Marijuana school opens in Michigan

DETROIT, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- A 24-year-old aspiring businessman says he's teaching Michigan residents how to grow medical marijuana at his new "Med Grow Cannabis College."

Nick Tennant founded his school this year after an auto-detailing business he started after high school failed, The New York Times reported Sunday.

"This state needs jobs, and we think medical marijuana can stimulate the state economy with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars," Tennant told the newspaper from his bare-bones classroom in a Detroit suburb.

The six-week, $485 program includes lectures on the science of growing marijuana, the only required reading being "Marijuana Horticulture: The Indoor/Outdoor Medical Grower's Bible," by Jorge Cervantes.

The business of growing medical marijuana is legal under Michigan's new law, in which patients whose doctors certify their medical need for marijuana can grow up to 12 plants themselves or name a "caregiver" to grow the plants and sell them the product.

Tennant's students, a diverse group, include Sue Maxwell, who cares for an 85-year-old ailing woman.

"I don't know if she'd have any interest in medical marijuana," Maxwell said, "but I bet it would help her."