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When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, Koryn Boyd was living in the Terrebonne/Lafourche parishes area.
“I was 11 years old at the time, going on 12, and I still experience a lot of (post-traumatic stress disorder) from that,” said Boyd, who started using medical cannabis in college. “It helped out a lot.”
In addition to the PTSD, Boyd uses medical cannabis to help with depression symptoms, migraines and side effects from medications they take. The cannabis usage sparked an interest in the medical cannabis industry.
In 2023, LSU launched an online cannabis program with Green Flower to educate students about the intricacies of the industry, and Boyd, now living in Virginia, registered and completed the program. But with tight regulations on medical cannabis growing licenses in Louisiana, graduates of the program are moving elsewhere for jobs within the industry or leaving it all together.
LSU’s online program has five different tracks for students to choose from: Cannabis Healthcare and Medicine, Cannabis Agriculture and Horticulture, Business of Cannabis, Cannabis Compliance and Risk Management and Cannabis Product Development and Design. Courses are self-paced but scheduled to run 24 weeks and billed starting at $499 per month.
Thus far, LSU has awarded 267 certificates to 245 students. Currently, there are 89 students in the program.
Like Boyd, LSU online students are not necessarily in state. According to Max Simon — CEO and founder of Green Flower, the California company that provides the curriculum for LSU’s online certificate program — that’s part of the beauty of the program. Louisiana doesn’t have a high concentration of cannabis experts who could teach these classes locally, Simon said, and his company seeks to bridge this gap.
“We can basically go to them (leading cannabis experts) wherever they are around the world, and bring their knowledge to people wherever they are,” he said. “It also allows you to get the best of the best brought to you, and online education is exponentially more affordable than most in-person training.”
Some people take the class and learn to make edibles or how to care for and grow cannabis plants. Others, he said, are medical professionals who take the class in order to provide more accurate information about medical cannabis to their patients.
According to Kevin Caldwell, southeast legislative manager for the Marijuana Policy Project, a group that works toward the legalization of cannabis, Louisiana was an early adopter for medical cannabis legalization. The state’s strict regulation surrounding regulating the cannabis industry has led to a stagnant market. Louisiana has only issued two licenses — one to LSU and the other to Southern University — to grow cannabis in the state.
“I think that is all that the legislature was comfortable with at the time, and they wanted to make sure that they could tightly oversee this industry,” he said.
At the same time, neighboring states that legalized medical cannabis after Louisiana have fewer restrictions and more licenses, which translates to more facilities, more competition and more jobs in the industry. As of September 2023, Mississippi has licensed 121 facilities.
“They’re getting the economic benefits of allowing a more free-market approach, which also benefits the patients as well, with a variety of products as well as competitive pricing,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell is glad that LSU is taking steps to expand into one of the fastest growing industries in the country, but given the state’s political climate, there are practical implications for training people in an industry that is so restricted.
“Quite simply, there really is not a lot of opportunity for people that want to get into the legal cannabis industry here in Louisiana,” he said. “I do find it strange that LSU is training people to leave our state. We have been hemorrhaging people out of Louisiana for a long time. It makes perfect sense if we were going to look at expanding the cannabis industry in Louisiana, but it does not appear right now that our current governor has any interest in expanding access to cannabis.”
A competitive industry
Former student of the program Jailen “Jai” Jordan completed his certificate in cannabis compliance and risk management earlier this year. These days, he’s running his cannabis business, Squad Packs, which is based in California. He’s from Baton Rouge and wants to eventually relocate his business here.
“I want to be able to bring all of that back to Louisiana when we are finally able to have licensing and opening up and be able to create opportunities for people who necessarily don’t have these opportunities,” he said. “In Louisiana, I feel like I could be ahead of the game.”
But Jordan, who has been in the industry since 2019, doesn’t necessarily see an opportunity to do so, at least not with current laws. He has run into legal trouble in Louisiana before with cannabis, and after completing his program, he contacted a facility in Louisiana but never got a call back.
“It’s very competitive out here, because it’s all a money game,” he said. He said that he thinks others in the industry perceive him as competition instead of a potential asset.
Jordan is currently back in Louisiana to finish his agriculture business degree at Southern University, while remotely working for his company in California and traveling back and forth. If nothing changes by the time he graduates next year and he’s not able to get licensed in the state of Louisiana for his cannabis business, he’s moving back to California.
“Louisiana pushes their talent out,” he said, “because they don’t allow us to grow here.”
Moving isn’t a silver bullet
One of the reasons Boyd, the other LSU online program student, left the state was because of the lack of job opportunities, especially in the cannabis industry.
Boyd was working in a cannabis facility in Virginia as a processing and packaging technician before taking the cannabis horticulture and cultivation program. After finishing it, they were able to transfer into the cultivation and vegetation department, but they’re currently unemployed and looking into other industries to transfer into.
Boyd doesn’t regret doing the program, but even though Virginia allows medical cannabis users to grow their own cannabis at home, Boyd doesn’t grow cannabis anymore.
“I still have all of my stuff, but electricity is expensive,” Boyd said.
Despite some negative experiences within the industry, Boyd still believes in the potential of cannabis to make a difference in people’s lives.
“Cannabis can do a lot more from Louisiana than people think,” said Boyd.
Aside from helping people with communal trauma from hurricanes, they said, hemp products could be used to replace sandbags and other things Louisiana residents are making out of plastic.
“If the politics of Louisiana get better,” Boyd said, “especially in the cannabis industry, then maybe there might be a chance for me to want to move back.”
Paths forward
To keep people in the state, said Caldwell, policies would have to change.
According to Caldwell, it’s not a public stigma problem. Polling consistently finds that upward of 67% of Louisianians support relaxing marijuana laws.
Louisiana’s lack of transparency with how many people work in the industry and how many people are using cannabis — especially compared to neighboring states’ clarity on the tax benefits of the cannabis industry — appears to be a stumbling block for the industry’s growth. Caldwell estimates that the illicit marketplace in the state is somewhere in the range of a billion dollars a year.
“Louisiana has chosen not to move forward in trying to bring all those people above board,” he said. “I think that’s what’s going to be necessary to keep people who graduate from this program in the state of Louisiana.”
“}]] When Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit, Koryn Boyd was living in the Terrebonne/Lafourche parishes area. Read More
