Jeff Freeman’s earliest memory of cannabis isn’t one of smoking a joint or walking into a dispensary. It’s of walking in on his older cousins in his grandmother’s Seattle home, bagging up a quarter pound.

Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!

“They were cool, had money, had girls, and Jordans to match every outfit,” he remembers. “It was strange because I grew up knowing the severity of what they were doing, and I felt like I needed to remind them of how dangerous it was.”

It was the first time he saw how cannabis could be both alluring and risky: a duality that has shaped his perspective ever since.

A Childhood Shaped by the War on Drugs

When Freeman was three, his father was killed in a drug deal. His mother, left to raise two children alone, turned to alcohol to cope. Freeman grew up in NA and AA meeting rooms, surrounded by stories of addiction, survival, and loss. He saw firsthand how the War on Drugs hit Black and Brown families, how it tore communities apart.

“I was completely against cannabis for years,” he says. “It wasn’t until my mom was suffering from chronic pain and asked me to look into the benefits that I saw it through a different lens; not as a vice, but as healing and liberation.”

Turning Distrust Into a Mission

When Freeman eventually entered the cannabis industry, he carried that skepticism with him. “I had a lifetime of negative perceptions from spending so much time in recovery meetings, hearing how drugs and alcohol ruined lives,” he says. “But I also found people with substance behind their goals, and I realized the industry needed more balance.”

At the time, he was running a small clothing brand, managing nightclubs, and going to college. Cannabis, he thought, could be a space where creativity, community, and ambition intersected. “I used something that had caused the biggest wound in my life as fuel to rewrite my own story,” he says.

Building With Intention

Freeman’s perspective shifted when he met engineer and future co-founder Adam Melero. “He changed how I saw cannabis, from being just flower-based and terpene-driven to thinking about modes of administration, mixed extracts, and clean craft cannabis,” Freeman says.

Together, they focused on delivering pure, consistent products that patients and consumers could rely on. “It became our ethos of conscious capitalism,” Freeman says. “The people funding our small business, our customers, stayed top of mind, and we reinvested their money back into the product.”

What the Industry Still Gets Wrong

Freeman has seen most corners of the cannabis landscape: the corporate side, the legacy market, the startup grind. The biggest misconception, he says, is underestimating how hard it is to build something sustainable. “The industry forces you to reinvent yourself. You have to surround yourself with diverse thinkers and balance legacy knowledge with professionalism.”

He also believes legalization came at a cultural cost. “The pre-legal world had mutual risk and real connection. People had to be vulnerable, transparent, and engage face-to-face. Once that was gone, it became faceless, competitive, and in some cases self-serving. We lost some of the culture that made this industry worth fighting for.”

Why He Still Believes

Despite the challenges, Freeman sees the industry moving back toward its roots. “People matter. Products matter. Money spent is an investment in others,” he says. “The operators still standing have learned to stay level-headed, focus on their teams, and put energy into innovation and best practices.”

After decades of personal loss, cultural change, and business lessons, his hope is simple: “An industry that remembers where it came from, honors its roots, and builds a future worth passing on.”

Photo courtesy of Jeff Freeman

The post ‘I Used The Biggest Wound In My Life As Fuel’: How The War On Drugs Shaped A Cannabis Entrepreneur first appeared on High Times.