CANNABIS IN COLLEGE
The Higher Education
of Cannabis
CANNABIS IN COLLEGE
WITH RECENT changes in the legality
of marijuana in general, it should come
as no surprise that there are new career
opportunities opening up right and left.
Right along with the new industries and
new careers will be the need for knowledge
to support those industries and jobs up.
The growing demand for medical marijuana
brings along with it a growing demand for
individuals who are qualified to dispense
it, run the businesses who handle it, and
better inform patients who have questions
or concerns about it.
Until now, since marijuana has been illegal
in the United States, research was not being
performed on it for medicinal purposes or,
really, for any purposes at all. This led to a
significant lag behind some other countries
and something of a dark age regarding the
plant. Without the ability to do research,
how could anyone prove how helpful it
could be in order to enact new legislation?
Almost half of the fifty US states have now
recognized therapeutic uses for marijuana,
including the District of Columbia. It has
been a long road, but the end of that road
is coming up fast, and people need to be
prepared for it when it gets here.
Students and researchers used to be
able to take certain classes in college,
such as the study of medicinal plants or
ethnobotanical classes, in order to learn
how natives and other cultures utilized
various plants in their daily lives. Now,
entire programs are being developed
based solely on the study of medicinal
plants. At Northern Michigan University,
for example, medicinal plant chemistry
is now being offered up as a major. This
is an attractive option for high school
graduates, businesspeople, and others
who see the value in the “green rush” which
is fast approaching.
Putting It in Perspective
Many people, even those working in
related industries, don’t realize that many
of the medicines and pharmaceutical
products that people use in their daily
lives are completely derived from plants.
That idea is the focus of medicinal plant
chemistry. While marijuana can be, and
is, a focus in some of the classes, it is not
the entire focus. Even when it is placed
in the spotlight, according to Professor
Mark Paulsen, what is being studied is “the
scientific underpinning of how medicinal
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plants work, and how you would prepare
a medicinal plant to be delivered to a
patient.”
If you are wondering how popular such
a program is, let me put it in perspective
for you: there were forty-seven students
enrolled in the winter program. For the
fall program of 2018, there are over
700 applications. The popularity is
unprecedented at the University and
speaks to not only the value of the
knowledge being provided, but also the
enormous dearth of information currently
available to the public and even to many
industry insiders.
The four-year degree is composed of
120 credit hours for students who will be
required to take courses in, among other
things, the following:
• chemical equilibrium
• plant physiology
• entrepreneurialism
• organic chemistry
The point of the program is to prepare
individuals to start their own medicinal
businesses, and it’s drawing interest from
states far-flung from Michigan, where the
program is based. Students can focus on