Alicia Verbic was bartending in northeastern Ohio when a customer who worked in Ohio’s burgeoning medical marijuana industry sparked her interest in joining the trade.
Verbic enrolled in the Cleveland School of Cannabis, which teaches the skills necessary to work at a marijuana dispensary, cultivation facility or processing plant.
The Mentor woman said she was skeptical at first.
“I researched the school to make sure it wasn’t a scam,” she said. Ultimately, she was sold.
Verbic, 32, graduated from Kent State University in 2009 and worked in New York City’s fashion industry before returning to Ohio a few years ago with plans to attend law school. She enrolled in the Cleveland School of Cannabis instead, graduating last summer.
Now, she works for marijuana cultivator Buckeye Relief in Eastlake, which sells its products to dispensaries and processing plants.
Before attending the school, “I couldn’t tell you the difference between THC and CBD,” she said. Today, she expertly discusses the two cannabis components with customers.
Soon, central Ohioans will be able to learn the trade.
The Cleveland School of Cannabis recently opened a branch in central Ohio. Students are enrolled and classes are scheduled to begin in July. It’s one of two such schools that have opened in recent years in Ohio. The other is Dayton-based Leaf Medic, which offers online classes. A third school has an application pending with the state Board of Career Colleges.
Ohio legalized medical marijuana in 2016, but the industry has been slow to open dispensaries, processors and cultivators. As a result, few Ohioans have experience working for cannabis businesses, and industry insiders say the schools fill the need for trained employees.
“We have a great relationship with them,” said Bryan Lloyd, retail director of Green Thumb Industries, which operates the Rise dispensaries in Toledo and Lorain. The company has three more dispensaries scheduled to open this year in northeastern Ohio.
They’ve hired 10 Cleveland School of Cannabis alumni to work in their dispensaries, Lloyd said.
“The reception has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said.
School officials said roughly two-thirds of their graduates end up working in the industry.
A handful of students are doctors trying to get certified to recommend marijuana. Others are simply curious about cannabis, said Kevin Greene, the school’s vice president of admissions and recruitment.
Now that medical marijuana is grown and sold on an industrial scale, the business is professionalized and highly technical, and employees need the skills to keep up, Greene said in an interview from the school’s Corporate Drive location on the Northeast Side.
“This is not something where people know a little something about growing things in their backyard, or they know a little information about cannabinoids. This is about being able to serve the medical population,” Greene said of the industry.
The school offers three majors: cannabis horticulture, cannabis dispensary and medical application of cannabis. Students spend 150 hours in classes, Greene said. The school also offers an executive program that combines those three majors and requires 300 hours in class.
“Our alumni are ready to work” the day they graduate, he said.
Admissions officer Nate Bauman, who works out of the Columbus branch, said the first step is meeting students to determine what they want to do in the industry and explain the different programs.
“People come from all sorts of backgrounds,” Bauman said. “This industry is new, and it’s opening doors.”
It isn’t uncommon for new industries to spawn new trade schools. John Ware, director of the Board of Career Colleges, said that several schools opened to teach casino skills after Ohio approved a constitutional amendment in 2009 to allow gambling.
The problem they faced, Ware said, was placing students after an initial hiring surge.
“We don’t have any left,” he said of the casino schools. “I don’t know if (cannabis schools) will be similar. When they’re getting started up they need people. Whether or not it lasts is an ongoing concern.”
For now, however, only 18 of the 56 dispensaries that were awarded provisional licenses have received their operating licenses. That means the demand for new employees with cannabis skills is likely to persist for some time.
pcooley@dispatch.com
@PatrickACooley
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