Chapter 6: Staying Power

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 — The First Arrest
Early rupture, authority, and the beginning of resistance

Chapter 2 — Before the File Was Opened 
Gifted education, faith, discipline, and early legitimacy

Chapter 3 — Becoming a Problem
Work, exhaustion, collapse, and the cost of visibility

Chapter 4 — Learning the Language of Power
Courts, probation, jail, campaigns, and proximity to decision-makers

Chapter 5 — The Apprenticeship
Training, mentorship, restraint, and learning how power actually works

Chapter 6 — Staying Power
Policy victories, documentation, long-term impact, and avoiding burnout

Chapter 7 — Why I Never Left
Containment, bad actors, ethical boundaries, and knowing when to walk away

Chapter 8 — What the Media Gets Wrong
Narratives, incentives, misinformation, and pretrial risk
Legal Note: Pretrial Publicity, Jury Pools, and Media Risk

Chapter 9 — The Record vs. the Narrative
Why documentation wins when attention fades

Chapter 10 (Epilogue): — What Remains

Author’s Note

Principles — Staying Effective Without Burning Out

Chapter 6: Staying Power

After all that training, I had more questions than answers.

That’s the part nobody advertises.

Training doesn’t give you certainty—it gives you vocabulary. It teaches you what questions are worth asking and which ones are traps. Once you learn the language of power, you stop mistaking motion for progress.

Jimmy introduced me to a Republican presidential candidate whose campaign he had worked with. I went to Washington, D.C. to table for them at CPAC. The message was polite but direct: if I wanted to operate at this level, I needed to learn how to handle media—and I should consider serving as state director for the campaign in Iowa in order to observe the candidate deal with reporters.

I was young. Curious. Grateful to be in the room.

I went to dinner with the candidate at Skip’s near the Des Moines airport. I talked too much, as I always did. I asked questions. I listened badly and enthusiastically at the same time. I had fun. I walked away with a story and a sense of how proximity to power actually feels—less glamorous than advertised, but instructive.

I was genuinely thankful for that experience.

Then something unexpected happened.

Without asking for it, without planning it, I became the lead lobbyist on the 2014 Iowa medical cannabis issue.

Not by title—by function.

I knew the history. I knew the committee math. I knew the legal arguments. Lawmakers trusted me not to embarrass them, not to burn bridges, and not to say things on camera that would collapse negotiations. I ended up on nearly every media station covering the issue.

The bill was dead.

Completely dead.

Past the deadline. No procedural path forward. Everyone accepted it was over for the session.

Then Jimmy called me.

He told me to call someone at the Capitol. There was a way—procedural, technical, narrow—to move the language through. We did it. Against the odds, the legislature then passed a medical cannabis bill—CBD-only, limited, imperfect.

Jimmy did that. It’s quite inspiring and heroic, but we never talked about it or explained publicly what we had saved. Too busy doing.

The governor signed it while I was at a music festival in Peoria, Illinois.

It felt surreal.

Dispensaries wouldn’t open until 2017. Patients still had almost no access. But something irreversible had happened: the state had formally acknowledged cannabis had medical use.

That mattered more than people realized at the time.

In the years that followed, I helped start a private group responsible for roughly twenty percent of patient sign-ups statewide. I also personally helped dozens of patients navigate the realities no one prepared them for—court issues, employment risk, child protective services concerns. I brought in $2,000,000 in sales to the Iowa medical cannabis program through our secret strategy for signing up patients and never collected a cent for the thousands of hours of effort that took.

I received a whistleblower tip to my blog at WeedPress from inside government: an internal CPS memo stating parents using CBD could be charged with child abuse. A DHS worker risking their career to warn the public. Screenshots of internal government memos. I checked with an attorney and then?

I published it.

That was the moment I fully understood something I had been circling for years: publishing solutions in real time mattered more than shouting demands.

Pressure campaigns are seductive. They feel like progress. But they often burn energy fighting one side or another while the real decisions are made quietly elsewhere—administrative boards, rulemaking committees, enforcement guidance.

Documentation lasts.

Movies. Podcasts. Articles. Blog posts.

Smartphones changed everything. Long-term impact required an online presence. Even Young Americans for Liberty understood that—proof of a social media profile was required just to attend training.

That realization shaped WeedPress.

I didn’t want to be trapped in permanent reaction. I wanted to create records that outlasted me.

Weed activism attracted bad actors.

People who had never built anything, never run anything, never studied anything—but promised riches through schemes. When their schemes failed—as most do—they looked for someone to blame.

I was visible. Opinionated. Precise.

So they attacked my character instead of debating facts.

I outlasted them.

Seventeen years and counting.

Longevity isn’t about being loud. It’s about timing. Research. Knowing your opponent’s tactics as well as your own. And having the humility to seek consultation constantly.

Institutional and governmental operators aren’t evil.

They’re constrained.

Understanding those constraints—and finding novel, lawful ways around them—is the most effective form of advocacy there is.

That requires free speech, first and foremost. Knowledge of the law. Willingness to litigate when necessary. And the patience to absorb attacks without becoming reckless or cancellable.

Logic, facts, and good faith are easily overrun by emotional advocacy and short-term opportunism. Many people want a slice of a pie today. I wanted foundational values upheld tomorrow.

That confused my opponents.

They couldn’t imagine someone doing this for the right reasons without a financial angle. When I said that openly, they accused me of lying.

I’m still here. They all gave up.

Still publishing. Still influencing outcomes where they actually matter.

Because I separated advocacy from income. Because I refused payouts. Because I chose restraint over spectacle.

That decision acted like a filter.

People willing to cut corners, run scams, or flirt with criminal behavior were repelled. Their schemes required ignorance of the law. I studied it. Their fantasies required silence. I documented everything.

I stayed online. I stayed boring. I stayed precise.

And that—more than anything—kept me effective.