Breaking the Stigma: Racism, the Opioid Endemic, Lies, and Inviting Grandma to the Dispensary

If there ever was a book that could be named the number one how-to guide on starting your own cannabis business, this would be it. This book covers so much more than just the selling of cannabis, however. It is full of personal stories from Author Charlena Berry as well as her friends and contributors Anna Shreeve and Betty Mitchell. What Charlena has put together in this book may help numerous people even if they decide building a business is not for them.

Understanding the cannabis industry can be very tricky. There are different rules for different states, however, by educating people about the benefits of cannabis, more and more states seem to have opened their eyes to why making cannabis legal to smoke, grow, and sell is beneficial for all. Charlena Berry’s story about how her younger brother Joe was given one half of an Oxycontin for a headache thus starting him on a downward spiral to a life of addiction is both heartbreaking and maddening. As Charlena states, no one has ever died from a cannabis overdose. No one. Yet doctors are prescribing the highly-addictive Oxycontin to patients every day. And even worse, kids are buying what they think is Oxy on the streets and these drugs may be laced with death-inducing fentanyl. The stigma that marijuana is bad and lumped into the same category as heroin, LSD, and meth is beyond me. But this is how Big Pharma works. They make big money off of pharmaceuticals and are able to pass them off as legal and get them approved by the FDA despite the fact that a natural solution can give the same pain relief.

Not only does Charlena talk about the stigma of cannabis, she also gives the readers a solution to the problem. Most of the book contains a full business plan of how to create your own cannabis business. This book is like a gold mine for the entrepreneur! With chapters on customer service, leadership, branding, merchandising, omnichannels, marketing, and story operations, Charlena has literally built a business for anyone who wants to give it a shot. The resources at the end of each chapter are also extremely useful in looking up further information. By growing the cannabis industry, we are not only helping ourselves, but we are also helping our friends, our families, and possibly protecting our future from the danger of painkiller addiction.

Even if you are not looking to start a business, Breaking the Stigma is an eye-opening read that everyone should read and understand about getting rid of the stigma behind cannabis.