Congress wants to put cannabis education money where the first wave of legalization didn’t. A new bill called the EDUCATE Act would create a federal cannabis scholarship program at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions — up to $10,000 a year for students studying the agricultural science behind the plant.
Filed June 23 by Reps. Troy Carter (D-LA) and Dina Titus (D-NV), the Establishing and Developing University Cannabis Agriculture Techniques and Excellence (EDUCATE) Act of 2026 does two main things, according to Marijuana Moment’s reporting.
First, it creates a Marijuana Agriculture Studies Scholarship Program awarding up to $10,000 per year to undergraduate and graduate students at HBCUs and HSIs who study food and agricultural sciences and intend to pursue careers in marijuana or hemp agriculture, cultivation, plant science, agricultural technology, or ag policy. Second, it authorizes up to $5 million a year in research grants from fiscal years 2026 through 2030, with at least 25% earmarked for Hispanic-serving institutions.
What the cannabis scholarship bill funds
The bill also tackles a problem unique to cannabis education: federal risk. Schools and individuals receiving funds under the program couldn’t be denied federal benefits or subjected to prosecution or civil penalties for the marijuana-related activities the program authorizes. That carveout matters, because plenty of universities have been gun-shy about cannabis research precisely because the plant’s federal status threatens their federal funding.
Think of this as the equity play run through education instead of licenses. The first wave of state legalization promised social equity and largely delivered corporate consolidation — a pattern we’ve covered relentlessly on the show, from Illinois to beyond. Licenses were supposed to go to communities harmed by the drug war; capital and incumbents mostly won instead.
The EDUCATE Act tries a different lever. Instead of handing out licenses and hoping equity follows, it builds the workforce at the schools that serve the communities that got shut out. Train the agronomists, plant scientists, and ag-policy experts at HBCUs and HSIs, and you change who’s qualified to own and run the next generation of cannabis operations. Workforce is harder for incumbents to monopolize than a license lottery.
Now the cold realism: will a Republican-controlled Senate fund weed scholarships at HBCUs in this Congress? Almost certainly not. The dollar figures are modest — $5 million a year in research grants is a rounding error in federal terms — but the politics are loud, and bills like this rarely move on their own.
What it does do is plant a flag. Programs like this have a way of quietly becoming bipartisan consensus once the stigma fades and the industry’s labor needs become undeniable. A cannabis sector that’s projected to keep growing will need trained agricultural talent, and the schools positioned to supply it are exactly the ones this bill targets. File it under “not this year, but watch the idea.”
Related: the tax revenue funding state programs. Related: the federal rescheduling hearing.
Watch the full episode
Tom Howard and Miggy break down all of this week’s stories on the Sunday, June 28, 2026 episode of Cannabis Legalization News:
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