Marijuana has helped countless people around the world cope with various diseases, and yet it remains a controversial drug. Millions have been pushing for its legalization for many years now, and those who believe in the plant have collected a few victories, and there are now a number of states in America where recreational or medicinal marijuana can be purchased. With any new change in how the government views a certain substance, there are sure to be plenty of entrepreneurs who launch businesses based on the new opportunity that has arisen, and it’s no different when it comes to weed.
One person who is working on changing how the world views marijuana—while also making a few bucks off the trend—is Melissa Etheridge, who has launched her own namesake brand (Etheridge Farms) of cannabis-related items. In a recent conversation with me, she discussed why this was a good time for her new business and how it has helped her through health issues, as well as in her music career, which is already one of the most impressive in history.
Hugh McIntyre: How did you decide to jump into the marijuana business?
Melissa Etheridge: You know, “jumping into it” is something I’ve been doing for 10 years. I don’t like to think of myself as somebody that just jumped on a bandwagon or anything. I realized 12 years ago when I went through breast cancer and used cannabis to relieve the collateral damage of the crazy chemo that I was on, that cannabis really needed to be taken seriously as a medicine as it was 70 years ago. It was on all of our pharmacy shelves 70 years ago. It’s just a shame that Prohibition has kept it from people who could really use it as medicine.
12 years ago I decided to start advocating for it. I understand from my work with the LGBT community that advocating can be just as much as coming out and saying, “I am gay and I am a cannabis user.” That creates change. I started with that and as I started doing that, then the cannabis community especially here in California, reached out to me. I realized it was an industry, loosely using that term, that was built around a lot of fear and difficulty. It is amazingly difficult to have the federal government beating you down, and the state government making it almost impossible for you to do what the people have voted on that they wanted. It was interesting out here in California. About six years ago I started working with a dispensary up in Santa Cruz and some groves up there and better understanding the work.
As it’s developed I realize that now I can develop this into a real business because it had been non-profit up until then. Now we’re moving towards more recreational use and hopefully legalization here in California, at least. It’s starting to be taken more seriously as a serious business, and thus I have an interview today with FORBES magazine.
McIntyre: You said you’ve been working with this dispensary and this idea’s been coming along for six years now?
Etheridge: Yeah.
McIntyre: How have you seen things change over the past six years?
Etheridge: Well, the biggest change is in attitude, just in the populous in general. America’s going, “All right.” You see more people coming out as being smokers. You experience it more so the fear of it changes. That’s probably the biggest thing I’ve seen is that it’s not so frightening anymore when you talk about cannabis. It’s more kind of a joke, everyone kind of takes it lightly. You laugh, you say cannabis and people giggle. So it’s this funny reaction that people have to cannabis and then, on the business side, the biggest change I’ve seen is real business people. People who know business, that have made businesses, that can see business trends are finally entering the arena of cannabis industry. That’s making the biggest changes. Before then it was just people doing their best, really slogging it out. It was very difficult.
Link – Forbes
