Doug Porter’s cannabis-motif shirt is a dead giveaway, as are the terms he uses in his business lecture, such as weed and buzz.

On Saturday, Porter helped lead a how-to session for launching a marijuana business. The California-based Cannabis Career Institute offered the daylong seminar at a BWI Marshall Airport hotel less than a week after D.C. residents voted to legalize marijuana.

Maryland lawmakers earlier this year decriminalized possessing small amounts of marijuana and previously approved its medical use.
CCI officials say the measures mean that an industry growing nationwide could mushroom in the Baltimore-Washington area in years to come. Porter, 52, implored the class of a dozen people to use a model not unlike that of any other small business.

Offering a blueprint that included a business plan, an action team and a demographic analysis, Porter demonstrated how to launch a medical marijuana dispensary, marijuana plantation and delivery services. [Read More]