This goes way beyond growing a few pot plants in your dorm room closet.
Morrisville State College is planning to offer a minor in the “cannabis industry” starting in the fall of 2019. The focus will be to prepare students for jobs in the rapidly growing (and increasingly legal) medicinal and recreational marijuana business, according to Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins, an associate professor of agricultural science.
Legal marijuana, and legal marijuana taxes, could be coming to New York
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says recreational weed use could generate about $300 million new state revenues
The minor program, which would be open to four-year agriculture and horticulture majors, could begin in the fall on 2019, Gilbert Jenkins said. The program still needs final approval from the college administration.
The announcement of the plan coincides with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent call for adult recreational marijuana to be legalized in New York state. If that’s approved by lawmakers, New York would join ten other states, and the District of Columbia, in allowing recreational marijuana. (More than half the states, including New York, allow marijuana use for medicinal purposes).
But Gilbert Jenkins said the idea was in the works before Cuomo’s announcement. “This (the minor) would have happened anyway,” Gilbert Jenkins said. Cuomo’s call for legalization, she said, “just gives it another kick in the butt."
Even if marijuana were to remain illegal in New York, she said, there is enough interest and growth in the cannabis industry around the country for students to find jobs. The cannabis industry is currently enjoying larges jolts of private investment.
The cannabis minor would build on an industrial hemp research program already underway at Morrisville. That three-year-old program include a pilot field of industrial hemp grown on an organic farm in Eaton, Madison County.
Although industrial hemp is related to marijuana, and is cultivated much the same, it contains far less THC, the psychoactive compound that creates the marijuana “high.”
“We’ve grown hemp for three years, so we have some experience and research in testing the cultivation and production techniques,” Gilbert Jenkins said. “What we’re learning is applicable to cannabis production.”
The minor sequence would include coursework and cultivation, production and business.
“There are very few people who have the production skills,” Gilbert Jenkins said. "The benefit of having this degree is coming away the business skills needed to craft new products, and knowing how to produce it more efficiently -- knowing how to do it better."This goes way beyond growing a few pot plants in your dorm room closet.
Morrisville State College is planning to offer a minor in the “cannabis industry” starting in the fall of 2019. The focus will be to prepare students for jobs in the rapidly growing (and increasingly legal) medicinal and recreational marijuana business, according to Jennifer Gilbert Jenkins, an associate professor of agricultural science.
Legal marijuana, and legal marijuana taxes, could be coming to New York
Gov. Andrew Cuomo says recreational weed use could generate about $300 million new state revenues
The minor program, which would be open to four-year agriculture and horticulture majors, could begin in the fall on 2019, Gilbert Jenkins said. The program still needs final approval from the college administration.
The announcement of the plan coincides with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent call for adult recreational marijuana to be legalized in New York state. If that’s approved by lawmakers, New York would join ten other states, and the District of Columbia, in allowing recreational marijuana. (More than half the states, including New York, allow marijuana use for medicinal purposes).
But Gilbert Jenkins said the idea was in the works before Cuomo’s announcement. “This (the minor) would have happened anyway,” Gilbert Jenkins said. Cuomo’s call for legalization, she said, “just gives it another kick in the butt."
Even if marijuana were to remain illegal in New York, she said, there is enough interest and growth in the cannabis industry around the country for students to find jobs. The cannabis industry is currently enjoying larges jolts of private investment.
The cannabis minor would build on an industrial hemp research program already underway at Morrisville. That three-year-old program include a pilot field of industrial hemp grown on an organic farm in Eaton, Madison County.
Although industrial hemp is related to marijuana, and is cultivated much the same, it contains far less THC, the psychoactive compound that creates the marijuana “high.”
“We’ve grown hemp for three years, so we have some experience and research in testing the cultivation and production techniques,” Gilbert Jenkins said. “What we’re learning is applicable to cannabis production.”
The minor sequence would include coursework and cultivation, production and business.
“There are very few people who have the production skills,” Gilbert Jenkins said. "The benefit of having this degree is coming away the business skills needed to craft new products, and knowing how to produce it more efficiently -- knowing how to do it better."
Creating a minor sequence would give cannabis production some credibility that years of underground marijuana cultivation -- much if it by college students -- has never had, Gilbert Jenkins said. (Morrisville has a similar idea when it comes to beer, offering a 4-year degree in brewing.)
“Just like growing a few flowers in your dorm room doesn’t make you an expert in running a greenhouse, a few pot plants doesn’t make you an expert in cannabis production,” she said. “We’re raising this to the level of an honorable profession, rather than a back door, illegal thing.”