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US (WI): Established university course under sudden scrutiny, despite existing for years

Social media has been ablaze after Instagram account @badgerbarstool posted that the University of Wisconsin-Madison is "now offering" a course on the science of cannabis last Wednesday. But contrary to the framing of the post, the class has actually been offered at UW-Madison for years, professor Shelby Ellison told The Daily Cardinal in an interview last Thursday.

"I use cannabis as a hook to draw students in to learn more about plants," Ellison said. "I think a lot of people go into the class super excited to learn about drug-type cannabis production. But [students] leave the class super excited about hemp and all the industrial applications of the plant."

"The Science of Cannabis" is a one-credit course offered every spring semester by the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at UW-Madison. Ellison, assistant professor in the department, and researcher of alternative crops, created the course in spring of 2020 and has been teaching it since.

The course was originally titled "The Science of Hemp," but the name was changed in the spring of 2023 when it officially became a class. The class name was changed because the word "hemp" is a legal definition while "cannabis" is a scientific name, Ellison said.

Read more at Daily Cardinal

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