Registration has already opened for the Cannabis Law and Business certificate of study, which will officially commence in January 2023. Those accepted will spend six months learning the ins and outs of the New Jersey weed sector, with an emphasis on the stringent and often complicated regulations which prospective business owners need to be familiar with.

“This is the first program that Rutgers Law School has developed to support participants who are not [law] students or legal professionals,” a press release from the university said. “The curriculum has been developed specifically for New Jersey’s legal cannabis industry, making it highly specific to the needs of the local community.”

The program will be mostly online with two in-person sessions and has two certificate options for cultivators and retailers respectively. The entire course can be taken for $2,695 or individual topics of study can be purchased for between $600-$850. A limited number of scholarships may also be available to anyone applying for a cannabis-related social equity business license in New Jersey.

Rutgers Co-Deans Kimberly Mutcherson and Rose Cuison-Villazor said in a joint statement that “This new certificate is exactly the kind of work that we want to be doing as New Jersey’s state law school. Now that the state legislature has legalized the cannabis industry here, we want to ensure that we can provide crucial information to the citizens of New Jersey who want to enter this business, especially those from communities that traditionally bore the brunt of punitive outcomes before legalization.”

The six available class modules are as follows:

1. Fundamentals of cannabis regulation in New Jersey – The history of legal marijuana in New Jersey with an emphasis on the CREAMM Act
2. Regulatory compliance – Protecting your license by running a compliant cannabis business
3. Cannabis business operations – Banking, branding, licensing, and more
4. Locations and local government – A big challenge in New Jersey specifically where 70% of local municipalities initially opted out of allowing recreational marijuana
5. Retail or Cultivation – Students choose one or the other depending on what kind of business they want to open
6. Capstone project – A final project such as a business plan or an investor pitch with feedback from expert faculty

The announcement from Rutgers comes on the heels of New Jersey’s recreational cannabis market opening its doors in April, amid heavy speculation and concern surrounding the availability of product. However, other than some long lines, no one has reported running out of cannabis yet. That said, many in New Jersey have said that between licensing holdups, high property costs, and stringent zoning laws, New Jersey is not an easy place to open a cannabis business to say the least.

Rutgers is the latest in a relatively small number of universities that have elected to add cannabis studies of some kind to their class offerings. Though most cannabis-related college programs are either certificate-based or minor degrees; Cal Poly Humboldt, CSU Pueblo, and Lake Superior State University remain some of the few to create 4-year BA programs with the word cannabis in the title.

Not to be an ass or anything, but I feel obligated to disclose here that cannabis is still entirely prohibited from Rutgers University property due to its continued federal illegality, despite being legal for adult-use in New Jersey. To register for the program, click here.

The post Rutgers Law School Adds Cannabis Law, Business Certificate for 2023 appeared first on High Times.

The post Rutgers Law School Adds Cannabis Law, Business Certificate for 2023 appeared first on Paradise Found.

A new study conducted by Rutgers University in New Jersey compiles data on cannabis consumption in relation to gender, age, and race.

On February 14, Rutgers New Jersey State Policy Lab released a public study that examined various cannabis consumption trends of state residents. Entitled “Cannabis Legalization in New Jersey: A Baseline Study,” this nearly 100-page document spans a wide variety of observations.

“In this report, we examine education, health, and law enforcement factors as they relate to youth and adults with respect to marijuana usage directly and indirectly. That is, we include variables that could be impacted by the legalization of recreational marijuana,” the study states in its executive summary. Although it claims to be the first study of its kind in New Jersey, it also points out that other states with more mature cannabis legalization industries produce similar data on an annual basis. It also shares that the data was pulled from multiple secondary sources, and cautions readers when considering the presented information.

One of the study’s key findings includes the breakdown of consumption by sex and age. The overall percentage of men (45.2 percent in New Jersey) and women (35.8 percent in New Jersey, and 39.6 percent in the US) who consume cannabis is slightly lower than the national average (48.6 percent and 39.6 percent respectively), according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Data Archives 2021. Between 2016-2019, data also reflects that the male/female breakdown was divided by 49.3 percent and 50.7 percent.

In terms of age ranges between 2016-2019, data showed that consumption for adults over age 26 increased, whereas usage decreased for the 18-25 age range. Youth consumption, including anyone between 12-17 years of age, also rose between 2017-2019 (about 70,000-78,000 individuals), which matched the overall national average.

According to Dean of Rutgers University-Newark School of Public Affairs and Administration Charles Menifield, one of the main goals of the study is also to identify if the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance and Marketplace Modernization Act is being followed effectively. “This report is critical to New Jersey setting a model similar to other states in recognizing that all people in the state are not the same, and by legalizing cannabis, its impact on different communities is going to vary,” Menifield said. “[People] should care about this study because it’s going to have ramifications on healthcare outcomes, educational outcomes, and public safety.”

Menifield also shared that this data, as well as information gathered in the future, could help Rutgers University better understand the effects of cannabis consumption on students. “The argument we are making is that graduation rates could change based on cannabis use,” said Menifield. “If students start smoking and selling marijuana, they may drop out. Then the question becomes, who is dropping out? Where do they live? What city are they in? What county are they in? What’s their race? What’s the income level of their parents? So in order to ameliorate those situations, you need to know all of that other information.”

Additionally, Vandeen Campbell, assistant research professor with the Rutgers-Newark Department of Urban Education and Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, explained that study should start now so that the data can be examined as the cannabis industry matures. “The disparities in exclusionary discipline practices are really important to highlight for students of color,” said Vandeen Campbell, an assistant research professor with the Rutgers-Newark Department of Urban Education and Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, who also worked on the study. “We don’t know if legalization will be related to these rates in any way—we’ll have to study it—but that is certainly something that needs to be changed and needs to be monitored.”

The post Rutgers University Report Examines Cannabis Consumption Data appeared first on High Times.

The post Rutgers University Report Examines Cannabis Consumption Data appeared first on Paradise Found.