CT is sending Cannabis Business owners to college
Open to people granted cannabis social equity licenses, the program partners with Oaksterdam University and reSET to help entrepreneurs with the technical aspects of starting their businesses.
Included in the law that made the recreational use of cannabis legal in Connecticut is a provision to create a small business accelerator program.
Open to people granted a cannabis social equity license, the idea is to impart knowledge about running a cannabis business to help get those businesses off the ground.
“The social equity applicants, if they were approved by the council, they’re eligible for this first program,” said social equity council spokesperson Kristina Diamond. “The program does all the technical business assistance. They go through the soup-to-nuts of a cannabis business, what they need to know, how to launch a program, how to get funders attracted to your business.”
The state went through an RFP process and settled on a California-based school called Oaksterdam University, where Dale Sky Jones is executive chancellor.
The year-long $1 million contract was ultimately signed with Oaksterdam and Hartford-based reSet because, Diamond said, “We did feel it was important to have somebody from Connecticut, as well as part of the process.”
Oaksterdam, Jones said, began as a nickname “because the founders had gone over to Amsterdam, saw the dual use, saw the ease, the decriminalization, that it was working, and Oakland was the first city that had allowed for the sales of medical cannabis,” she said. “That was on Broadway, in 1996, is when that first started.”
The founder, Jeff Jones — who later married Dale Sky Jones — had been “forcibly retired from dispensing medical cannabis,” she said. “He became an educator and also helped patients find their medicine.”
“He wound up in contract with the county,” Jones said. “He trained the city tax department, the police department on how to recognize qualified medical patients and what transactions look like.”
Since then, cannabis has become legitimized. Jones said she was “the first to be a spokeswoman on a statewide voter initiative that was someone your mom might want you to grow up to be like.”
“The only folks that were willing to talk about cannabis legalization, destigmatization, were Cheech and Chong types, and I honor Cheech and Chong because they were goofy stoners, but they still always tried to hold themselves in a positive light," she said. "They weren’t hurting anyone in any of those movies. It was all in good fun. It was very intelligent writing that got them to that, but it still created the stigma of ‘Don’t be like them.’ And, you know, Carl Sagan was a stoner at the same time as Cheech and Chong. He just would have lost his contract at NASA.”
Fast forward to 2023, and the school has worked with officials in Florida, Missouri and Los Angeles, as well as Connecticut, where so far 32 participants have begun the nine-month-long program.
“Some are further along, others are really behind, and there is a time limit on how long they have to stand up their business,” she said. “Sometimes we’re just a cheerleader or simply holding their hand and saying, ‘Wow, this is hard. It’s OK to feel overwhelmed.’ And just keep them holding on to get through that hump. ‘Don’t give up. Just get to the next goalpost, and we’ll get through it.’”
