Business

In Colorado, California and Montana, where medical marijuana is legal, newspapers are enjoying increased ad revenue for this emerging market. This is most valuable at a time when newspapers are hurting for advertising, particularly classified ads, which have plummeted with the rise of online services like Craigslist.

It was already known as the Wal-Mart of the marijuana world with 15,000 square feet of everything you ever needed to grow or smoke marijuana. Now, iGrow is growing even more, so much, that it changed its name to "weGrow."

A new line of marijuana-infused beverages are now available to patients with a recommendation for medical marijuana. Made by Colorado-based Dixie Elixirs, the carbonated drinks are marketed to medicinal marijuana patients who wish to avoid “weed culture” stigmas.

More than a dozen companies are setting up shop in Arizona hoping to get into the business of selling medical marijuana. The Arizona law requires that the dispensaries be set up as non-profit corporations. But that isn't deterring would-be medical marijuana sellers who hope to snare one of 120 licenses.

The Boulder, Colorado city manager extended the deadline for existing medical marijuana businesses to apply for an operating license, citing massive confusion about the city's rules. If the deadline had not been extended, the majority of the city's dispensaries and growing operations would be operating illegally, though owners may not have known it.

At some point next year, medical marijuana will finally be available to qualifying patients in the District. The problem? It might be too expensive for anyone to grow it or sell it, much less for anyone to actually afford to buy it.

Only those with medical marijuana authorization forms gained entrance to an event billed as the state’s first cannabis farmers market. “These are farmers growing agricultural medicine, so it seemed like a no-brainer,” said Jeremy Miller, organizer and owner of Sacred Plant Medicine. “It’s a place where people can network with other patients in similar situations.”

As organized labor faces declining membership, one of the United States' most storied unions is looking to a new growth industry: marijuana.

T-Mobile "did not approve" of a company called EZ Texting, which does business with a website, WeedMaps.com, that provides information on the location of legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Today, EZ Texting sued T-Mobile in the U.S. District Court in New York City. EZ Texting says that on Sept. 10th, T-Mobile began "unlawful blocking" of its 313131 text service, which it offers to business and non-profits to help get their message to the public.

Mexico became a manufacturing mecca thanks, in part, to its inexpensive labor and proximity to the massive U.S. market. But there is a new reality on the ground in that country these days: a surge in violence tied to the prohibition-based war on drug traffickers that Mexico's President Felipe Calderon mounted after his election in 2006. The result has been a wave of kidnappings, extortion and murder that is threatening the country's economic health and causing multinationals to examine closely how they operate and invest in Mexico.