Why I’m Leaving Big Beer for a Cannabis Career

When I tell people that I’m leaving my stable job with a multinational corporation in an established industry, some look puzzled. When I add that I’m leaving said job to work at a startup in the cannabis space, people fall off their chairs. 

After they re-mount, I tell them what I told my new team during initial interviews, and what I told my parents when I revealed my green aspirations, and what I told my wife when first pitching the opportunity. It’s personal, it’s professional, and it’s good.

It’s Personal

After years of struggling with the incongruity between my personal experience and the “marijuana-is-bad” mantra spouted throughout my life by well-intentioned suburban policemen lecturing to my classrooms, I’ve officially concluded that we have been fed some pretty bogus information about a pretty incredible plant. As relieved as I feel at resolving my internal conflict, I’m equally pissed that this history of misinformation and manipulation has spawned the legal infrastructure, financial incentives, and attitudes that continue to keep this plant out of the hands of people for whom it would provide great benefit.

Since humans learned to light a fire and puff on sticks, plants such as cannabis have been used for a variety of useful and healthful purposes. Regarding cannabis in particular, in addition to providing a pleasant and safe mental respite from the slings and arrows of human toil, over 5,000 years of anecdotal evidence suggests that cannabis can help with anxiety, nausea, depression, seizures, gut problems, and pain – even the pain of cancer. An increasing number of small scientific studies have corroborated that word-of-mouth evidence, but controlled clinical trials in the US are all but impossible given the Schedule 1 status of the plant. As you probably know, Schedule 1 means that the government considers cannabis to have a high risk of abuse and no medical benefits. It’s the same classification attributed to heroin and ecstasy (MDMA). According to this scale, the government thinks that cannabis is actually worse than meth (Schedule 2). I call bullshit. 

Despite the Schedule 1 tag, an increasingly savvy and skeptical populace, combined with some courageously unbiased research, is finally turning the legislative tide: nine states and Washington, D.C. now permit medical and recreational use, while 29 have legalized medical cannabis. I wasn’t crazy after all.

It’s Professional

Imagine being a skilled beer brewer or distributor at the tail end of prohibition. If you somehow knew – or believed – that the history of the alcohol industry would play out as it has, you’d be tap-dancing, and your skeptical life mate would swear that your eyes had transformed into actual emerald dollar signs, a la Scrooge McDuck.

The trend of cannabis legalization throughout the country evidences a growing recognition of the safety and value of cannabis. I believe that more and more states will legalize medical cannabis. Then, more states will legalize the recreational use of cannabis for adults. Then, the federal government will surrender because the tax benefit will far outweigh the outcry from aging white folks who will always be freaked out by herb. Then, it’s gonna go bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

For all you number-crunchers, “bananas” means that the cannabis market grew to $10B-ish in the US in 2017 and is projected to triple in the following five or six years.

The beer industry, which is the industry in which I cut my professional teeth, is perfectly set up to leverage the mainstreaming of cannabis to turn a massive profit. The distribution network is best in class (when is the last time you went into a convenience store that didn’t carry Bud Light?) and beer wholesalers are already held to the stringent standards of the three-tier system[1]; cannabis will likely be held to very similar (if not identical) rules. The products are complementary and, although some brewers will certainly argue that their top line is going to suffer as consumers split their $50 between cannabis products and beer instead of just beer, both products play a social and relatively benign role in our daily lives. 

The beer industry, despite its favorable position to cash in, has not budged enough to convince me that the mass budging will happen soon. To be fair, certain companies (that shall remain nameless given my entrenched loyalties) have already put their money where their hoppy mouths are with investments in Canadian cannabis companies. But most big guys are sitting on the sidelines, waiting for federal movement. Hence my departure from the industry.  

It’s Good

Yes, I believe that the cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis is a good thing. But what do I mean by “good?” To me, “good” shows up in three main areas of our lives: wellness, honesty, and kindness.

Wellness. I wish wellness for everyone – me, my family, my friends, and every single one of you. Those small scientific studies I mentioned have indicated that, among other positive effects, cannabis can (1) reduce anxiety, (2) relieve nausea, (3) decrease pain, (4) diminish or prevent certain epileptic seizures, (5) slow the progression of certain disease conditions, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and certain cancers, (6) reduce inflammation and pain caused by arthritis, and (7) improve sleep. That’s wellness. And that’s good.

Honesty. Our society reveres honesty as a noble attribute, yet accepts rampant dishonesty and manipulation, often without objection. I object. I no longer wish to stay dutifully silent while participating in our dishonest political, commercial, or social activities. Cannabis is not the “Devil’s Weed” or a “gateway drug.” Cannabis will not turn you into a criminal. In fact, cannabis might actually help you through your chemotherapy. At the very least, eating a cannabis brownie will take the edge off a difficult day. And, at the risk of inviting a more severe backlash to this post than I already expect, the prisoners still languishing in prison for cannabis-related offences are victims, not threats.

Kindness. We all seek meaning in our lives. For me, meaning is found in the way we have treated others – in the quality and character of the connections we make along our path. At the end of my run, I would very much like the majority of my connections to reflect kindness, which is just another word for love.

FYI, E-commerce

So, off I go to work in the cannabis field, striving to work honestly and kindly and to spread wellness to as many folks as possible. My new employer is Jane, a cannabis e-commerce company that provides real-time inventory for customers and allows them to shop like they shop for everything else. We partner with dispensaries, which are driven by hardworking small business owners. 

I chose Jane because the company is a cut above the competition in several ways: they enable patients to find exactly what type of medicine they need (there’s wellness); they only allow real customers to review shops in order to reduce “fake” endorsements (there’s honesty); and they’re committed to maximizing the benefit of their business activities for both dispensaries and users (there’s kindness).

Stay tuned.

[1] Originally a byproduct of the elimination of prohibition, the “three-tier system” refers to the rules surrounding the manufacture and distribution of alcohol. Brewer / Distiller is Tier 1, Distributor is Tier 2, Retailer is Tier 3, and all legal alcohol must flow sequentially through these stages, with some weird state exceptions. It was meant to stop brewers from controlling everything.