Many hardworking and successful marijuana connoisseurs have dreamed of one day working a legal and legitimate job in the cannabis industry.

For Ohioans that dream can finally become a reality. According to many Ohio medical-marijuana industry experts, there is a shortage of skilled workers as the state’s medical marijuana program takes off like John Glenn in a rocket.

Indeed, some Ohio medical marijuana companies have looked far and wide to find experienced workers. Standard Wellness near Sandusky, one of the state’s first cultivators and processors of medical marijuana, started with four employees and now has 45, said CEO Erik Vaughan recently to Cleveland.com.

“We had to go out of state to find specialists and managers for our cultivation business,” says Vaughan.

Also telling is how many cannabis careerists have had to leave Ohio to make their career dreams a reality. But staying near to home is now possible as the only state-approved career school for cannabis education east of Colorado – The Cleveland School of Cannabis or CSC – is opening a second location in Columbus this April and currently enrolling students.

Kevin Greene, Vice President of Admissions and Recruiting for CSC, says their 8-week condensed courses for horticulture, processing and dispensing, specifically line-up with jobs available right now within the Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program.

“The three licenses awarded by the state are the cultivator license, processing license, and dispensary license, so our programs line up with the actual job need and market growth,” says Greene, adding each CSC program was first approved by the Ohio Board of Career Colleges and Schools.

Greene says Ohio’s need for skilled cannabis workers is growing every day and into the foreseeable future.

“We get calls every single day seeking our students. We have right now over 50 percent job placement rates for our graduates,” he says. “There’s only a few cultivators and dispensaries open right now. We are still so early into this program and all are in need of employees who know what they are doing in this medical industry.”

The cannabis industry is one of the fastest if not the fastest growing industries in the nation.

According to Glassdoor, the number of marijuana-related job openings jumped 75 percent during 2017, with 1,500 new jobs posted in December of 2018 alone.

Just how many legal cannabis jobs are there? A great question considering the federal government refuses to count them. But the web site Leafly, self-described as the world’s largest cannabis information resource, there are over 200,000 legal cannabis jobs across the United States.

In other words, states Leafly, legal cannabis is currently the greatest job creation machine in America.

“What people have to remember this isn’t just entirely about marijuana,” says Greene of CSC. “This is an entire industry being developed. Just as much you are hiring cultivators, you’re hiring marketers, you’re hiring carpenters, Hvac people, you need accountants, you need bankers. You need everything. This isn’t a stand-alone situation, this an entire industry that’s going to have ancillary businesses and will need support from traditional businesses.”

CSC Open House

April 10, 2019, 5:30-7pm
3700 Corporate Drive, Suite 125
Columbus, Ohio 43231
Free to the public, Free refreshments
Learn about CSC and upcoming career opportunities in the medical cannabis industry
Hear from current instructors and students at CSC.
Network with like-minded individuals to discuss how Ohioans can capitalize on the emerging cannabis industry in Ohio
kevingreene@csceducation.com