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.
McIntyre: What can people actually expect in terms of products from your company?
Etheridge: Before my cancer I was a very, very light cannabis user. Just socially. I never sought it out, I never bought it anywhere. I would smoke if somebody had it. Then when I went through cancer and used it as medicine that’s when I said, “This is medicine. I understand this is medicine.” I researched it as medicine. I looked up that cannabis has a long history. You find it in biblical times, you find it everywhere. It’s been around forever.
My hope and my plan is to present to the world a brand that they can understand medicinally first. Are you a woman going through breast cancer? Well, come to Ethridge Farms, come to this brand to understand that we have researched, we have collected data. We like to say we have studied cannabis to where we know this strain and this dosage, will help with your appetite when you’re on chemo. This will help you with sleeping. All the things that the pharmaceutical companies have tried to make drugs for we have alternatives in the cannabis line.
Maybe sleep is your biggest problem. Maybe you’ve just been either drinking every night or taking Ambien and you’re tired of waking up feeling like you’re dragging in the morning. Cannabis can help you sleep and has no side effects, no addiction problems whatsoever. If we can just get past that reefer madness stigma there’s a world of healing that can happen. So my approach to this, my brand, is one of precision medical cannabis for the community that might be uncomfortable… I mean, I love me some Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg, I really do, but the moms at my kid’s school, it might make them uncomfortable. I really want to cover the space of people who are curious about it but really have a lot of fear going in. I want to relieve that fear and let them know that I’ve done all the work and this is a brand they can trust.
McIntyre: What’s more difficult, creating these strains that are good for sleep or good for your appetite or something specific, or battling the stigma?
Etheridge: Oh, the stigma is the worst. Every time I go into the medicinal side of it, every time I look at the research, every time I see the people who are putting their heart and soul into researching and collecting data and creating new ways to do this it just lifts me up. It’s amazing. And then when I open my computer and see that the DEA says, “Nope, it’s Schedule 1, it’s still nothing medicinal,” I hang my head and go, “What is going on?” I’ve experienced it myself and I see that it’s a long road and it’s about changing hearts and minds. That’s all it is. I have been here with the LGBT movement 20 years ago when we started saying things like marriage and people were cringing and afraid of it and here we are. It’s just a road and we’re on it and it’s getting better every day.
McIntyre: Outside of creating this business and speaking publically about it, is there anything you’ve been involved with to try to change either the stigma or laws, anything you’re doing in that realm?
Etheridge: Oh my gosh, yes. There’s an organization called The Realm of Caring. You get the mothers of these epileptic children that were having at least 500 seizures a day and they were looking at their child dying and they saw immediately, and I’m saying immediately, that day, what cannabis can do. You get these kind of women and men, these parents involved in it, it’s so beyond anything. I have such a reverence for those doing the work, state to state, because you see these families who are picking up and moving to states like Colorado and Washington and Oregon because it’s legal and their children can get help. People shouldn’t have to move to another state just to get their children help.
McIntyre: What can people actually expect in terms of products from your company?
My hope and my plan is to present to the world a brand that they can understand medicinally first. Are you a woman going through breast cancer? Well, come to Ethridge Farms, come to this brand to understand that we have researched, we have collected data. We like to say we have studied cannabis to where we know this strain and this dosage, will help with your appetite when you’re on chemo. This will help you with sleeping. All the things that the pharmaceutical companies have tried to make drugs for we have alternatives in the cannabis line.
Maybe sleep is your biggest problem. Maybe you’ve just been either drinking every night or taking Ambien and you’re tired of waking up feeling like you’re dragging in the morning. Cannabis can help you sleep and has no side effects, no addiction problems whatsoever. If we can just get past that reefer madness stigma there’s a world of healing that can happen. So my approach to this, my brand, is one of precision medical cannabis for the community that might be uncomfortable… I mean, I love me some Wiz Khalifa and Snoop Dogg, I really do, but the moms at my kid’s school, it might make them uncomfortable. I really want to cover the space of people who are curious about it but really have a lot of fear going in. I want to relieve that fear and let them know that I’ve done all the work and this is a brand they can trust.
McIntyre: What’s more difficult, creating these strains that are good for sleep or good for your appetite or something specific, or battling the stigma?
Etheridge: Oh, the stigma is the worst. Every time I go into the medicinal side of it, every time I look at the research, every time I see the people who are putting their heart and soul into researching and collecting data and creating new ways to do this it just lifts me up. It’s amazing. And then when I open my computer and see that the DEA says, “Nope, it’s Schedule 1, it’s still nothing medicinal,” I hang my head and go, “What is going on?” I’ve experienced it myself and I see that it’s a long road and it’s about changing hearts and minds. That’s all it is. I have been here with the LGBT movement 20 years ago when we started saying things like marriage and people were cringing and afraid of it and here we are. It’s just a road and we’re on it and it’s getting better every day.
McIntyre: Outside of creating this business and speaking publically about it, is there anything you’ve been involved with to try to change either the stigma or laws, anything you’re doing in that realm?
Etheridge: Oh my gosh, yes. There’s an organization called The Realm of Caring. You get the mothers of these epileptic children that were having at least 500 seizures a day and they were looking at their child dying and they saw immediately, and I’m saying immediately, that day, what cannabis can do. You get these kind of women and men, these parents involved in it, it’s so beyond anything. I have such a reverence for those doing the work, state to state, because you see these families who are picking up and moving to states like Colorado and Washington and Oregon because it’s legal and their children can get help. People shouldn’t have to move to another state just to get their children help.
McIntyre: Outside of medicinally when you used it when you had cancer, how else has cannabis affected your life, creatively or in any other way?
Etheridge: Oh my goodness, I could go on and on. There’s a whole generation of those of us who grew up in the… I grew up in the 1960’s and 1970’s, but even those who grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s that are like, “People are just gonna get stoned and they’re gonna be addicted to it.” This idea that there’s something fearful and something detrimental to smoking and getting a euphoric experience. It’s like that we are afraid of euphoric experiences is something that I think we could look at, that we could examine and go, “Why are we afraid of exploring our consciousness?” Because it’s a big part of who we are and yet we ignore it all day long and we go on through our lives and we have our problem-solving consciousness. And that’s coffee and work, and I’m gonna solve the problems today, and go, go, go, and smoke my cigarettes, and then I’m gonna do all this, then have a drink and pass out. That’s one consciousness and there are many of us who are like, “I think there’s a little bit more here.”
Cannabis can open that up inside of us personally. We can have a new experience with ourselves personally, just through this plant and I call that medicinal. So when people say, “People just wanna get high,” when I smoke before I write a song, I’m opening up my consciousness. I’m entering a space inside myself where creativity is in full bloom and I’m able to go in and reap the rewards of that and that’s my job. This is a plant that helps my job and the enjoyment of it and thus I enjoy my life more.
McIntyre: So where and when will some of these items become available?
Etheridge: Well, it’s all about California right now. Right now I’m in the middle of putting it together, so I can say it will be available in California. I could just go on and on about incarceration rates and blacks and Hispanics, and I could just go on and on say so deeply we need to pass this, especially in California because we can show the world how to do it. So after that’s done it will be available in California and we will be working to get it outside the borders as soon as we can, but that’s a federal government sort of thing so right now it’s in California.
McIntyre: What else does the rest of the year bring for you?
Etheridge: Well, I’ve got my whole music thing going on, but cannabis-wise I hope to open my own dispensary. That’s a little bit down the line, but I’ve got my grove in Santa Cruz and I’ve got my manufacturing also in San Jose and Oakland and we’re moving ahead with this and it’s a whole new frontier. You can ask me again in a few months what we’re gonna do, but we’re just taking this one step at a time.
I really see the business side of this. The people that see this as a business opportunity, as an investment opportunity, are really bringing about great change and I appreciate the ones who believe in American enterprise and how America can create jobs, create change. So if you are interested I encourage you to reach out and find someone to invest in this because it’s tricky, yet the more people insist on making it legitimate the more legitimate it will become. So I encourage people to put some of their old fears aside and really jump into this with the American gusto that we have.
credit:420intel.com
