Rancho Santa Margarita's God's Green Earth College Online (GECCO), which provides classes on growing marijuana and operating a successful collective, is apparently enjoying a major spike in enrollment. The college put out a press release today boasting that the school is well on its way to “becoming the largest and most trusted online source of cannabis education.”
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You may remember that GGECO just recently began offering classes in Spanish. That could certainly account for the rise in enrollment. Or perhaps, as the school's press release notes, the boost has something to do with the recent release of the film How Weed Won the West on Netflix. The movie, directed by Kevin Booth and originally released in 2009, features the school, which will also be mentioned in Booth's next movie, American Drug War II, scheduled to be released in 2012.
Or maybe GGECO is attracting lots of students because the school provides lessons on how to grow pot, and then make money providing it to people, money that you can use to . . . grow more pot!
Just a theory, though . . .
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).