Business

Gunmen representing the Zetas drug trafficking organization have threatened to attack isolated natural gas well drillers unless they pay to operate in parts of northern Mexico. The threats are a new twist in Mexico's failed drug prohibition war, which is hitting businesses near the U.S.-Mexico border.

Denver-based mmjDailyDeals.com is picking up where other social couponing sites don't dare to go, offering deals of up to 80 percent off on medical marijuana in your inbox everyday. Founder John Molinare said his company is filling a void for medical marijuana patients who stand to benefit through increased accessibility and affordability.

Conflict between state and federal laws over the legality of medical marijuana has left owners of medical marijuana dispensaries finding that their financial services can go up in smoke. They're caught in a legal gray area that makes big banks wary or downright hostile. Last spring, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and 14 other members of Congress sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner seeking reassurance for financial institutions. The letter to Geithner asks his office to "issue formal written guidance for financial institutions assuring that Department priorities do not include targeting or pursuing institutions whose account holders are involved in a business ostensibly operating in compliance with a state medical marijuana law." No response has been received.

In San Francisco, a medical marijuana collective is trying to change the idea of a medical marijuana club as a tiny storefront office in a declining part of town, or a huge but impersonal former warehouse.

A notorious Mexican drug trafficking organization has been selling counterfeit Microsoft software on the streets and has been shoving it in authorities' faces by stamping fake Office 2007 discs, for instance, with the familiar "FMM" logo of the Familia organization.

The LPGA has canceled the $1.3 million Tres Marias Championship in Mexico due to concerns over drug prohibition violence.

In a sign of the growing professionalization of the medical cannabis industry, Mark Rhoades and Ali Kashani, the owners of the Berkeley development company Citycentric Investments, have teamed up with Debby Goldsberry, a founder of the Berkeley Patients Group, to open a number of medical marijuana facilities around the East Bay. Goldsberry, Rhoades, and Kashani represent a new breed of medical marijuana entrepreneurs: people expert in land use policy, non-profit work, and running cannabis collectives. It’s a set of services that is growing in demand as more states adopt medical marijuana laws and as more people try to navigate the byzantine laws permitting medical marijuana in California.

Californians who use medical marijuana outside of work would be protected from job dismissal due to medical marijuana use under a bill that has been introduced by state Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco. The bill, SB129, would make it illegal for an employer to consider either a worker's status as a registered patient or a positive drug test when making hiring and firing decisions. The bill would not change existing laws that bar employees from using medical marijuana at the workplace or during work hours.

Monterrey, Mexico's business capital and third-largest city, is being pushed to the breaking point by a drug prohibition war that has left about 80 people, including 14 police officers, dead this year alone and pushed authorities to the limit. The city, home to more than 50,000 corporations, including some of the largest multinational businesses in Mexico, fears for its future if the prohibition-caused violence is not stopped. "This is a very difficult time, perhaps the most difficult in the recent history of Nuevo Leon" state, Gov. Rodrigo Medina said.