Last week, Bellarmine University announced its new cannabis certification program.

It comes as the Commonwealth readies itself for legalized medical marijuana.

Although a bill legalizing medical marijuana in Kentucky was passed earlier this year, it doesn't go into effect until 2025.

The bill sets up a structure for regulating the medical cannabis program, including rules for cultivators, processors and dispensaries.

37 states now allow cannabis for medical use.

The cannabis industry is pretty complex and it requires a real level of specialized knowledge and understanding to be able to navigate and succeed in this space.

And so it's challenging.

It requires a lot of customization and it requires a lot of nuance.

Green flower partners with universities across the country to power their cannabis certificate programs and workforce development initiatives.

We have been looking for a university in the state for a long time, and through lots of vetting we were able to connect with Bellarmine.

Last week launched our cannabis education partnership with Green Flower, which is a national company that is a supplier of a cannabis education curriculum.

There's four different Noncredit certificate programs.

The first is for health care and medicine.

The second is for agriculture.

The third is for risk management and noncompliance.

And the fourth is for business.

So the first one is going to aim to educate our health care systems, our nurses, our doctors, our therapists.

There is very little cannabis education that they receive in their schooling.

And so now with the turnaround of being able to prescribe, having people coming in that they're having to treat, it's going to educate them on that side of things.

The agriculture is just what it would sound like in our region.

We're a huge farming region, so it's going to be the actual process of what the what it will look like to turn a farm into a cannabis farm.

Kentucky is an amazing agriculture powerhouse and cannabis is an industry backed by growing this plant.

The short answer is that it generates in pure medical markets hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

It generates thousands of jobs.

It allows for hundreds of thousands of patients to get access to a product that is natural and safer and in many cases healthier than their alternatives.

And it creates an all new industry where people can participate as entrepreneurs, as employment, and as patients and customers.

Noncompliance and risk management is going to be for our professionals, legal teams, different things like that that are having to both prepare businesses that may be turning into cannabis dispensaries or preparing your own business to come up with policies and different things for your employees.

And then the business certificate will be running a dispensary or cannabis business.

We've already had a great number of sign ups.

Our inquiries and leads are well over a thousand people at this point.

So we're really excited and hoping we can have a great class to start out our first cohort in January.

To see Kentucky moving forward with medical cannabis legislation to see Bellingham in offering cannabis education programs.

I think it's a really sign of the times that opinion and stigma is shifting and opportunity is coming.