For those trying to break into the burgeoning medical cannabis industry, there’s a lot to learn about laws, sales, and the daily ins-and-outs of building a business.
Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences has consolidated some of that knowledge into a new MBA track, which the school says is a first of its kind.
The program arose, in part, from a recent meeting of CannaGather, a community of entrepreneurs and other professionals in the cannabis industry, where conversation turned to the lack of options for specialized business training. Many people running dispensaries or grower-processors were learning through informal networking, or trial and error on the job.
At that gathering was Andrew Peterson, executive director of the Substance Use Disorders Institute at University of the Sciences. He had heard similar things before, from health care practitioners who took USciences’ existing certification course for becoming a medical cannabis recommender or dispenser in Pennsylvania.
“Some of the pharmacists, they thought they would be just dispensing cannabis,” he said. “But once they get in there, they realize they are now managers of personnel, supply chain managers, they’ve got to detail with security — and all those business things that they didn’t realize.”