Higher Education Picks Up Some Cannabis Momentum: Week in Review

More and more, colleges and universities are jumping into the cannabis space and offering some sort of pathway to a new career. This past week, we covered the news out Syracuse University that Green Flower is helping to power a certification program for students interested in the industry.

It’s a sign of normalization, that key word that means so much.

As the wave of cannabis legalization continues, so too will the number of job opportunities continue to rise. And that translates to more businesses helping to propel the cannabis market to a better, more inclusive arena.

We’ve rounded up some of the major cannabis headlines from the week right here.

• Assistant Editor Andriana Ruscitto reports on how “University College at Syracuse University, the academic college of continuing education and professional studies, has partnered with Green Flower, a cannabis education association, to offer four programs where individuals can receive non-credit certificates in Cannabis Education.” Read more 
• “Founded by co-CEOs Michael Horner and Chris Leonard in 2019, Cannavia is vertically integrated and fully owned by its farmer and producer members. It’s pillared to help smaller farms own their brands, build equity and retain the legacy culture that helped create the cannabis space in the first place,” Associate Editor Tony Lange writes in his feature on Cannavia’s recent work. Read more 
• CULTA, in Maryland, launched its tissue culture program this week. “Plant tissue culture is not a hard process to do, but it takes a lot of knowledge and skill to master,” CULTA Tissue Culture Lab Supervisor Isaac Fisher said. Read more 
• “Rural New Mexico will soon be the home to one of the nation’s largest cannabis manufacturing and research facilities, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Bright Green Corp. announced Monday.” Read more 
• Keef Brands announced that Travis Tharp will be taking over as CEO, so we talked with him about where he sees the beverage market segment going. Read more 

And elsewhere on the web, here are the stories we’ve been reading this week:

• Santa Ynez Valley News: “Arguments a community organization has used to challenge Santa Barbara County cannabis cultivation permits suffered a minor blow Tuesday when a Superior Court judge rejected them in a petition for a writ of mandate focused on a Buellton area operation.” Read more 
• GreenState: “Thanks to the legalization of medical marijuana, cannabis-related arrests in Missouri’s state parks have dropped by 60% last year.” Read more 
• Syracuse.com: The recent NY Cannabis Insider Live event featured a number of speakers from New York. “If there was one recurring theme to the entire presentation, it was the importance of the law’s social equity provisions.” Read more 
• WSBT: “Green Stem in Niles, Mich., is aiming to help small businesses by working with them and getting the community involved. It's an initiative to help other businesses and also defeat the stigma surrounding cannabis.” Read more 
• Denver Post: “Workers at two Longmont, Colo., cannabis companies unionized this week, a move the labor organization hopes sets a precedent as the first-ever national union contract for CBD workers.” Read more