“Why can’t you shoot up medicinal marijuana? Because you’ll get a budclot.”
“A bud a day keeps the doctor away.”
“I smoke weed for my health and my health is perfect.”
Those are just a few of the litany of jokes regarding the use of marijuana for medicinal or therapeutic purposes. But some of that humor — maybe not all — is lost on those living with painful, life-altering or terminal illnesses.
For years, the public has been aware of the therapeutic benefit of medicinal grade cannabis in treating patients with glaucoma or those undergoing chemotherapy, but Nick Tennant of Center Line, Mich., became acutely aware of the plant’s medicinal merits when he traveled to California to visit his terminally ill grandmother. “A lot of people are becoming educated on the effectiveness of medicinal marijuana and as generations change, there is a different outlook. The negative stigma is starting to wash away and this will improve the quality of life for a lot of people,” says Tennant, who established Med Grow Cannabis College, Michigan’s only medical marijuana training and growth facility in April 2009.
“I saw a similar model in California and … it spurred the idea,” says Tennant of transporting the practice for use in treating residents of the Detroit metropolitan area and outlying regions. “We are making a positive impact on the community,” says the 24-year-old former auto detailing shop owner.
The therapeutic and fertile growth industry is catching on and dispelling some of the myths about the new generation of “head shops” springing up in some of the more liberal regions of the country. California is the nation’s leader, with hundreds of marijuana dispensaries in the Los Angeles area alone, which has led to a much-needed economic boon in that region’s failing economy.
Med Grow’s 30-hour training and certification program covers topics from growing cycles and harvesting to proper dosage and taxation issues. “Once you’re certified you’re protected under all the provisions that the law enacts. So it is a completely aboveboard legal industry and we pride ourselves in operating with as much professionalism as possible to overcome that negative stigma,” Tennant says.
Med Grow’s trainees are a culturally mixed group of black and white students of all ages and economic backgrounds. The thing they do have in common, though, is that in the long run they all intend to reap what they sow. –roz edward
