As many of you know, I run Hill-3 Investments, a family office that focuses on three verticals: Cannabis, Fitness and Healthcare. What has become very clear to me is that all three of these businesses are now morphing into one. The driving force behind this: the medicinal value of cannabis/CBD and the incredible growth these categories are experiencing and will continue to experience going forward.

Santa Barbara, with its burgeoning cultivation and easy freeway access to the Southern California consumer market, may be positioned to become California’s largest legal cannabis producer.

The proposal to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use was on its way to victory early Wednesday morning, making Michigan the first state in the Midwest to approve legal weed.

Canada is running low on legal pot three weeks after the government approved the use of recreational marijuana, a shortage that is sending some frustrated consumers back to the black market.

So great is the lure of the cannabis industry that it is attracting heavyweights from mainstream industries, congressmen, presidents and prime ministers.

The latest to join the green rush is former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who soon will sit on the board of Acreage Holdings, a multistate marijuana company in the United States.

For years, the marijuana industry has been involved in a kind of arms race toward creating super-potent cannabis products. Looking to provide veteran consumers enhanced highs and more bang for the buck, manufacturers over the past few years have gone full throttle to produce cannabis offerings with greater levels of THC (the psychoactive component in weed that gets users high). But that trend looks to be ebbing, in some respects, as an increasing amount of marijuana retailers across North America position themselves toward lower-dose creations that speak to an expanding mainstream audience.