By Walsh's estimate, the legal marijuana business had sales of about $3 billion last year, and that could soar to $8 billion by 2018 as more and more states approve both medical and recreational use.

Using trickle down economics — famously backed by President Ronald Reagan — the entire value of the market was $10 billion to $11 billion last year, Walsh estimated. And that figure could grow to $25 billion to $30 billion by 2018.

Plastic packaging, while just a component of the industry, appears to be ready to benefit from that growth. “If packaging accounts for a fraction of that, it's a huge market still,” Walsh said. Estimates from Marijuana Business Daily put the value of about $15 million last year. “That will probably grow by leaps and bounds over the next couple of years.”

Marinac sees the market and agrees: “This is a very hot product that is out there. Whether you agree with it or not, that doesn't matter. There is a serious market that is out there that wants packaging, whether it's pure marijuana or edibles.”

He equated marijuana packaging to coffee bags, which have to seal in odors while also protecting the product from moisture.

“We see this as a potential serious growth market. We see this with a considerable amount of potential out there. Goodness gracious,” Marinac said.

Advances in plastic marijuana packaging are helping retailers and growers build particular brands thanks to customization.

Packaging also is moving toward single-serve portions for some edible products, a move that helps consumers regulate their intake.

“In the past, you might have bought a chocolate bar and you would only eat a piece of it. But you would have people were eating half of it and didn't know better and couldn't move for five hours,” Walsh said. “The packaging market is one of the main growth areas of the ancillary side of this industry.”

Kush just went public at the beginning of 2016 and trades under the stock symbol KSHB on the OTC market. The company, in January, reported quarterly sales of $1.72 million for the three months ended Nov. 30. That's a steep increase from the $620,000 in sales for the same quarter a year before.

The Kush CEO said the goal in becoming a public company is to access investors interested in helping the company expand and grow.

“That's our next push, going out there, knocking on doors and figuring out who is going to be our capital fundraising partners moving forward,” he said. “Take some capital into the company, use that capital to grow, invest that capital into new products. Invest back into development.”

Kush chiefly relies on outside suppliers for its lineup of products, but uses JB Plastics Inc. of Irvine, Calif., to manufacture its own patented, injection molded plastic joint and blunt tubes.

For the uninitiated, a joint is a smaller marijuana cigarette while a blunt is a hollowed out cigar that's then filled with marijuana.

JB Plastics manufactures a range of bird repellant products for its sister company, Bird-B-Gone Inc., but owner Bruce Donoho seeks outside work as well.

“There's capacity in our plant, so we're always looking for a nice mix of both propriety products and contract work,” he said.

“We've been working with Kush for about two years now,” he said. “It's classified out here as medicine. So I think there's a lot of good therapeutic properties behind it. For a number of reasons it gets a bad rap. Quite frankly, I think that alcohol is a lot worse than marijuana,” Donoho said.

“Our motto since 2000 is ‘if you can dream it, we can make it.' We lend ourselves to a lot of entrepreneurs. So we see a lot of entrepreneurs and believe in giving those types of people an audience. It's worked well for us over the years,” Donoho said.

“I see that there's so many more people who want to buy America vs. Chinese for a myriad of reasons. That really serves us well, being made in America,” Donoho said.

Kovacevich hopes to use investors' money to develop more exclusive designs and products. “That's what we're all about, and it takes capital to do that,” he said.

These kinds of innovations will help companies build their brands, Kovacevich said.

“People are now open to the idea of getting into custom solutions. We have to focus on compliance, because that's No. 1, we need to have compliant packaging. But sometimes compliant packaging comes at the cost of building a brand,” he said. “We can help them build their brand along with helping them operate compliantly.”

Kush, itself, didn't have to look too far for its own branding, its CEO said.

“Kush Bottles is a name that we came up with because it has a nice ring to it. Kush is a very potent form of marijuana,” Kovacevich said. “Kush is a well-known term within the industry. But outside the industry, it's also something that people who are involved or aren't familiar with the industry may not know, may not make the connection. Which we thought was cool because it felt like more of an insiders club.”