This fall, Coast Mountain College will expand its curriculum to include cannabis classes for its students, with the new Cannabis Cultivation Series.

The series will be made up of five courses covering cannabis regulation, processing for the home grower, harvesting and curing, indoor growing and outdoor growing.

To participate in the entire series, students must first complete Cannabis Regulations and Licensing, which provides a primer on both the federal and B.C. provincial laws, with an emphasis on home cultivation.

The new course will also examine the role of municipal government and other organizations with regulatory authority as it relates to personal cultivation.

Cannabis cultivation isn’t as simple as growing a fruit or vegetable, suggests an article in My Bulkley Lakes Now. With a focus on cultivation, the courses provide provide essential knowledge on the plant’s unique traits, including harvest timing, trimming techniques and the drying/curing process for the small-scale grower.

Sarah Zimmerman, executive director of communications for the college,told Interior News the series was created to help give people a sense of how to navigate the new recreational and medicinal cultivation laws in Canada. “We know that, in the new framework of legalization, that there are a lot of people that are curious about how to grow [legal] cannabis,” Zimmerman says.

Enrollment is open for the series, notes Zimmerman, adding that the college has already had numerous inquiries for the program. Based on the positive response to date, her expectation is that it is likely the classes will be very popular. Should demand warrant, the college will consider running the courses in the Smithers and Hazelton communities.

Classes will begin in installments this September and early October.