TEMPLE TERRACE, Fla. Its a Tuesday around 5:30 p.m. and Floridas self-proclaimed first professor of Cannabis, Carlos Hermida, is discussing the most prevalent cannabinoids found in marijuana. Thats soon followed by the difference between lab techniques: gas chromatography vs. high performance liquid chromatography.

This lecture has gone to pot. They are discussing the intricacies of weed.

Outsiders might consider it a stoners dream. But most of the 12 students crammed into this small classroom view it as a business opportunity.

Welcome to Medical Marijuana Tampa or, as some are calling it, Cannabis U complete with its own slick slogan: "Take Your Career To A Higher Level."

Pepper plants are used as a cannabis-like substitute by the instructors at Medical Marijuana Tampa.

In a nondescript building just outside Tampa, Jeremy Bufford, 33, is building an empire.

Or so he hopes.

He came up with the idea almost four years ago, he said, but didnt anticipate this quick of a rollout. Plans were sped up once organizers of the medical marijuana initiative in Florida got it on the November 2014 ballot instead of 2016.

"We want to approach cannabis from a historical, from a legal, from a botanical and from a pharmacological perspective."

This Tampa-area location is Buffords first. He had planned to house the school in a former cigar factory but his landlord kicked him out when he discovered what the business was. Bufford scrambled for a new lease.

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Medical marijuana schools take root