Maryland-based medical cannabis manufacturing company Peak Harvest Health is partnering with Frostburg State University in order to explore ethnobotanical research opportunities and provide possible employment for graduates of the university's ethnobotany, biology, and chemistry programs.
"Our partnership with PHH will comply with all state and federal laws. It will provide Frostburg State University with one more way to foster regional economic growth and workforce development, enabling our skilled students to continue working in their chosen field after graduation," said Joseph Hoffman, dean of Frostburg State University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and administrator of the Appalachian Center for Ethnobotanical Studies (ACES).
According to their press release in Business Wire, PHH also agreed to provide the initial funding for the Appalachian Cannabis Research Cooperative (ACRC). ACRC is a research incubator allows universities around the region to experiment, to the point possible under state and federal laws, with the technologies and advancements that are quickly flourishing in the field of cannabis cultivation, data collection and processing, and then share their research and technological innovations with PHH to be tested, implemented, validated, and applied.
"FSU has the only ethnobotany major in the U.S., as well as an extensive program focusing on understanding the medicinal value of plants," said Ethan Ruby, CEO of Peak Harvest Health. "By working together, we hope to educate the next generation of scientists and provide job opportunities for them in Western Maryland, while also benefiting from the medicinal plant research done by the university."
FSU Officials have been meeting with PHH for the past years to explore potential opportunities that include site visits to the Connecticut cultivation facility of PHH's sister company Theraplant. With their visit at Theraplant, FSU officials were able to witness personally the company's ability to produce medical cannabis in a state-of-the-art pharmaceutical environment with mandatory independent laboratory testing.
"Our faculty and students are very much interested in how plants, and the complex ways in which they exist in nature, can be used for health purposes," added Hoffman. "We consider the opening of PHH's facility in Cumberland to be a unique potential opportunity for the university to advance the understanding about medicinal and nutraceutical uses of plants."
