cozy and very different from the other stores we have in the city."