EDITOR’S NOTE: On Oct. 2, NJ Cannabis Insider hosts its fall live event at the New Jersey Convention & Expo Center, featuring leaders in the medical marijuana and legal cannabis industries. Tickets are limited.
Friday looked like an ordinary morning at Stockton University, the campus abuzz with job-hungry students and prospective employers handing out information.
But those marijuana leafs plastered on the banners and pamphlets showed this wasn’t your average career fair.
It was an event for students seeking internships and jobs in the burgeoning field of cannabis, drawing medical and business professionals, marijuana or hemp growers and more.
Illicit just a few years ago, marijuana is an industry that’s already created some 220,000 jobs nationwide, with the potential to employ more than 40,000 in New Jersey once weed is legalized. Medical marijuana is legal, and the program is getting bigger.
This wasn’t Stockton’s first foray into cannabis: The university launched a minor in cannabis studies last fall with 25 students. This year, enrollment doubled. The students come from a variety of majors, and Stockton hopes to place them in both in dispensaries and ancillary businesses, based on their interests.
The program is one of just a few in the country offering students a designated, legitimate route into the industry. To further that goal, Stockton held its first Cannabis Fair and Business Expo in partnership with The New Jersey CannaBusiness Association Friday. Some students and outside job seekers had registered to attend.
“People think of cannabis industry as just growing (marijuana),” said Ekaterina Sedia, the minor coordinator and a professor of biology. “People can get involved in this industry in many different ways."
Allison Reid, 20, a junior from West Milford, created her own holistic medicine major with a minor in cannabis. She began using marijuana as a young teenager to relieve menstrual pain, and realized she could use that knowledge to help others.
Reid was in search of an internship Friday morning. She said she is interested in the safest way to use cannabis medically and wants to work in growing, cultivation or research.
“It could benefit a lot of people," she said. “I was very happy they started the cannabis minor.”
The career fair included vendors and employees, as well as workshops on the state’s medicinal marijuana program, the role of nurses in cannabis, cultivation, labor issues and how cannabis businesses can grow in their communities through good relations and social equity. Big companies like Curaleaf had set up shop, as well as equity organizations like Women Grow.
Shannon Glover, a 19-year-old freshman, said he came mostly to learn about the variety of opportunities. A business major with a concentration in marketing and minor in cannabis, he knows the stigma firsthand. Toward the end of his senior year in high school, the Delran teen was arrested for a marijuana offense, he said.
But he took that experience and put it to work, founding Exhale and Chill. His website currently sells branded sweatshirts and seeks to educate people about cannabis. Glover said he hopes to grow the business with legalization, and also wants to open a dispensary that hires people those previously arrested for marijuana offenses.
With legalization in limbo, Glover wanted to know how he could act, and asked keynote speaker state Sen. Troy Singleton, D-Burlington, what role a young person can play to further the agenda.
“Most adults will probably still sit there and say, this kid doesn’t know what he’s talking about," Singleton said.
But he encouraged Glover to keep educating those around him about the benefits of cannabis. Some, he said, will listen, and may change their minds.
“Too often, the stigma that is associated with cannabis especially has made it difficult to have an honest, rational, reasonable conversation about what it is we can do going forward,” Singleton said.
“It is critically important that your voices are heard," he said.
Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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