Page 28 - BusinessWest December 12, 2022

customers I talk to every day, their life is better. A recent study showed that 60% of Millennials use cannabis for wellness, and when you ask them to define ‘wellness,’ it was stress, relaxation, sleep, and anxiety. The fact that people look at cannabis as wellness is huge.
“And I still believe the best thing in cannabis still has not been invented,” she went on. “We find new cannabinoids every single day; there are new ways to consume this product, new delivery methods, new formulations. Those are all really important parts of where this industry is going. Science is in it, and I am psyched to see the prod- ucts we come up with to help people.”
“At Canna Provisions, we really believe that we’re not just growing plants and growing a business, we’re growing humans.”
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Sanders about her business, her industry, the words printed on the back of her jacket, and what she expects to come next with all of the above.
Joint Ventures
That aforementioned tour of Canna Provisions came the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It was late morning, just before noon, and the traffic in the store was still relatively light, with a handful of customers exploring the myriad product options or talking to customer-service providers, both
behind the counter and on the floor.
But Sanders was expecting a huge day because
cannabis, in her estimation, is becoming a grow- ing part of Thanksgiving, especially to contend with the week’s large doses of stress.
“People will be in to get their coping mecha- nisms and their celebratory pieces so they can deal with Uncle Bob, who might be talking poli- tics at the Thanksgiving table,” she explained. “We all have families, and they’re all very interesting and come with a lot of stuff; this is one way to cope, and it’s not new.”
Meanwhile, she was expecting even bigger crowds for the upcoming Black Friday and the holiday season in general. And such expectations, born from experience in both Colorado and this market, are evidence of the growing influence of cannabis — on the economy and in people’s lives.
Turning back the clock nearly 15 years, Sand- ers, as noted earlier, was working for a small financial-services company handling a few dozen traders when she approached a friend who was getting in on the ground floor of the exploding cannabis scene in the Centennial State and asked if he could find a place for her.
“I had definitely hit a glass ceiling — there was nowhere else to go and no more money to be made there,” she recalled. “That was happening at the exact same time as this brand-new indus- try was starting to explode; I reached out to my friend who was creating this cannabis business and said, ‘I’d love to help you guys; what can I do?’
“It took a while for us to find the right place, but I went basically from compliance in the financial industry to compliance in cannabis, and that’s how I got started,” she went on, adding that she became increasingly more involved and even-
Staff Photo
The wording on the back of Meg Sanders’ jacket is both a request and a bit of hope for what people will be able to do more easily in the future.
tually become CEO.
Sanders would eventually exit that company —
primarily because its board wanted to focus solely on Colorado, while she had larger aspirations for the venture — and work, along with Williams, as
a consultant to states, municipalities, and indi-
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