New Jersey

Higher Education: Colleges Add Cannabis Programs to the Curriculum

A recent study predicts the cannabis industry could support 467,000 jobs by 2022.

What to Know

  • Colleges are adding courses to prepare graduates for careers cultivating, researching, analyzing, and marketing cannabis.
  • Some states where recreational marijuana remains illegal, including New York and New Jersey, colleges have launched cannabis programs.
  • Marijuana is currently legal for medical purposes in 33 states and as a recreational drug in 10.

Grace DeNoya is used to getting snickers when people learn she's majoring in marijuana.

"My friends make good-natured jokes about getting a degree in weed," said DeNoya, one of the first students in a new four-year degree program in medicinal plant chemistry at Northern Michigan University. "I say, 'No, it's a serious degree, a chemistry degree first and foremost. It's hard work. Organic chemistry is a bear.'"

As a green gold rush in legal marijuana and its non-drug cousin hemp spreads across North America, a growing number of colleges are adding cannabis to the curriculum to prepare graduates for careers cultivating, researching, analyzing and marketing the herb.

Research shows there are high times ahead for all kinds of careers in cannabis, ranging from greenhouse and dispensary operators to edible product developers, marketing specialists, quality assurance lab directors and pharmaceutical researchers. Arcview Market Research, which focuses on cannabis industry trends, projects the industry will support 467,000 jobs by 2022.

And even in states where recreational marijuana remains illegal, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, some colleges have launched cannabis studies programs in anticipation of legalization or to prepare students for jobs in other states.

The expected boom in cannabis-related jobs has colleges responding with a range of offerings.

In New Jersey, Stockton University started an interdisciplinary cannabis minor last fall and recently forged an academic partnership with Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia that gives students the opportunity for internships and research work in medical marijuana and hemp.

"Most of the students are interested in novel business opportunities," said Kathy Sedia, coordinator of the cannabis minor at Stockton.

Cannabis businesses range from medical and recreational marijuana to foods, fabrics and myriad other products derived from industrial hemp. The basis for all is the cannabis sativa plant. Marijuana is produced by varieties with high levels of THC, the chemical compound that makes people high. Hemp has only a trace of THC, but produces cannabidiol, or CBD, used in a broad range of nutritional and therapeutic products that are all the rage right now.

Marijuana is legal for medical purposes in 33 states and as a recreational drug in 10. While marijuana remains illegal federally, the 2018 Farm bill cleared the way for widespread cultivation of hemp.

Colorado State University offers a cannabis studies minor focusing on social, legal, political and health impacts. Ohio State University, Harvard, the University of Denver and Vanderbilt offer classes on marijuana policy and law.

Universities have done little research on marijuana because of federal restrictions, but that's starting to change. UCLA's Cannabis Research Initiative, which bills itself as one of the first academic programs in the world dedicated to the study of cannabis, has studies underway ranging from medical treatments to economic impacts.

Agricultural schools are also getting in on the action. The University of Connecticut is launching a cannabis horticulture program this spring.

"We're following the market," said Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins, an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Morrisville, a college in rural central New York that's launching a new minor in cannabis studies in its horticulture department this year. Students work with hemp and other plants rather than marijuana, but can take internships at medical marijuana facilities, Jenkins said.

Copyright AP - Associated Press
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