Breaking Stigma Through Community
Kevin Bradley, general manager of Ethos’s Lynn, Massachusetts location, has watched the progression of public perception around cannabis with delight. Bradley, has long appreciated cannabis for its central role in promoting social unity and building community. Now, with record numbers of Americans supporting cannabis legalization across the board, Bradley says he welcomes the change with open arms.
“For the longest time, the perception was that people who smoke [cannabis] are lazy idiots who don’t do anything, but that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Bradley said. “More and more, you see people who are very successful working in the cannabis industry and not hiding their love for cannabis anymore.”
For Bradley, cannabis has long been part of his life. In college, he said, some of his strongest and longest-lasting friendships blossomed around a shared passion for cannabis.
“This plant brings together people from vastly different walks of life,” Bradley said. “From my experience, cannabis was the starting point for these relationships, and then we found out that there is a lot more in common than we thought. It helps you think outside the box a little and understand each other’s perspectives a little more. It’s a beautiful thing.”
After college, Bradley worked in hospitality, building a 10-year career in hotel management. When tourism and travel dollars dried up due to nationwide quarantines triggered by COVID-19, the jobs in that industry also disappeared. Bradley took this opportunity to explore uniting his personal passion with a professional trajectory, to pursue a career focused on the plant he has appreciated for more than a decade.
“Having the opportunity to work in an industry that sells the product I love is very cool,” Bradley said.
Each day, Bradley is immersed in a world of exciting new cannabis products and finds himself plugged into new research developments that are furthering our collective understanding of how cannabis helps make people feel better. One of his favorite parts of the job is continuously educating himself and his customers about the nuanced, complex realities of what makes cannabis work.
One common theme is the myth of high THC content. Many consumers understand that THC is the compound most commonly associated with cannabis’s intoxicating qualities. Therefore, many assume the higher the THC, the more potent the consumption experience. As researchers learn more about what makes cannabis work, though, it appears that that assumption is overly simplistic.
“A lot of our customers want the highest THC content they can get, or they know to ask for sativa or indica,” Bradley said, referring to another common cannabis myth that indica-leaning strains are always relaxing and sativa-leaning strains are always energizing. “But we talk to them about why there are a lot of good cultivars for their goals that might have lower THC content. We explain how there are a lot of terpenes and cannabinoids involved in how you feel.
“And honestly, I’ve learned a lot myself,” he added. “I was always a recreational consumer and I didn’t know very much. Becoming a more educated consumer is a cool thing.”
Elevating education and community are at the core of what Bradley hopes to bring to the cannabis industry. It all starts with his own team and their commitment to learning and sharing their experiences with one another and with customers, he said. A culture of taking the academic insights of researchers and making it personal and accessible to everyday consumers is what can make the difference for new people who walk into the dispensary, Bradley said. To do so, his team needs to be knowledgeable about each product on the shelf, but they also need to solicit detailed feedback from their customers. The learning experience is an ongoing two-way street, he said.
“We get to have these conversations every day and learn from our own experiences, as well as our customers’ experiences,” Bradley said. “It’s almost like sommeliers and wine. As we learn more, we have people who are like connoisseurs of cannabis.”
Ultimately, working in the legal cannabis industry has reaffirmed what Bradley always understood – cannabis is for everybody, and people who consume cannabis are just as likely to be motivated, successful, professional, loving people as anyone else. Seeing cannabis come out of the shadows has been a dream come true for Bradley, and learning so much about what makes the plant tick has been fascinating, he said.
But what’s even more special is watching the stigma associated with cannabis crumble and seeing so many people acknowledge that cannabis can play an important and beneficial role in all our communities.
“A lot of good people consume cannabis, so it’s great we are finally getting past the prohibition of it,” Bradley said. “A lot of hard working people and successful parents consume cannabis – it has a place in our society.”
