Medical marijuana has grown from an “only in California” curiosity into an expanding realm of business opportunities—which some are now calling the Cannabis Industry. Among them is an entrepreneur who sees a niche in training workers for that budding industry.

The Cannabis Training University program will be offered at the Holiday Inn Express  in Santa Rosa July 24-25 (other summer sessions are scheduled in San Jose and Santa Cruz).  Jeffery Zorn outlines the curriculum.

There are further details about the program in this promotional video.

 Zorn is himself a graduate of Oaksterdam University, the Oakland-based school that was established to address many of the same needs and concerns as the Cannabis Training University. But as the founder, owner, CEO and promoter for CTU, Zorn sees comparative benefits in his program.

Cannabis activist and advocate Ed Rosenthal   is among the instructors at the Cannabis Training University, but will not be among the faculty for the Santa Rosa workshop.

It’s hard to imagine anything more personal than the genetic information encoded in your DNA. But it’s only protected by privacy laws some of the time.

The actual status of California’s law protecting genetic information with regard to long term care insurance is currently a bit murky, says health journalist April Lynch. It is generally assumed to have ended, but it seems to have lapsed rather than having been repealed.

As genetic information becomes increasingly available, Lych suggests that consumers will more and more have to make decisions about how much they themselves want to know about it, as well as how much is shared with doctors and insurers.

April Lynch

Early clinical trials suggest the drug MDMA, also known as Ecstasy, may be beneficial in treating and even curing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The research protocol used in the MAPS studies uses a male-female team of therapists working with each patient. It is an expensive and labor intensive approach, but Executive Director Rick  Doblin says there are several sound reasons for proceeding that way.

The incidence of autism is growing, now around 1 in every 110 births, a burgeoning epidemic that also carries huge consequences for the parents of those children.

Like many children diagnosed with autism, four-year old Peyton Price, shows few outward signs of the condition, which is most often expressed through unusual or unpredictable behaviors and difficulty with verbal communications. (Thanks to his mom, Jill, for sharing this photo.)

The CATS program at SSU offers several direct benefits to parents—trained child care, informational seminars, a directory of resources—but another asset is their opportunities to simply talk with one another, and learn from each other’s experiences. This father, who asked not to be identified, credits another mom with guiding his family into the complex world of specialized services for kids with autism.

With or  without huge medical bills, the demands of caring for a child with autism often require one parent to give up a job or career. And as these children grow older, their aging parents must also reconsider their own plans for retirement, a situation that now confronts Beth Farrar.

The following links offer additional information about autism:

The Autism Society of America

Autism Speaks

The Centers for Disease Control

The National Institute of Neurological  Disorders and Stroke