Cannabis is an annual flowering herb that’s been cultivated as far back as 12,000 BC. Medicinally, it was used throughout ancient China, India, the Middle East, classical Greece and Rome, even in ancient Netherlands. As hemp, it was grown to make rope, cloth and paper, and was one of George Washington’s the three primary crops. By the 19th century it was a common ingredient in potions for relieving pain. But beginning with the 20th century, it began to be seen as a poison. By the mid-1930s almost every state had regulated its use, and in 1970, the federal government classified it a Schedule 1 drug deeming it as having no accepted medical use. Yet a decade later, the government was studying its use for treating glaucoma as well as relieving pain from cancer and AIDS; and western states like New Mexico, Oregon, California and Colorado began to legalize its medical use. Maine joined them in 1999, and in 2016, the state approved retail sales to serve those with a medical card. But the establishment of retail outlets stayed in the hands of municipalities. Waldoboro has approved two such outlets, Highbrow in 2017 and Finest Kind in 2018. Eric Carlson is Finest Kind’s owner. He grew up in Owl’s Head, and his family was part of a close-knit, Baptist-leaning church. Eric was homeschooled and he went to church every Sunday. When his studies concluded, he attended Mid-Coast Technology for constructions. But it wasn’t a fit. When he had an offer to work offshore as a stern man, he seized it. He loved being outside and he loved hard work. A few years in, however, Eric tore his rotator cuff and then he tore it again. And so, Eric began to study natural remedies, something he’d always been interested in. It wasn’t long before he landed on cannabis. He kept on researching and learned that it was patient-specific. People were using it for alleviating conditions like cancer, epilepsy, drug addiction, spasms, inflammation, and anxiety. In 2017, Eric started Coastal Compassion, a delivery service. When regulations permitted him to open a storefront, he landed in Waldoboro with Finest Kind. At the same, to ensure that his cannabis is organic and entirely natural, he opened a pristine facility nearby where he grows cannabis indoors.
I never smoked weed as a teenager, because in our house, if you brought in a joint, you were out. But then I discovered that you didn’t have to smoke cannabis. There were tinctures, capsules, edibles, salves, all sorts of things. So, I tried a micro-dose for my shoulder pain, and it worked.
At the same time, my father was taking a lot of painkillers because years before he’d had a motorcycle accident and broke his back. He’d come home from work and have to lie on the floor for hours. He’d had over a dozen cortisone injections until his spine was scarred from it. He’d even started missing church because of it.
I kept thinking how I could get him to try cannabis. It had worked for me. So, I started to dig into the Biblical side of it. Very quickly I found Genesis 1:29-30 that says, “Every green herb bearing seed is for you to use as meat.”
I showed my father the verse, and he said, “That doesn’t mean you can smoke it.” And that’s when I told him there were other ways. Well, he brought it to the congregation, to the church elders, and they basically said to him, “It seems like there are a few verses here that suggest that it’s certainly not forbidden.”
After no more than a month, he was off all his painkillers. Completely. He was up, moving around and no longer lying flat at the end of the day. So, I was like, okay, if we’re going to use this as medicine, we probably shouldn’t be buying it from who knows who off the streets, and my parents allowed me to start growing three plants in my bedroom closet. other family members started finding out about us, and they started having relief. Then friends and people we’d met.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning because you have to find a cannabis-friendly bank, a cannabis-friendly attorney, a cannabis-friendly accountant, and a cannabis-friendly insurance. At the time when I started, I was only 22 or 23. It was scary.
But I believe everything has a purpose. I’m very strong in my faith and my personal relationship with God. I believe that cannabis is a part of a creation deemed perfect when it was created.
I read a lot about science and history, and science re-enforces my faith. I think that, while humankind can more or less ruin things and abuse things, in the proper time and place, cannabis can bring about a quality of life. If you have some kind of physical or mental ailment, that becomes your main focus. It prevents you from thinking of the deeper parts of life, and from examining the spiritual side of the world, digging into your soul and your place in the world. If cannabis can relieve that, it can give you a quality of life so that if you’re at a family picnic, you can pick up your grandkids again.
I am hopeful that, in the realm of cannabis, the stigma is going away. I’m already seeing how it’s opening people’s minds to question beyond what they think is true, to be open-minded and keep digging deeper. I am seeing how it’s already starting that process so that they go, “This isn’t what I was told it was, thought it was, and if this isn’t what I was told it was, maybe something else isn’t what I was told, either.”
Cannabis is just a plant that grows naturally. But to me, it has broader implications. It can help people open their minds to re-evaluate the things in their life. And so, for the world, I think there’s this great potential for an awakening.
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