Cannabis compliance can get a bit complex for business owners and employees who just want to make sure they are in good standing.
With that in mind, the University of New Mexico is launching a new cannabis program focused on cannabis compliance and risk management in partnership with California-based Green Flower. The program, which is being rolled out through UNM Continuing Education, begins on Nov. 7 and spans six months.
The program — which provides an overview of federal and state cannabis regulations, track-and-trace systems and navigating changing regulatory requirements — is entirely online.
Max Simon, the CEO of Green Flower, said the program offering for cannabis compliance and risk management might be the most important one the company has offered to date.
“There’s often a dirty secret in the cannabis industry that people think they’re in the cannabis business,” Simon told the Journal, “but they’re actually in the compliance business because the compliance requirements to operate a legal cannabis business are very heavy handed.”
Simon said the company has long partnered with universities on offering cannabis-focused programs and courses. In fact, Green Flower announced its partnership with UNM last September, just a few months after the Cannabis Regulation Act was signed into law.
The initial partnership between UNM and Green Flower included four cannabis offerings — the Business of Cannabis, Cannabis Agriculture and Horticulture, Cannabis Law and Policy and Cannabis Health Care and Medicine.
The new program being offered has replaced the previous cannabis program that focused on law and policy, which Simon says was “more geared towards legal professionals” and not “towards people looking to play a leadership or a management role within a cannabis company.”
Simon said the new program will largely cover three key focus areas: a compliance and risk management overview; helping create a risk assessment framework; and developing a risk mitigation plan.
While the new and old programs are being offered through UNM Continuing Education, Green Flower is acting as the program operator.
The program comes at a cost of nearly $3,000, and interested individuals do not need to be students at UNM to sign up.
“The people that take these programs will come out of this with such a hugely in-demand skill set that every single cannabis company on the planet ultimately needs,” Simon said. “They become a necessity to the operations of a company.”
