After making moves on the court for close to two decades, retired NBA power forward Al Harrington is now making moves in the cannabis industry. Harrington is the CEO and co-founder of Viola, the largest premium Black-owned, multi-national cannabis company which recently opened its first brick-and-mortar space in St. Louis. 

But growing up in a family where some members struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, Harrington didn’t become interested in marijuana until he was playing professionally in the NBA.

On this episode of The Plant Lady, Harrington discusses his early encounters with the drug in pro sports, how it aided his grandmother, and how he’s using his platform to advocate for a more equitable cannabis industry.

Named after his late grandmother who used cannabis to treat her glaucoma, Viola pays homage to the drug that allowed his grandma to read her Bible for the first time in years. “For her to be open-minded enough to try cannabis, it made me realize that what we’re doing is God’s work,” Harrington says “God put this plant here for a reason.”

Harrington firmly believes marijuana has the power to bring people and communities together, even if many people still have issues with the plant. “I think the main thing that [my grandmother’s story] does to me is it humanizes the plant,” Harrington says. “[That] allows people to let their guard down and have a real conversation.”

In his quest for a more-informed cannabis industry, Harrington has spoken with politicians across the US where the drug is legal either medically or recreationally—including Senator Chuck Schumer.

Harrington also discusses his desire for others to know the hurdles that Black businessmen and women face in the cannabis industry. We still have a long way to go in order to achieve social equity, he argues, while sharing the importance of understanding predatory investors preying on minority business owners.

With so much work that still needs to be done, Harrington continues to use his platform to advocate for positive changes in the world of marijuana. “Hopefully brands like mine and others that I know of as well, we can continue to make the investment back into the communities like we said we would,” Harrington says.

Baking in the sun is one of our favorite pastimes here in San Diego. Find your favorite sol spot and watch your stress melt away while you enjoy a natural and organic vitamin D mood booster. Bright and warm like the city, Humboldt Family Farms maintains the same energy up North in the Emerald Triangle with a cannabis cultivation process that leads with sun-grown production and legacy farming.

Scott Vasterling, co-owner of Humboldt Family Farms, chats with host Jackie Bryant on this week’s episode of The Plant Lady about how the farm went from a major supplier for outside brands to establishing itself as a hub for local growers through community cultivation. Joining the podcast this week is San Diego Magazine’s very own Troy Johnson, CCO and co-host of the Happy Half Hour, who just happens to be Scott’s fraternity brother when the two were at Chico State.

Reminiscing on uni days and first times, the trio also dive into Humboldt Family Farms’ beginnings following a meet-cute at the Beachcomber Cafe where Scott met his wife, a second generation cannabis farmer and owner of the restaurant. After introducing him to the sun-grown weed industry flourishing in Humboldt County, their fate was sealed. Much like the agriculture business, Scott explained that this was an easy transition for him and was most likely going to be a part of his life as he grew up on his grandfather’s farm.

“I just naturally moved into it,” Scott says on this week’s episode. “From the wilderness and the outdoors and farming was a really smooth transition for me, especially with the sun-grown.”

So the duo jumped right in and grew with an intent to sell to distributors. However, 80 percent of the product was leaving the county unbranded, he continues. People didn’t know where it was coming from or the care taken by local farms all around Humboldt to ensure this organic, naturally derived plant. For them, it was time to enrich their own community and connect growers directly to consumers.

“Let’s just have this collaboration on behalf of the community,” he says. “Let's use Humboldt Family Farms as a mechanism for all of us to come together.”

With love, a new side of Humboldt Family Farms was born.

The brand creates recognition for award-winning legacy growers in the local region and brings together small-batch farmers such as Amaranth Farms, Full Moon Farms, and Neukon Family Farms. With a richer cannabinoid profile and terpene, Humboldt Family Farms has perfected sun-grown cannabis while also syndicating the market around them. Although navigating regulation has become costly because of California legalization in 2016, the company hopes to continue nourishing its tight-knit community in the heart and soul of Humboldt County.

“Let’s just have this collaboration on behalf of the community,” Scott says. “Let’s use Humboldt Family Farms as a mechanism for all of us to come together.”

To learn more about Scott Vasterling and the farms, listen to this week’s full episode of The Plant Lady.

Cannabis legislation has come a long way since its initial breakthrough in 1996 when California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana through the Compassionate Use Act. Within two decades, 38 states followed suit where some have legalized it recreationally. While it is a state issue now, a pressing issue of how cannabis should be regulated and by who continues to trend and spark activism for federal legislation.

From a quaint Airbnb in Bulgaria, Boston University law professor and author Jay Wexler joins this week’s episode of The Plant Lady to discuss national policy making, local authority over cannabis access, and his latest book, Weed Rules: Toward a Just, Joyous, and Sensible Marijuana Policy in a Post-Legalization Nation, which dives into the basics around these topics.

His perspective on the next steps: tackling local restrictions and expanding interstate commerce.

Although cannabis is recreationally legal in the state of California, lawmakers have enshrined local control to cities and town ordinances that allow them to create their own rules about how to manage access to the weed industry—giving authorities the power to prohibit cannabis sales, zone and prohibit cannabis businesses within their jurisdiction, and restrict distribution.

As Jay puts it during the episode, this political move only feeds into the fear and stigma of cannabis as a second or third class activity. In reality, the plant “provides millions of Americans with treatment for a wide range of ailments as well as happiness, joy, and euphoria,” he says.

Legislators presenting and instituting cannabis laws are often ill-informed and uneducated on the industry, as well as the growing national market. Thus, federal legalization is not politically viable at this time, according to Jay. However, local control is widely supported among voters because it serves as a step forward in terms of progressing as a society and accepting that cannabis is a tool for most to improve their lives.

“People can vote for cannabis legalization without worrying that it’s going to affect them,” he says during the episode. “There’s a significant number of people who vote in these initiatives or support legalization of cannabis that believe that cannabis should not be illegal and that people should not be going to prison. But, at the same time, don’t want a cannabis store next door.”

Currently on sabbatical, Jay visited law schools in south Asia and Europe in an expedition to explore their teachings and dabble in research for cannabis legislation among these countries—many of which have not legalized weed in any sort of capacity. The industry was almost untouched in Bhutan, one of the regions most memorable for Jay as he visited the Jigme Singye Wangchuck School of Law, and found that cannabis grew casually on the side of the road. The country’s grass is more valuable than the average blade, but, even though its philosophy is “Gross National Happiness,” he recalls hemp’s only use is to feed farm pigs.

It makes us wonder: should there be a greater push for federal legalization here in the States, or are we lucky to have made it this far? Host Jackie and Jay tackle this debate and more on his newly released book, Weed Rules: Toward a Just, Joyous, and Sensible Marijuana Policy in a Post-Legalization Nation in this week’s episode of The Plant Lady.

Although California originated as the sunny cannabis hub—dense with growers in the north and saturated consumption in the south—San Diego doesn’t quite fit into the narrative. After Prop. 215, the law that legalized medical cannabis in the state passed, the cities of the west coast were able to open up shop and a new, more by the book, operating system fell into place.

Up until 2016, the timeline in which weed went recreational, local governments restricted the number of licenses and dispensaries able to post up in their regions. One of the most conservative and regulated being San Diego.

On this week’s episode of The Plant Lady, Jackie sits down with jack of all trades, female empowerer, and owner of a San Diego local cannabis retailer JM Balbuena who got her start in the industry not long after Prop. 64 passed. In a newer fashion, JM opened her wellness brand and dispensary, Jaxx Cannabis, as a medical operation and breaks down what it’s like to acquire a legal license in a county that wants to scrub cannabis culture from its image.

But by waiting her turn and playing by the county’s rules, Jaxx Cannabis was able to start running and stay within its communities—unlike some of their competitors. JM recalls during the show that a lot of her success keeping her business running is attributed to patience and working for the system instead of against it.

The host and guest reminisce about the low-key dispensaries scattered around every neighborhood and the elaborate rouses needed as a front to keep them open like under-stocked coffee shops or deserted medical clinics. It’s not that these shops were selling illegal drugs, but that there weren’t enough licenses allowing businesses to sell weed in the cities. When supply meets demand and opportunity strikes, hundreds of dispensaries found ways to continue operation.

As one of few female cannabis entrepreneurs in pursuit of a thriving local business competing with multi-state operated companies, JM knew the type of game she needed to play in order to reach her goals. Owning a small business like Jaxx and advocating for social equity amongst the cannabis industry—as well as in the San Diego communities where her brand stood—connected her with the residents of Ramona, Mount Hope, and La Mesa who chose her over a larger company, Curaleaf, who competed for the same license.

It took JM’s commitment to authenticity, advocacy, and a mission to contribute to their economic ecosystem to finally receive an invitation into the community. Jaxx Cannabis and JM are currently working with the Mount Hope Community Alliance Program to restore a park in the area to signify it as a landmark of San Diego. The local cannabis brand, like others, helps fund social projects that will, in turn, uplift the collective population.

“The culture is compassion and community. Those two things are the pillars of cannabis,” she says during the episode. “You can have the money but if people aren’t supporting you because they don’t feel that sense of culture, that sense of community, that sense of — you know — this is something good for the world and it’s just capitalism, then it’s not going to last long.”

JM also leads Synergy Studios, providing filmmaking, content creation, and executive production to leading brands in the cannabis industry. She currently serves as CMO for Prime Harvest Inc., a technology-focused full-service cannabis corporation horizontally diversified across various segments of the cannabis value chain including licensing acquisition and compliance management and direct-to-consumer operations.

Read JM Balbuena’s debut book The Successful Canna-preneur for aspiring leaders in the rapidly-growing industry of cannabis. To stay up-to-date on the expansion of Jaxx Cannabis, follow @jaxx.sandiego and @_jmbalbuena on Instagram.

California has had its cannabis market up and running since the ‘70s. Being illegal, it wasn’t as polished as it is today, with fancy dispensaries and government oversight. However, it’s still the largest trade in the country. This week, for episode five of The Plant Lady, we are transported across the country to the East Coast—where legalization has taken a much different path.

On this week’s episode of The Plant Lady, Jackie talks to CEO and co-founder of Happy Munkey Vladimir Bautista. This internationally known New York City lifestyle company is one that’s synonymous with cannabis culture. Alongside company partner and high school friend Ramon Reyes, the duo created Happy Munkey in 2017 to host spaces where people can hang and share their love for weed. Uniquely, these events were often set ablaze in swanky cocktail bars; uptown, immersive art playgrounds; and VIP rooftops, all to empower and elevate the cannabis community during a time when consumers were still made to feel like criminals.

The brand works to dismantle the stigma still prevalent on the East Coast, where distribution (colloquially known as dealing) dominates the culture over generational farming, which is the bedrock of culture more common in California. Happy Munkey connects politicians, chefs, doctors, influencers, athletes, and creative artists through its high-profile events, but it also shows this culture has a solid place in NYC now and is more normalized on a social level.

Vlad and Ramon seek out more than placing cannabis as a ubiquitous note in New York’s resurfacing nightlife; their mission to extend activism for a more positive outlook on weed comes from Vlad’s humble beginnings in the industry from a neighborhood in Harlem. Cannabis plays a large part in his success—not only as a businessman, but as a human being.

“One day when I was 16-years-old, I told myself, ‘You know what? I’m going to buy an ounce and if it doesn’t sell, I’ll smoke it. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain,” Vlad says. “If it wasn’t for that, I don’t think I would be here with you, Jackie.”

Growing up in Hamilton Heights, a neighborhood ravaged by the War on Drugs while he was a kid, Vlad notes that his opportunities to flourish financially were limited, and he was often surrounded by people going down skewed paths in order to survive. This included using or selling harder drugs on the streets. But cannabis was an afterthought in his community, so the CEO took a chance and found his economic stability and life purpose by selling weed before he caught a few charges decades ago.

“If I grew up with 100 people, I’m probably like one of the 10 left because, you know, it was a rough era,” he says. “So I would say cannabis saved my life because if it wasn’t for cannabis, I probably would’ve ended up with the rest of the statistics because there weren’t that many options of income.”

Today, he and his high school friend are jumping into New York’s fledgling legal industry with Happy Munkey. With Vlad’s industry resources and Ramon’s creative ideas to create a legacy market and pop-up consumption lounges, Happy Munkey was born. However, building the brand is half of the battle.

The company developed itself on lively events hosted and organized across New York City, as well as with merchandise, a podcast, and an e-magazine. The other half comes with its activism to further legalization. Eventually, Happy Munkey hopes to be granted a dispensary license, particularly considering its qualifications as a social equity applicant, owing to the fact that they are owners who were impacted by the justice system and the War on Drugs, which is a criteria for gaining early licensure in New York.

“For the first time in history, the smaller players like me are going first and the [multi-state operators] have to wait,” Vlad says.

Eyes are set on producing more community engagement through streams of education and wellness training at the brand. Find out more about their recent event with Columbia University and what they’re working on by listening to this week’s episode of The Plant Lady with Jackie Bryant.

We’ll leave you with one of Vlad’s mantras to sweeten your day and ours: “You’re too blessed to be stressed, things will always get greater later, and always choose happy.”

Up until recently, cannabis had a pretty rough reputation. It wasn’t until California legalized medical marijuana in 1996 that its image transformation began in earnest, rebranding the plant from a so-called hippie drug to a more respected substance taken seriously in the medical community. At the forefront of this shift was Dr. Michelle Sexton—a naturopathic doctor (N.D.), professor, and researcher who has studied the use of cannabis to treat disease and disorder for more than a decade.

Now serving within UC San Diego’s department of anesthesiology (she was the first N.D. hired by the university) and as a clinician at the UCSD Center for Integrative Medicine, Michelle has come a long way since her first encounters with horticulture at natural stores in her native west Texas. Always fascinated by the relationships between plants and their functions as remedies, she began her career as a midwife and herbalist before returning to school for a post-doctoral pharmacology fellowship. Since then, the healthcare advocate has dedicated the last 13 years of her career to studying the endocannabinoid system and what role cannabis can play in helping people combat all kinds of illnesses and disorders.

In her early days as a researcher in Seattle, her access to cannabis (and cannabinoid compounds like THC, CBD, and CBN) was limited to what they could part with at the University of Mississippi, which was once the only U.S. institution growing weed for research purposes. She acted as a trailblazer of the Washington healthcare community by opening the first cannabis testing facility in the state in 2010. She also developed its professional standards of operation—principles that are still in use today—just three years later.

Although cannabis remains criticized in mainstream media and limited from a recreational standpoint in other states (as well as still federally illegal), Michelle received very little backlash from her research exploring how cannabis compounds might be utilized to provide relief for patients with multiple sclerosis and Dravet syndrome, a seizure-inducing disorder occurring in infants, causing epilepsy and intellectual and growth delays. Even within pediatrics, her studies were promising enough to garner the support of neurologists and practitioners who have since begun using cannabinoids to treat children with Dravet syndrome and other serious disorders.

Sexton continues to couple the knowledge she’s gathered from years of studying and implementing successful cannabis use with her passion for treating patients in the most holistic way possible. At UCSD, she teaches fellows in pain management, addiction, and palliative care about cannabinoid medicine and how to apply it to their practice.

“My philosophical background … is all about treating the whole person and systems … and looking at how is everything combining to give this symptom profile,” Michelle says. “You know, it’s not about one molecule [or] one target.”

In addition to her many accomplishments in the still-new study of cannabinoid medicine, Michelle works in education on a larger scale. She founded the Green Women’s Guide, a course on the endocannabinoid system and women’s health across all stages of life, with the mission of teaching women how to use cannabis as a tool to aid in reproductive health, postpartum, and wellness practices.

To learn more about the ways in which cannabis is used as medicine and the tenets offered in the Green Women’s Guide, listen to the full episode of The Plant Lady with Dr. Michelle Sexton.

If you want to know if you’re smoking the best flower out there, don’t stop at just the strain name. Go further into the rabbit hole and explore where it’s grown, how it’s made, where it comes from. Better yet, choose a product featured at The Emerald Cup—the ground zero for cannabis competitions built to judge the best weed on the market.

On this week’s episode of The Plant Lady, Jackie chats with founder Tim Blake and his daughter Taylor about the upcoming award show, which will take place in Northern California in May. The 19th annual competition brings together the top cannabis producers from all over California to show off their product in over 50 judgeable categories. The categories range from flower, cartridges, pre-rolls, solventless and BHO concentrates, and edibles to alternative cannabinoids, innovative products, photo, and dispensaries.

The Emerald Cup started out as a small competition between friends when Tim and his grower pals would try each other's weed and pick which one really hit the spot. Before legalization, that’s really all they could do as both producers and consumers feared prosecution. But since those more low-key, informal days, the loud and proud community expands each year alongside the cup, always priding themselves on authenticity and keeping genuine cannabis culture thriving.

As of 2021, the cup began hosting a festival-style celebration since their one off competition wasn’t enough time for producers to share space and talk shop. With the legal industry growing as each year passes, the latest developments in plant genetics and infusions needed a place for exposure. And so, the Emerald Cup Harvest Ball was born, running each December before the May awards show.

Live music, vendor collaborations, and a farmer’s market appeal to connect consumers directly to the product made this event a hit. The Cup has always been the state’s premier cannabis event, but Tim and Taylor wanted to make a much deeper impact in the community when it came to growing practices and the livelihoods of those who dedicate their careers to the plant.

Last year, the Cup launched the Small Farms initiative to help growers in NorCal stay afloat and competitive in the face of big business. During the Harvest Ball, farmers who practice sun-grown cultivation with under 10,000 square feet of land were given complimentary or discounted vendor spaces at the event alongside other sponsors and brands.

“It’s been my favorite part of the show,” Taylor says on the episode of the Small Farms initiative. “It has so much life in it and you can just truly see that it means a lot to the community and to all of us because these farmers are the ones who deserve to have their place in the market and they deserve to have every single spotlight on them.”

Bringing small farming techniques to the forefront of their mission has been an important part in the Emerald Cup’s growth, she also says.. Tim chimes in, bringing into relief the plight that California’s small cannabis farmer face during the age of adult-use legalization.

“Most of the farmers throughout the Emerald Triangle in this state … weren’t all the way up to speed,” Tim says of when Prop 64 rolled out, giving big businesses and small farmers alike the same time horizon for going legal and fully permitted. “All of a sudden, they were faced with most of them having to put up $2-$300,000 just to get their ranches permitted.”

They knew these farmers could never compete with the large grows down south. Watching their region try to survive this inspired them to use the competition as a direct hub for the small business model of cannabis farming.

To find out more about the Small Farm initiative, as well as more details on the Emerald Cup Awards Show held on May 13, 2023, listen to the full episode of this week’s The Plant Lady and follow @theemeraldcup on Instagram for updates.