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San Diego’s Legal Cannabis Institute Leads the Way in Training for the Medical Marijuana Industry
“Somewhere between band camp and Princeton,” is how Nicole Scott described her team’s early efforts at assembling experts and professionals to create San Diego’s first and only medical marijuana school, the Legal Cannabis Institute, or LCI. “We moved very rapidly beyond band camp,” she said. “We’re not aiming to be Princeton or anything like that either,” notes Scott, “LCI is essentially a trade school by and for our students. The students are the ones who really drive the classes both in the sense of that we offer and in the enthusiasm they bring to learning what they need to know to work in the medical marijuana industry,” said Scott.
In addition to legal issues and collective courses taught by experienced lawyers and beginning-to-master hydroponic grow classes and workshops, LCI has recently added courses on cooking with cannabis and classes for patients, caregivers and dispensary workers taught by medical professionals.
A visit to LCI’s Medical Marijuana Law class showed a level of enthusiasm for learning the legal pitfalls and how to avoid them in this still-emerging and uncertain area. “We teach the law as it applies or as we think it would apply at this moment,” said San Diego attorney and medical marijuana law expert Roger D. Brown, “but more importantly, we try very hard to develop the concepts and the forces that are driving the law. Our aim is to teach students how and where to find the rules that affect them and to give them the resources to stay current.” According to Brown, the exchange of knowledge moves both ways. “I am always impressed at the level of questions students bring – many have clearly thought deeply about the issues which makes for a lively and enlightening learning environment.”
In addition to Brown’s 101-level law class, LCI offers lawyer-taught classes on how to avoid and how to deal with law enforcement encounters and how to open a dispensary or start a delivery service.
LCI instructor and registered Nurse Leslie Warner has developed LCI’s dosing class for patients, caregivers and dispensary workers. “This information is extremely important for any medicine,” says Warner, “and doctors are silent when it comes to recommending appropriate doses, not necessarily because they have no opinion, but because the California Medical Association advises physicians not to discuss dosing. It has to do with the whole federal ban on marijuana,” explained Warner, “but patients, caregivers and anybody who works with them really need and benefit from the practical knowledge we have gathered.”
Scott, the LCI founder, has endured attacks on marijuana’s legitimacy as medicine and has heard all the jokes about bringing “higher” education to San Diego. “Yes, we can have fun with it,” she said, “but this is a dead serious issue to patients whose access to medicine is continually under threat. Our long-term vision really sums it up: We envision a world in which Cannabis is readily accessible and socially supported.
Student by student, class by class, until its vision is reality, LCI clearly intends to work with passion and purpose to achieve it, and – judging from comments like those of recent graduate Stacy O. – appears to be succeeding: “Loved the medical marijuana classes. Ready to start my collective. Feel empowered. Thank you!” “That’s exactly why we’re here,” said Nicole Scott, “passing on that feeling of empowerment is what this school is all about.”
© 2010 Legal Cannabis Institute
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