{"id":15076,"date":"2020-01-08T12:12:08","date_gmt":"2020-01-08T19:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/?p=15076"},"modified":"2020-01-08T12:41:19","modified_gmt":"2020-01-08T19:41:19","slug":"grass-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/2020\/01\/grass-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Grass Roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Impact of Cannabis From Classroom Conversations and Concerns About Youth to Jobs and Educational Journals<\/span><\/p>\n

Just a few days after graduating from Colorado College this May with a degree in economics, Austin Ronningen \u201919<\/strong> began an internship at Los Sue\u00f1os Farms. The family-owned business in Avondale, Colorado, about 60 miles south of campus, focuses on environmentally friendly, organic farming practices. But they aren\u2019t growing carrots, corn, or Swiss chard. Their 36 acres house some 36,000 cannabis plants for four Colorado-licensed retail marijuana cultivations that lease the property, making Los Sue\u00f1os the largest outdoor recreational cultivation facility in North America.<\/p>\n

Two months into the internship, Los Sue\u00f1os offered Ronningen a full-time job. He\u2019s now responsible for inventory and packaging for product that\u2019s ready to be sold, as well as working with Metrc, the compliance tracking system used by Colorado\u2019s Marijuana Enforcement Division of the Department of Revenue.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Austin Ronningen \u201919<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cI never thought this is what I\u2019d be doing at all\u201d after graduation, says Ronningen, \u201cbut it was a more interesting offer than anything else I had for more traditional economics or finance jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of that interest comes from the fact that cannabis is a booming new industry. If Ronningen had graduated five years ago, he wouldn\u2019t have been offered an internship, much less a full-time gig, at Los Sue\u00f1os because the company didn\u2019t exist. This year, he\u2019s joined what\u2019s considered the fastest-growing labor market in the U.S., based on research by Whitney Economics and Leafly. (The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn\u2019t officially count cannabis jobs, even though records show there are now more than 200,000 Americans employed by the industry. Compare this, as Whitney Economics does in its report, to 52,000 coal-mining employees, 69,000 brewery workers, and 112,000 textile manufacturing personnel.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s changing way, way, way faster than anyone I think from the outside can really imagine,\u201d says Ronningen. \u201cIt\u2019s like anything that once vast amounts of money are put into it, the kind of value that other people see in it and the effort and capital that\u2019s put in will just exponentially grow.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Colorado, this change began 20 years ago. <\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ask state residents, and many will say, at this point, marijuana feels mainstream here. \u201cI forget that it isn\u2019t just legal everywhere,\u201d says Rhonda Gonzales \u201989<\/strong>, dean of library services and steering committee member for the Journal of Cannabis Research <\/em>at Colorado State University-Pueblo (see interview with Gonzales<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In 2000, voters approved Amendment 20, allowing the use and sales of medical marijuana in the state. Twelve years later, voters passed Amendment 64, which legalized marijuana for recreational use for those over the age of 21, making Colorado the first state to end marijuana prohibition in the U.S. The seven years since haven\u2019t been struggle-free though \u2014 the state had to figure out rules, regulations, licensing, and taxing, as did individual municipalities. Though recreational marijuana is legal across Colorado, the vote left it up to cities to decide whether to allow sales or not. Colorado Springs chose the latter, even though the city does allow medical dispensaries. Neighboring Manitou Springs chose the former and currently allows\u00a0two recreational retail shops.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor of Southwest Studies Santiago Guerra sits on the City of Colorado Springs\u2019 Medical Marijuana Working Group and is fascinated by the dynamics in the local community. \u201cI think here in Colorado Springs where we have a more conservative outlook on the substance, where we haven\u2019t approved retail sales, we\u2019re dealing with very different dynamics from other locales in the state.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of tension around how locals view the substance, Guerra says. \u201cWe have, at least on paper, the biggest medical cannabis-serving population in the state.\u201d Colorado Springs residents seem to be more accepting toward cannabis as a medicine, he says, \u201cavailable for those who need it for these particular things and really not in any other capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just one of many points of discussion that come up in the cross-listed Business in Society class he\u2019s been co-teaching with Professor of Economics and Business Jim Parco since 2016.<\/p>\n

\u201cSantiago covers the history, the culture, the early policy\/development of cannabis prohibition and legalization, and then I discuss the regulatory environment, the legal aspects, some of the societal impacts and the formations of the industry in Colorado, and the scaling of it,\u201d says Parco.<\/p>\n

The students then have to take what they\u2019ve learned and mock-appeal for licensing a cannabis business. \u201cThey put applications together. Santiago and I are the \u2018Board of County Commissioners,\u2019\u201d Parco says, \u201cand they see how difficult this is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Parco and Guerra also teach other classes that engage conversation on cannabis.<\/h3>\n

For Parco, it\u2019s in his 400-level Business Policy and Strategy class. \u201cWe always have a topic of mergers and acquisitions,\u201d he says, \u201cand the latest news in Colorado the students are interested in is the consolidation of the cannabis industry.\u201d He includes a day of class where they discuss the regulated cannabis industry and analyze related consolidations happening in real time.<\/p>\n

Though Parco brings in guest speakers to talk about \u201cthe practical matters\u201d and assigns case study reviews from Harvard Business Publishing \u2014 this year they focused on the Canadian-based Canopy Growth Corp., the world\u2019s largest cannabis company \u2014 it\u2019s a topic he understands better than many other people do. The former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and his wife founded a cannabis company in Pueblo, Colorado, in 2014, which was acquired by another business earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, though, Parco is simply teaching students the same skills he\u2019s been imparting since he began this work in 1996 at the U.S. Air Force Academy. \u201cFor me as a professor, it\u2019s the same,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether it\u2019s in manufacturing, whether it\u2019s construction, whether it\u2019s consulting, whether it\u2019s cannabis, it\u2019s the same business skills. It\u2019s just a different product. \u2026 It\u2019s marketing. It\u2019s finance. It\u2019s accounting. It\u2019s policy and strategy. It\u2019s management. To start, those are the core areas, right? But those are the areas that any business entity looks for students to have a knowledge of theories, models, and skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also doing research. Lots of research.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of what I\u2019m doing right now, I guess is what you tend to do as a professor. I\u2019m really developing an expertise in the industry and the way you do that is you study it, you pay attention. \u2026 Much like historians don\u2019t really talk about current administrations for about 25 or 30 years to be able to really find out what happened, it\u2019s kind of the same thing. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe kinds of research that I\u2019m doing, it\u2019s less manifested in written publications,\u201d he says. \u201cThose will be coming fast and furious in about three years. I\u2019ve got probably a dozen working papers that I\u2019ve drafted, but it\u2019s just, in my opinion, it\u2019s still premature to release them. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m really seeing, but I have a pretty good idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

He does have students publishing though. For his thesis two years ago, Austin Davie \u201917<\/strong> studied how marijuana legalization affected the black market. His team of six, including Parco and two other CC folks \u2014 Department of Economics and Business paraprofessional Phoenix Van Wagoner \u201913<\/strong> and Haley Parco \u201916<\/strong> \u2014 conducted a series of anonymous interviews with black market operators on how legalization affected their business. The study, \u201cBlack, White, and Green: The Effect of Legalization on Colorado\u2019s Black Market of Cannabis,\u201d was featured in \u201cThe Politics of Marijuana: A New Paradigm,\u201d a book edited by Timothy McGettigan and published in August.<\/p>\n

For Guerra, his other class offerings come from a very different perspective than Parco\u2019s.<\/h3>\n

He says he was lucky to arrive in Colorado in 2011 as the state was building up to Amendment 64. \u201cMost of my work has been around border smuggling, drug policy along the border, and its impact on border communities,\u201d says Guerra. \u201cComing in here it just seemed like I was well-suited to be looking at drug issues and really to think about what happens when things completely change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trained as an anthropologist and as a historian around U.S.-Mexico border issues, Guerra thinks about this topic in an interdisciplinary way, such as how has history impacted our relationship to cannabis in the present. One of the first courses he began teaching when he arrived as a visiting professor was on drug wars. Cannabis was one point of topic in that class, he says, both in terms of the history of prohibition and medical marijuana legalization.<\/p>\n

But, he says, students were so interested that he went on to develop a Half-Block course focused on just that topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cPart of it is to help people start to think about how did we get here in terms of prohibition and then what are some of the things we have to deal with as we transition out of prohibition into reform,\u201d Guerra says. \u201cAnd then the other part of it is really thinking about what sort of impacts are border communities feeling from legalization as well as what are communities of color more broadly experiencing.\u201d (See \u201cCannabis and the Latinx Community\u201d on pg. 18.)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

C-SPAN visits Associate Professor of Southwest Studies Santiago Ivan Guerra’s class in March to record a lecture on marijuana regulation for its \u201cAmerican History\u201d TV series. Photo by Jim Parco<\/p><\/div>\n

While multidisciplinary classes tackling the topic of cannabis at colleges and universities across the country are getting a lot of attention right now<\/strong> \u2014 C-SPAN recently visited one of Guerra\u2019s classes to record his lecture on marijuana regulation in U.S. history for its American History TV \u201cLectures in History\u201d series \u2014 Guerra says that it\u2019s not what we think about cannabis that we should be focused on but how we think about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis offers us a unique way to do liberal arts education that really can put all of the campus in conversation.\u00a0\u2026 Jim\u2019s in economics. I\u2019m in history and anthropology, in Southwest studies. And we\u2019re able to have these conversations that I feel should be happening on campus, but they should also be happening across the U.S. As a product of a liberal arts education myself, I think this is the great benefit of liberal arts learning that you\u2019re able to be the greatest critic of a policy, but also perhaps the greatest advocate. You should be able to find all of the compelling information for both sides,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegardless of where [you] sit on the political spectrum, or [whether you] desire to engage with the substance at all, it\u2019s a part of our society that we now have to really all use our minds and our histories and our positions to be able to understand how we can effectively [serve] the communities that we are a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Policy Talk<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Policies may have changed in the state of Colorado, but that doesn\u2019t mean they\u2019ve changed on campus.<\/strong><\/p>\n

CC\u2019s policy on marijuana is straightforward: \u201cThe federal Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act disallows the use of drugs including marijuana; if the college fails to comply, it could become ineligible for federal funding and financial aid programs for its students. The college\u2019s policy also does not allow the use of medical marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In “Grass Roots,” journalist Kirsten Akens \u201996<\/strong> takes a look at the impact of cannabis on CC, from classroom conversations and concerns about youth to jobs and educational journals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1388,"featured_media":14880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-15076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-winter-2019","tag-features"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/files\/2019\/12\/CC-BUL-WIN19-14_grass-roots-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15076"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15410,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15076\/revisions\/15410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/bulletin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}