Understanding medical cannabis: SUNY Empire’s new online course on a complex topic

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This series about cannabis education programs throughout the state is produced in partnership with students from Syracuse University.

Amid turbulent discourse about medical cannabis, an Empire State University course is teaching students to step beyond stereotypes and pair empathy with research on the subject.

SUNY Empire has offered the online course every spring semester since 2018. It’s intended for students pursuing human services careers, jobs that include a range of advocates, from social workers and counselors to government workers and nonprofit employees.

“It’s a very complex topic,” said Joanne Levine, the course’s lead faculty member and an associate professor in SUNY Empire’s Department of Health and Hhuman Services. “The more you delve into it, the more you find.”

Levine first entered medical cannabis research as a scholar in residence at Realm of Caring, a Colorado-based nonprofit dedicated to educating on and providing access to medical cannabis.

People may use medical cannabis for many different reasons, including for conditions like epilepsy, Huntington’s disease, Parkinson’s and HIV/AIDS.

Encountering people who had to relocate to states like Colorado for legal access to medical cannabis changed everything for Levine, she said.

“Typically, we don’t think of refugees as being internal in our country, let alone for medical reasons,” Levine said. “The whole notion of somebody having to be a medical refugee was one that was really disturbing and intriguing to me at the same time.”

Drawing on her research from some Colorado patients, Levine set out to design a course that could expand other people’s perspectives on medical cannabis too, she said.

Together with Drew Monthie, who also teaches at SUNY Empire, Levine developed the course as it stands today: “Understanding Medical Cannabis: Multidisciplinary Perspectives.”

The course focuses on different aspects of medical cannabis from user stigma to the historical trajectory of patient advocacy efforts in the U.S. up to the present ate.

Throughout the semester, Levine addresses U.S. and international policy while unpacking how social conversations about medical cannabis have changed too, she said, and often invites students to reflect on their preconceptions of medical cannabis at the beginning of the course.

“When you’re working with clients, you have to be aware of your own biases so that they don’t get in the way, hopefully, of your work,” Levine said. “That’s no different for this topic than any other aspect of human services.”

Since the course is designed for asynchronous and online learners, many of whom are nontraditional students with little time for school, making the class interactive is key, Levine said.

Incorporating old public service announcements and other mixed media visual elements into the course is one way to make the content as engaging as possible, she said.

“It’s a whole world unto itself, online learning,” Levine said.

All of Levine’s students hail from different levels of exposure to medical cannabis, she said: some students have used it before to alleviate medical conditions, while others have family members who have struggled with stigma, too.

Exploring how to navigate other people’s emotional connections to medical cannabis has been a learning curve for Levine, as well.

“People become very emotional when talking about cannabis, whether recreational or medical,” she said. “I think that I didn’t truly appreciate the extent to which that occurs until I started teaching this course.”

Levine and Monthie have adjusted the course’s curriculum often in the past five years in tandem with big shifts to the social and political climate related to cannabis, she said.

When SUNY Empire first began offering the course five years ago, 25 U.S. states had legalized marijuana for medical use only. That number has since risen to 38.

Increased statewide legalization has opened up access for people who would have otherwise been displaced by their lack of legal access to medical cannabis, Levine said. These recent changes have also caused visible ripples in academia as illegality holds implications for research too, Levine said.

“I think when we’re talking about all these (cannabis) courses that are popping up all over the place, you still have to remember that it’s under the larger shadow of it being illegal at the federal level,” she said.

As further developments inevitably take place, Levine hopes her students walk away from the course with informed opinions and a deeper appreciation for the facts.

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