After hours and hours spent mastering FarmVille, you’re ready to upgrade from corn and soybeans to a real cash crop: marijuana. Weeds Social Club, a new game for Facebook, lets you grow and sell pot (and potted) plants online.

The game could eventually serve as a testing ground for new characters or stories to be incorporated into the actual show.

Launched on Monday, June 27, to complement the season premiere of Showtime’s Weeds, the game is just the latest brand extension for Hollywood producers who have already mastered action figures, TV shows, DVDs, apparel and more.

“Social games played on Facebook are the new frontier for film and television tie-ins,” according to Businessweek’s Douglas MacMillan. “This summer, two movies — Disney’s Cars 2 and Fox’s Mr. Popper’s Penguins — and a popular Showtime series will attempt build buzz and some extra revenue by featuring their characters in Facebook games.”

Without Jim Carrey’s comic stylings or Pixar’s anthropomorphic four-wheeled friends, though, Weeds is by far the most controversial project we’ve seen enter this space. Showtime — and, like it, HBO — can often get away with racier material because the content they produce is locked behind subscription models and shielded from the eyes of (most) children. While Facebook doesn’t officially allow kids under the age of 13 access to its network, we know there are millions with profiles anyway.

What are they — and the adults who have also been drawn to this extension — learning from their membership in the Weeds Social Club? The game allows users to buy and grow different strains of marijuana — “from downmarket ‘Schwag Weed’ to the pricier and more (virtually) potent ‘Jamaican Ganja,’” according to MacMillan — before harvesting and selling it.

All of the money that players earn selling their weed to a hooded-sweatshirt-wearing figure in the game can be spent on virtual flat-screen televisions, bongs and more. Andy Botwin, a character from the show, which is entering its seventh season, makes an appearance in the game, performing “tasks that correlate with the storyline from the latest TV episode.”

But the game will serve as more than just another way for the Weeds producers to get attention for their show. It could eventually serve as a testing ground for new characters or stories to be incorporated into the actual show, according to Curt Marvis, the president of digital media at Lionsgate,Weeds‘ distributor and producer. “In the social realm it’s a living, breathing experience,” Marvis toldBusinessweek, “one where you get a fan base of engaged users.”

The game was approved by Facebook and doesn’t break any laws, according to Ecko Code, the creators. Ecko Code, a social-game unit of Marc Ecko’s urban fashion empire, is working on creating games for other Showtime shows, including The Borgias and Dexter.

Here's what happened last time Mr. Obama took votes from the public on policy questions...

Once more President Obama wades into the online breach with yet another Facebook Town Hall to solicit questions on policy from the public.  The event takes place on April 20th, a.k.a. 4/20, the unofficial national cannabis holiday, without any sense of irony that these forums have been dominated by marijuana legalization questions every time the public votes on these questions.

(President Obama’s Facebook) WHAT’S HAPPENING
President Barack Obama will hold a special “Facebook Live” townhall to connect with Americans across the country.

WHERE & WHEN IT’S HAPPENING
Where? Well, everywhere! The event at Facebook’s headquarters, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg & COO Sheryl Sandberg, will be live streamed for anyone to watch. Just come back here at the right time: Wednesday, April 20 @ 1:45pm PDT / 4:45pm EDT. Unless invited to attend in person, please do not show up at Facebook HQ. You can watch and participate via the event’s live stream.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT
President Obama will connect with Americans across the country to discuss the tough choices we must all make in order to put our economy on a more responsible fiscal path, while still investing in areas like innovation that will help our economy grow and make America more competitive.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE
Facebook will be selecting questions for President Obama to answer during the event. Submit questions now by posting them right here, on this event’s wall. As an alternative, you may submit a question via WhiteHouse.gov/facebooktownhall.

So how in the world can the president avoid what will surely be voted the number one question once again by the online democracy of Facebook?  Simple… don’t let the public vote.  Scott Morgan from DrugWarChronicle has the scoop:

It had become clear that as long as Obama’s forums allowed the public to vote on topics for the president to address, the top-ranked questions would be about legalizing marijuana or even ending the War on Drugs altogether. Reluctant to confront the issue further, the White House recently changed its approach and announced an April 20, 2011 event on Facebook in which participants will not be allowed to vote at all. Questions can be sent in by email or posted on the Facebook page, but Obama’s staff will make selections without any public input.

The inherently democratic, vote-powered economy of ideas on the Internet has proven to be a remarkably powerful tool for discovering content of social value. The ability to click on what you like is the currency of social media and it offers insights into public opinion that may be worth more than meets the eye. The participatory nature of a vote-driven web forum makes people care about the outcome. Advocates for a wide variety of causes are inspired to spread the word and work to make sure their issue gets votes. The Obama Administration has abandoned the process simply to silence one particular idea, but the effect will be to make the forum less interesting for everyone.

Moreover, the rise of marijuana policy into the realm of mainstream public discussion should fascinate, rather than frustrate, our political leadership. It’s a phenomenon that should at least interest our elected officials, even if they don’t yet fully understand or care that marijuana prohibition funds murder in Mexico, that innocent family pets are slaughtered in botched pot raids, that precious wilderness is being devastated by black-market marijuana manufacturing, that racism defines our marijuana arrest rates, that public servants are being corrupted before our eyes, and that we blow billions each year just to keep the situation as bad as it’s been for so long.

An irony here is about a month ago Facebook refused to take FireDogLake’s ‘Just Say Now’ pro-cannabis law reform ads…blessedly, karma exists.

From Forbes:

Dustin Moskovitz confirmed tonight that he has recently given $50,000 in support of Proposition 19, which is seeking to legalize marijuana in California this November. He had previously donated $20,000 to supporters of the act, which would allow people 21 years old or older to possess, cultivate or transport cannabis for personal use and would permit local governments to  regulate and tax commercial production and sale of the substance. (Update: Dustin explains why he backs Prop 19.)
Not too many other billionaires have come out in favor of legalizing pot but one who has is Peter Lewis, who donated $12,800 to Oregon’s medical marijuana ballot this November, according to my colleague Clare O’Connor. (Read her September post). Lewis, who was arrested for drug possession in New Zealand a decade ago, has been a longtime supporter of the issue; he apparently smoked marijuana for pain relief after his left leg was amputated.

Moskovitz, who is now the America’s youngest billionaire and who is played by actor Joseph Mazzello in the just released Facebook movie “The Social Network,”  had no other comment at this time. Moskovitz left Facebook in 2008 and started Asana, a software company that allows individuals and small companies to better collaborate. The company, which has several of the same early backers as Facebook, lists some of its values as pragmatism, chill-ness and being a mensch. For now, we estimate that his entire $1.4 billion fortune comes from his 6% stake in Facebook.

We have also installed a new sharing service which you can find by clicking Email, Tweet, Post, Share at the bottom of any post.  It will give you options for email, text message, Twitter, Digg, Facebook and just about every other social network and web tagger there is.  Spread the Truth about Marijuana!