by Alex Cooley, Solstice

The Life of a Cannabis Grower – 10 years from the first plant

When asked to write for the NCIA blog, I first thought I’m not sure if anyone really wants to read my ramblings via an open blog format. So I thought about where most of my cannabis conversations start and end. More often than not, I am asked how I started out, what it has been like, and where I think the industry, Solstice, and myself are headed. Recently I celebrated 10 years cultivating the cannabis plant and I figured this format is as good as any to rehash (pun intended) the last decade of my life.

In 2006 at the ripe age of 21, I took my first step into the cannabis cultivation world for two reasons; an act of civil disobedience, and so that my friends and I could have the best cannabis around. I was given a few seeds and a light from a close friend and in a rather paranoid fashion I began my journey in a small closet in my one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. I read everything I could get my hands on and constantly experimented with the plant. Faster than I had imagined, I was through several harvests and quickly converting my bedroom into a grow room. As the size of my grow increased, so grew my paranoia and I determined I could no longer risk my future by illegally growing cannabis.

Within days of deciding to stop growing I was introduced to the realities of medical cannabis and that I could cultivate legally with a doctor’s recommendation. Receiving my first recommendation was a massive catalyst of learning and consciousness. As a person who dealt with chronic pain for most of his life and as a respite care provider, my world was forever improved. I realized that I personally could massively benefit from the medical values of the plant and as a care provider I could help to provide these values to others. Upon that realization I jumped head first into the pool and rented my first grow house.

All the while I was growing medical cannabis for others and myself, I never planned on doing it forever. During this time I was going to college to obtain degrees in education and I never saw “Elementary Teacher’s Marijuana Grow House Discovered by Seattle Police Department” as being a good headline or one that would help me further my career as an educator. It was planned that I would stop growing at the scale I was when I finished college, but it turned out that the universe had different plans for me. My world changed forever when Seattle Public Schools went on a hiring freeze and I was told it would be years before I could get a job in Seattle.

At that point I was lost and if it were not for a good friend, Trek Hollnagel, who I had taught to grow, opened my eyes to the reality of a career in the new world of the cannabis industry. To say the least in those early days we had little to no clue what we were doing. We went from moving to California, to deciding to “revolutionize” medical cannabis in Washington by starting four companies from dispensaries to merchant services. Of course we attempted to do all of these at once. After a few years of being pulled in 1,000 directions I decided to bow out and begin a new adventure. It was then in early 2011 I founded Solstice with Will Denman and hoped to only be pulled in 100 directions by focusing on cultivation.

Will and I started Solstice with the goal of helping to legitimize and normalize medical cannabis by being a public cannabis cultivator that was transparent about what we did and why, with everyone from law enforcement to patients. Simply put, we wanted to take the plant from what marijuana was to what cannabis can be. This was a rather crazy concept at that point in Washington’s history, but we took Steve DeAngelo’s charge of “out of the shadows and into the light” to heart. When the first Times article came out about how we were building the state’s first fully permitted cultivation facility, my paranoia was elevated to say the least.

Fortunately, instead of being cast out of society and thrown in prison we were embraced and celebrated. This gave us a platform to further our goal of helping to legitimize/normalize and we were welcomed in by legislators and regulators to craft what the world of regulated cannabis was going to look like. It was then that we successfully helped to write and pass our first ordinance for cannabis at the city level. From there under the Solstice flag we have helped to craft countless pieces of legislation and regulation from the neighborhood micro level in the SoDo District to the international stage at the United Nations and everything in between. Though we spend a lot of our time working on policy (I’m currently on a plane to DC to lobby Congress with NCIA!) we actually grow a good amount of cannabis.

At Solstice we have done so much with the plant and a have stellar team that has grown the business beyond my wildest dreams. It’s crazy, we’ve gone from starting the company in the downstairs of my house to building multiple state of the art facilities and working with sun-grown partner farms with canopy exceeding acres and acres of cultivation in both the medical and adult uses systems. We are also very proud to have the distinction of being the first cannabis brand in the first fully legal state. Along the way, we have grown cannabis that has won countless awards, stopped children from having seizures, at a high point employing 75 people, and had a lot of fun along the way.

Looking back ten years to that day I propagated those first seeds in my closet, I am overwhelmed with gratitude. I have been so incredibly fortunate to get to learn so much, grow a business, manage to succeed while failing a lot, make life-long friends, and some say, change the world. Going from not planning to do this for that long to not even being able to comprehend doing something else with my life; it’s been quite a ride. In truth for me, cannabis is my life’s work.

Here’s to at least 10 more years!

Alex Cooley
Vice President & Co-Founder
Solstice

For more information about my story, please check out the Solstice Company Story video:

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