LSU Cannabis Certificates Met a Two-Grower Job Market

LSU launched online cannabis certificates in December 2022, citing nearly $400 million in legal sales by 2025. The partner was Green Flower, a California education firm. Anyone 21 or older could enroll from home.

The courses filled. The local hiring door did not. Louisiana kept legal cannabis on two private grow licenses and a hard retail cap, and a lot of the people who finished the LSU credential left the state to use it.

Four Certificates and a $400 Million Forecast

The announcement landed on December 21 and 22, 2022. Green Flower CEO Max Simon said LSU would offer four medical cannabis certificates, and he called the school the firm’s 19th university partner. First classes were set for January 2023.

Lisa Verma, then senior director of LSU Online & Continuing Education, framed the work as teaching, not campaigning.

We’re looking at education on our side, not so much advocacy as much as education. And making sure that people have the information they need to have to succeed in the field and whether they’re starting out on their own, as an entrepreneur, and starting their own business, or if they’re going to work for someone else.

Lisa Verma, Senior Director, LSU Online & Continuing Education

Simon’s launch list was healthcare, business, agriculture, and compliance. By 2024 the catalog had a fifth track in product development. Each path ran 24 weeks, instructor-led and asynchronous, billed starting at $499 a month.

THE FIVE LSU TRACKS

• Healthcare and medicine: Medical properties, products, and how clinicians talk about cannabis with patients.
• Agriculture and horticulture: Indoor, outdoor, and greenhouse cultivation for a commercial crop.
• Business of cannabis: How firms grow, brand, and sell inside a licensed market.
• Compliance and risk management: Rules, audits, and how a licensed operator stays inside them.
• Product development and design: Extraction through finished goods, added after the original four-certificate launch.

Kristy Anthony, director of professional development for LSU Online, said each week mixed video lessons, reading, skills checks, and a portfolio that built toward the certificate. The clips came from a Green Flower network she put at more than 700 industry voices, including physicians, lawyers, and company heads. LSU was the brand on the diploma. The syllabus was Green Flower’s.

LSU Counted Hundreds of Cannabis Students

By June 11, 2024, Anthony said 580 people had signed up for the cannabis training courses and that the completion rate was 85%. She also said Green Flower then worked with 54 U.S. university and community college partners. David Bocage, associate director and academic coach at Southern University at New Orleans, finished the compliance track and put his load at about five hours a week.

LSU CANNABIS CERTIFICATE TALLY

• Course sign-ups: 580 people had enrolled in the training courses by June 2024, per Anthony.
• Completion rate: 85% of those course takers finished, according to the same LSU count.
• Certificates awarded: Late-2024 program tallies showed 267 certificates issued to 245 students, which means some people finished more than one track.
• Still enrolled: Those tallies put 89 students in the pipeline at the same time.

Bocage signed up for job leads after he finished in January 2024 and said he had received one. “I thought that it would open up doors immediately,” he said. He still told other people to take the courses if they could pay and had the hours.

The last public recruitment push found for the LSU suite came in May 2025, still selling the five 24-week paths through LSU Online & Continuing Education. No later LSU enrollment count turned up.

Why the Ag Centers Lost the Grow Licenses

For years the only legal growers in Louisiana were not private farms on paper. State law named the LSU Agricultural Center and the Southern University Agricultural Center as the licensed producers, and each campus contracted the actual grow-out. LSU’s contractor was Good Day Farm. Southern’s was Ilera Holistic Healthcare, also styled Advanced Biomedics LLC.

Sen. Patrick McMath, a Republican from Covington, sponsored the bill that ended that structure. He said the two systems were the only higher-ed shops in the country “in the pot business” and that it was time to get them out of it so they could “focus on higher education.”

They are the only two higher education systems in the country that are in the pot business right now, and it is my belief that it’s time we get them out of that business and let them focus on higher education.

Sen. Patrick McMath, R-Covington, on Act 150

Act 150, signed into law with an effective date of May 22, 2024, removed the universities as the licensees and moved those licenses on July 1, 2024, to the two contractors that held the campus deals on January 1, 2024. The same act pushed the medical program’s sunset from January 1, 2025, to July 1, 2030. LDH later spelled out the same transfer in its retailer rules, stripping the old language that required licenses to be issued to Southern and LSU.

HOW THE STATE CLOSED THE CAMPUS GROW

1. December 21, 2022: LSU and Green Flower announce four online medical cannabis certificates, tied to a forecast of nearly $400 million in legal sales by 2025.
2. January 2023: First certificate session begins. The offering later expands to five 24-week tracks.
3. May 22, 2024: Act 150 takes effect, setting the July license move and extending the medical program to July 1, 2030.
4. July 1, 2024: Grow licenses transfer from the LSU and Southern Ag Centers to Good Day Farm and Ilera Holistic Healthcare.
5. January 1, 2025: LDH takes over retailer regulation from the Board of Pharmacy. New non-satellite retail permits are closed.
6. May 2025: LSU is still recruiting for the five certificate tracks.

Eighteen months after the certificate launch, the same university system that was selling cultivation homework no longer held a cultivation license. The continuing-ed arm kept selling the classes anyway.

What Louisiana’s Medical Cannabis Market Sold

The 2022 pitch used a round number that never showed up in the state’s own books. Analyst Daniel Kief, working from Louisiana Department of Revenue Therapeutic Marijuana Fee collections, put producer-to-pharmacy wholesale distribution at $90.9 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, up 77% from $51.4 million the year before. That is wholesale, not store-level sales, and it is still a long way from $400 million.

LDH’s medical marijuana page lists two licensed medical marijuana manufacturers for the whole state: Ilera Holistic Healthcare and Good Day Farm Louisiana. Retail sits on 10 base permits, each allowed two satellite sites, for a 30-location ceiling. LDH’s emergency rule also bars retailers from selling product made outside Louisiana and caps patients at 71 grams of flower per 14-day period.

Good Day Farm President John Davis, speaking in Baton Rouge on February 25, 2026, put active patients near 150,000 by the end of 2025 and put the illegal market at $750 million to $1 billion a year. The legal channel is growing. It is still a closed shop.

LDH’s Act 150 report compiles the licensees’ own 2025 production and distribution figures. Good Day is the larger plant. Ilera is the smaller one. Together they are the entire licensed supply.

THE TWO LICENSEES IN CALENDAR 2025

Good Day reported 63,338.3 pounds of marijuana produced at its Ruston plant. Ilera reported 9,061 pounds. Combined payroll at the two manufacturers was $15,428,300. Combined flower to retailers was 29,233 pounds. That is the legal grow-and-make labor pool a cultivation certificate is supposed to feed.

The license math is why local cannabis jobs stay scarce even as patient counts rise. Two firms make every gram. Thirty doors, at most, sell it. There is no home grow. A new indoor farm cannot open because the state is not issuing a third manufacturer license.

Certificate Holders Found Work Outside Louisiana

The people who finished the LSU tracks noticed the same ceiling. Brennan Ruppert, an LSU graduate student in cannabis cultivation, told the campus paper in June 2024 that he did not plan to look for work in Louisiana. He called medical cannabis too expensive for many patients and said the state’s politics and climate would slow any outdoor industry.

Ryan Stoa, a cannabis law professor at Southern University Law Center, put it in license terms. Louisiana, he said, “has a very limited number of licenses to cultivate, to transport, process, distribute, and so on.” He also said few cannabis firms nationwide were making the kind of money the early forecasts implied.

Koryn Boyd finished the horticulture and cultivation track and was living in Virginia. Jailen “Jai” Jordan finished compliance and risk management and was running a cannabis brand, Squad Packs, in California. The pattern matches the license sheet. If the grow jobs are already assigned, the certificate becomes a ticket to a state that is still hiring.

Green Flower’s pitch always treated that as a feature. Simon said Louisiana did not have a dense bench of local cannabis teachers, so the company could record experts wherever they worked and beam them to students wherever they lived. The students did not have to be Louisianans. The jobs they wanted did not have to be in Louisiana either.

That is a clean outcome for a national content company. It is a weaker one for a state university that sold the courses against a Louisiana sales forecast. The louder constraint is not curriculum quality. It is who is allowed to grow and sell the plant.

Green Flower Took the Same Playbook to 45 Colleges

While Louisiana froze the license map, Green Flower kept cloning the product. Anthony’s June 2024 count was 54 U.S. college partners on the older six-month suite. In January 2026 the company said a rebuilt set of shorter online certificates was up at 45 universities and colleges, with classes starting January 13 and new cohorts every eight weeks.

The new menu, posted by partners such as the University of Illinois Springfield, lists six career-focused cannabis certificates running 8 to 16 weeks, including an associate-level foundation plus cultivation, product development, retail and sales, compliance, and medical tracks. Max Simon was still the public face on those launches, including Baker College in January 2026 and UNLV in August 2026.

UNLV’s first cohort of the rebuilt certificates was set to begin September 1, 2026. LSU’s name did not appear in those 2026 partner announcements. The last documented LSU enrollment drive remains May 2025. The template did not need Baton Rouge to keep traveling.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who could enroll in LSU’s cannabis certificates?

The launch rules were simple: age 21 or older, no degree and no industry job required, and the work was fully online on any device. That open door is why out-of-state students such as Boyd in Virginia could finish an LSU certificate without moving to Baton Rouge.

Did Louisiana legalize recreational cannabis after the LSU launch?

No. The state still runs a medical-only program. LDH and the 2024 statutes keep production and retail inside the therapeutic marijuana system, and several 2026 bill references to an adult-use excise describe hemp products or a market Louisiana has not opened.

What is the legal purchase limit for patients?

Patients may buy up to 71 grams of marijuana flower per 14-day period, the same 2.5-ounce cap the legislature set for smokable medical flower in January 2022. Other product forms follow the clinician’s recommendation, which may run no longer than 12 months.

Can Louisiana patients grow their own cannabis?

They cannot. The medical statute has no home-cultivation right, so every legal gram has to come from Ilera or Good Day Farm and pass through a licensed retailer. That is the same bottleneck that limits grow jobs for certificate holders.

When does Louisiana’s medical marijuana law expire?

Act 150 moved the sunset from January 1, 2025, to July 1, 2030. Unless the legislature acts again, the therapeutic program, the two manufacturer licenses, and the 30-site retail cap all sit on that 2030 clock.

UNLV opened Green Flower’s rebuilt certificates on September 1, 2026. Louisiana still had two licensed manufacturers, a 30-site retail cap, and a 2025 wholesale book of $90.9 million against a forecast that had already come due.