A year after selling Hip Chick Farms, their multimillion-dollar natural foods company, two Bay Area lesbians moved to a 10-acre lavender farm in Oregon to build what they hope will be their next successful startup: a CBD snack business.

This year marks the 10th annual Bay Area Reporter readers' poll, the Besties, and voting begins Thursday, January 30.

Despite the rollout of new products and retail outlets, both cannabis consumers and sellers are expected to face a difficult year in 2020.

A married gay couple on Tuesday received the first business permit for equity applicants by San Francisco's Office of Cannabis for their soon-to-open Castro cannabis retail store, Eureka Sky. They plan to soft open after Christmas.

From $5 stocking stuffer socks to $175 edible-making machines, you'll have no trouble finding gifts for the cannabis aficionado in your life this holiday season.

It's more than an hour away from San Francisco and tickets start at $100, but cannabis aficionados shouldn't miss the Emerald Cup, the longest running sun-grown contest, celebration, and farmers market in the world, according to its website.

Cannabis activists were elated after Governor Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed Senate Bill 34, the Dennis Peron and Brownie Mary Act, which exempts compassionate cannabis programs from state cannabis taxes.

State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and more than a dozen cannabis activists urged Governor Gavin Newsom to sign Senate Bill 34, which will make it possible for indigent patients to receive free cannabis.

San Francisco could have several new LGBT-owned cannabis businesses, if the applicants for new companies make it through the city's lengthy, expensive, and complicated approval process.

A free four-day conference to help people of color, queers, and women navigate opportunities in the cannabis industry, "Weed the People," will be held August 1-4 at the African American Art and Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street in San Francisco.

With almost 200 applications for licenses to open retail cannabis businesses now in the pipeline in San Francisco, a flood of new jobs is expected to make it easier to break into the burgeoning bud industry.

Two new cannabis retail stores have been approved by the San Francisco Planning Commission, including one in the Castro that will be owned in part by two gay men.

More than 100 people crowded into the Castro's Flore on Market recently, anxious to shake hands with Marisa Rodriguez, the newly appointed director of the city's Office of Cannabis.

Attention: Cannabis shoppers.