Alaska is seemingly incensed over the growing number of legal cannabis businesses starting to flower in the state, as officials are attempting to burn one of its home-grown and most dedicated activists with a rash of criminal charges.
These days, Charlo Greene is busier than ever and generally taking the cannabis world by storm, between her highly popular daily talk show, her new CBD beauty line, and a range of outreach efforts. Unlike many of LA’s leading cannapreneurs, however, she’s also paying a heavy price for weed’s earlier days, and for her role in helping to create the nation’s fastest-growing industry for employment.
In 2014, the then-reporter made a splash overnight when she announced live on Alaska station KTVA that she was quitting in order to dedicate her time to cannabis legalization and access as co-founder of the Alaska Cannabis Club (ACC), the subject of her broadcast segment. She proceeded to do just that, and continued using her home as a venue for adults in legal possession of medicinal cannabis to share it with others–specifically, club-members without their own supply who had no legal option to buy it under Alaska law, nor many more even after Greene helped pass more flexible legislation in 2015.
By 2016, however, it was clear that Alaska officials weren’t feeling so grateful. Rather, as The Guardian reported,”the state launched a series of undercover operations and raids,” finally charging the young activist with 10 felony and four misdemeanor counts relating to ACC operations that carry up to 54 years in prison. “It’s almost dizzying when you try to make sense of it,” she told the Guardian last summer. “It could literally cost me the rest of my adult life.”
In an interview last week, Greene pointed out that her home state also charged her with the crimes after Alaskans had voted to decriminalize cannabis for recreational use. Because the process of changing the statues determines when laws actually start to take effect, she explained, Alaska authorities were able to mount their case against her as the window to do so closed around them.
“Because of me, no one will ever again have to face in the state of Alaska what I’m facing there now,” she commented by phone.
By all accounts, Greene and her operation seem to have been afforded very special attention from authorities there. She recalled that on the day police first raided the club, a murder had occurred two blocks away that same morning, about three hours before police arrived at her home.
“More than a dozen officers spent the whole day going through my belongings,” she said. “Two years later, that murder is still unsolved.”
Courtesy Charlo Greene via YouTube
Greene hosts veterans’ activist and Haas grad Sean Kiernan, CFO of the Weed for Warriors Project, on an episode of ‘The Weed Show.’
As a result of her activism and Alaska’s objections thereof, Greene must now spend a whopping amount of her working life trying to demonstrate the many benefits of cannabis reform for any potential jurors that may be watching, as well as the world at large. “As the person on trial, my job now is to explain the why behind weed,” she said. With her trial approaching this fall, Greene has also redoubled her efforts to spread the word about cannabis through a rigorous broadcast schedule.
Launched earlier this year, “The Weed Show” has already hosted dozens of cannabis activists, patients, and creatives, and shared numerous stories of triumph and challenge with cannabis alongside the entrepreneur’s own. Surrounded by samples of the industry’s leading products and brands (and often testing them), Greene presides over the show each weekday with warmth and wit, inviting guests to share their personal journeys with the plant with her growing audience of fans.
From veterans’ activists and doctors to porn stars and chefs, Greene and crew have encouraged guests of all walks to explain “the why behind weed” for viewers around the world, demonstrating a host of familiar and new applications. Even for Greene, a veteran journalist and cannabis entrepreneur, the experience has proved both mind-opening and moving.
“Because my team and I work so hard–there’s always another deadline, always something we need to keep in mind–we don’t always take time to take in what we’ve accomplished,” she said.
“We’ve had a pregnant woman smoking weed on our show because it’s safer than available medications, which could cause terrible birth defects. We’ve had an 11-year-old who suffers from epilepsy making cannabis-infused PB&J on the show. Last week [during our veterans special], we had Jaden, a transgender veteran, promoting cannabis for helping soldiers recover from combat injuries without dangerous, addictive pain medication.”
See also: California Could Become The Cannabis Industry’s Safe Haven
“This is why I became a journalist,” she added. “To shine a light on stories that can help other people. I didn’t have that opportunity in mainstream media, but now I’m the executive producer, in a world that’s so new, with so much to be discovered, and so much to be shared. It’s such a blessing to finally be doing what I got my degree to do.”
Meanwhile, the industry that Greene is helping to define has been slow to respond in a number of ways, and especially regarding entrepreneurs of color. Across California, activists like Green have “taken a stand to demand that people most affected by marijuana prohibition have a stake in the industry now,” she noted, but standing legislation and bias have kept the number of dispensary owners of color under 1% in the state.
“It’s so important to me, as one of most visible people in cannabis, to show others that the industry is for them–that the community that exists right now is for them,” she said. “In cannabis, you don’t have to fit anyone’s mold; you can create you own.”
At the same time, Greene pointed out, “If you look at prison stats, the majority of people who have served time and given their lives for their industry are disproportionately black and people of color.”
“It’s disappointing,” she said. “The industry knows that it’s happening, but the ones in power are the ones with money.”
Courtesy Charlo Greene via YouTube
Nevertheless, Greene and her dedicated followers aren’t dissuaded by the challenges of their quest to spread awareness and change laws. “It makes sense that we do this in the legislative process. Fortunately, we legalized in Alaska, and California has stepped into some form [of legality], and we’re building alliances to fight for your right to safe, clean medicine.”
As difficult as that fight has been in certain states, Greene is also all too familiar with the process, from both her work as journalist and activist and her experience being targeted by officials in her home state. “Change only happens because of citizen initiates, and residents in many states can collaborate to pass initiatives toward legalization there.”
And while half of the states in our nation don’t allow citizens to change laws through that process, Greene urges reform-facing individuals to keep at it. “Lobby, and explain to people what cannabis is, why it’s necessary, why it’s a good thing, and not a bad thing. It’s all on you if you want to see that change.”
“I understood that as a reporter,” she said. “A lot of people ask me why I decided to take that stand. I didn’t have a personal stake in the [legalization battle] in Alaska–a suffering mother or grandmother, or a sick kid who couldn’t access the medication they need.”
“I took that stand for those who couldn’t, and because I hope someone would do the same for my grandmother,” she explained. “If I wasn’t able to, I would pray the other people would find a way to help her.”
See also: Research Suggests Legal Cannabis Is Failing To Corrupt Youth
In the time that Greene has spent successfully launching her cannabis businesses and doing the back-breaking work of preparing her public defense, Alaska has been ramping up its own entrance into the rapidly growing industry.
After a series of considerable stops and starts, the state now hopes to launch a feasible regulative network and even a series of cannabis business and community events as early as next month. According to the rather better established news site The Cannabist, however, Alaska’s current cannabis industry lacks a “unified voice” to guide it through the complicated tasks involved in state-wide operation. Lobbyist Taylor Bickford told the site, “What you have is a number of disparate voices that probably are mostly close to being on the same page, but in a lot of cases are not.”
Unfortunately for Alaska, of course, an absence of strong leadership or a unified public voice is often the result–as in Greene’s case–of government attempts to silence those citizens who speak out.
Thankfully for the industry as a whole, however, Charlo Greene has no intention of keeping quiet.
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