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In 1984, I sold an ounce of commercial Jamaican brick weed to one of the rich kids at my high school.
How could any weed smoker support that man? How did I get face to face with this and what should I do? These questions swirled around in my mind until I suggested we smoke a joint to sample the quality of the ganja.
As I took a deep inhale of that sweet Jamaican leaf, I noticed that the weed-smoking son was a step ahead of the parents—even if it was not much of a step ahead, at least he was smoking cannabis—and upon exhale I decided to sell him the bag of Jamaican.
Some just want to do this to make money, but others have a personal connection to the healing powers of cannabis and want to offer this remedy to others in their community.
And I work with them because I know that the cannabis plant is smarter than any of us, and if I just get her into the hands of as many people as I can, she will do the rest of the work for me.
I’m still working with that premise in mind and all these years later, after all these fights to legalize weed have been won, I’m in the trenches building businesses with people whose politics don’t align with my own.
I’m co-founder and Chairperson of the Board for the non-profit Last Prisoner Project and a co-founder and advisor to Harborside, where we pioneered legal cannabis business processes and provided political engagement and thought leadership to the cannabis community — leading the design and development of gold-standard cannabis retail by innovating many “firsts” for the industry.