A patient should not have to make somebody rich to matter.
That is where I start with medical cannabis. Before the licenses, the investment pitches, the industry associations and the fights over who gets a seat at the table, there is a person who hurts. Somebody’s mother cannot sleep. Somebody’s husband cannot eat. A family is trying to get through another week without watching someone they love suffer.
Their suffering does not become less important because serving them is inconvenient or the market is smaller than investors hoped.
I keep coming back to two passages in the Bible when I think about what this work is supposed to mean.
In Matthew 6:1–4, Jesus warns about helping the needy for the satisfaction of being seen helping them. In Mark 10:42–45, he tells his followers that greatness means serving people. I read those passages and think about how easily a movement built around sick people can become a fight over everybody else’s importance.1
Help without owning the person you helped
A patient comes to you because they need help. Maybe they are frightened. Maybe they have spent months being passed from one person to another, explaining the same problem until they are exhausted.
You help them. Good.
Then what? Do they owe you loyalty? Are they supposed to overlook your mistakes, defend your friends, shop at the right business and keep quiet when something bothers them?
That is a hell of a price to attach to compassion.
Matthew makes me think about that bargain, including the ways I could be tempted to make it myself. WeedPress is public. My name is on it. I want people to find the work and use it. There is satisfaction in being useful, and there is an ego sitting right there beside it, perfectly willing to take over if I let it.
I have to remember the person who brought me the question. They needed an answer. They were already carrying enough without being made responsible for my sense of importance.
In Mark, Jesus gives his followers a demanding instruction: “whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.”2
That is the activist I want WeedPress to encourage. The person who stays with a confusing rule until they can explain it to somebody’s daughter. Who makes another call after the first three go nowhere. Who shares what they learned so the next family has an easier time.
A lot of those families will never become valuable contacts. They will read the answer, help their loved one and go back to their lives.
I would like that to count as success.
Iowa understood that patients would need somebody who could stay
Iowa’s original medical cannabis law put a real obligation on the companies entering the program.
The 2017 framework authorized up to two manufacturers and directed the state to consider their expertise, employee qualifications, long-term financial stability and projected fees to patients. It also required manufacturers to provide a reliable, ongoing supply.3
I think about the family on the other end of that requirement. Once somebody finds a product that helps, they need some confidence they can get it again. They cannot plan their care around a company hoping every harvest goes perfectly.
Iowa wrote financial staying power into its licensing criteria. It also told regulators to consider what patients would pay. To me, those provisions belong in the same conversation: can you keep serving people, and can they afford to keep coming?
The law established a commercial program. The charitable obligation I see in it comes from what patients are asking us to protect—their ability to get care, even when doing so is less lucrative than somebody hoped. I found no legislative record establishing a plan to reserve the industry for billionaires willing to lose money indefinitely. The statute gives us something more concrete to work with: financial stability, continuing supply and attention to patient costs.
MedPharm showed up
MedPharm Iowa, now known as Bud & Mary’s, was the only applicant in the first manufacturing round.
That deserves to be remembered. There was an uncertain program, a limited market and a substantial job to do before patients could buy anything. MedPharm took it on.
State officials later described the circumstances. Nine companies had shown interest, according to Deputy Director Sarah Reisetter, but only one followed through. The short timeline and the need to secure local support had contributed to some companies staying out.4
I understand why someone who watched MedPharm do that work would grow tired of hearing its early position reduced to the word “monopoly.” Somebody had to build the operation and supply the patients.
The history also moved on. Program manager Owen Parker said the second manufacturing round drew six applicants.5 Questions about competition and prices deserve answers throughout a program’s life. Giving MedPharm credit for showing up should make that history clearer, while leaving patients free to ask whether the program is serving them well.
When it becomes your own family
There is something in the Nelson family’s story that I appreciate.
Bud & Mary’s traces its roots to the plant-science work of Kemin Industries and the family that founded it. Contemporary reporting identified Chris Nelson, Kemin’s president and CEO, as MedPharm Iowa’s owner.6
Then there is the part that brings it home. In a 2025 interview, Lucas Nelson talked about his grandmother’s knee pain and her use of the company’s product. His grandfather eventually used it, too. Nelson described a personal connection to the work.7
I understand why that matters. When someone you love is hurting, you start paying attention differently. An abstract debate about cannabis becomes a question about whether that person might have a better afternoon.
That is the family connection Nelson has described publicly. It is enough to explain why I find the story meaningful, without building a larger origin story around details I could not verify.
The family brought scientific experience and business resources to Iowa’s program. State records credit MedPharm with supplying products from the December 2018 launch.8 Staying involved long enough for patients to depend on you is work worth respecting.
The years when the money was going the other way
Early losses matter because somebody has to carry them while the program finds its footing.
CITYVIEW reported in August 2022 that Bud & Mary’s had operated at a loss for four years before becoming profitable. The company also reported reducing prices after reaching profitability.9
Four years is a serious commitment. The available reporting does not tell us whether the company has recovered its entire investment or what its finances look like today.
Its continued presence also mattered when another manufacturer left. Iowa’s Legislative Services Agency recorded that Iowa Relief shut down operations in April 2020. Iowa Relief was a different company from Iowa Cannabis Company, which the state’s 2025 annual report identifies as supplying products since April 2024.10
For a patient, a company leaving means wondering what happens to the product they use. That is why I care about businesses having the resources and the patience to stay.
I respect profit. I also remember who this was for.
People have to be paid. Buildings cost money. Equipment breaks. A failed crop still leaves bills on the desk.
I respect economics and the role profit plays in directing scarce resources. I want a good supplier to be able to keep its doors open, pay its employees and improve what it offers.
I can respect all of that and still object when sick people are treated as somebody’s overdue opportunity to get rich.
Nobody owes an entrepreneur a profitable medical cannabis market. Patients certainly never agreed to guarantee one.
And somebody’s bank balance tells me very little about their character. A small operator can care deeply about the people they serve. A wealthy company can become indifferent. I am interested in what happens when serving the patient gets difficult.
Does the patient still matter then?
That is also where independent advocacy earns its purpose. Businesses have obligations to their own survival. Advocates need enough freedom to notice when those obligations start pulling against what patients need, and enough backbone to say so.
It can cost you a friendship. You might lose access to someone who used to return your calls. You might have to publish an answer that disappoints people you like.
I would rather deal with that discomfort than leave a family in the dark to preserve my place in the room.
The standard I want WeedPress to live up to
In South Dakota, I want this kind of service to become ordinary.
Tell patients about a supply problem before they make the drive. Explain the testing. Answer the licensing question. Take the complaint seriously. Help a family understand what they are buying without making them feel stupid for asking.
If an improvement would help patients who shop at a competitor’s store, support it anyway. Those people are somebody’s family, too.
That is how I would recognize the values in these passages at work. Through the things people do when they have something to lose or nothing obvious to gain.
I owe readers the same effort. When a company deserves credit, I should give it. When new information improves the picture, readers should hear it. When I get something wrong, they deserve a correction without having to drag it out of me.
The fact that I care deeply about this work makes those obligations more personal. I want families to be able to trust what they find here.
People of every faith, and people with none, are welcome to use WeedPress. Matthew and Mark help explain why I feel called to do this. The help is for whoever needs it.
I think about a daughter sitting at the kitchen table after everybody else has gone to bed, trying to figure out what the law means for her mother. She has work in the morning. She is tired. She just needs somebody to explain it clearly enough that she can make the next call.
That is who I want to remember when the industry arguments get loud.
If WeedPress makes her night a little easier, I have done something worth doing.
Sources and notes
1. Matthew 6:1–4; Mark 10:42–45 (King James). Matthew; Mark. The application to cannabis advocacy is the author’s religious and ethical interpretation.
2. Mark 10:44 (King James), text.
3. Iowa Code §§ 124E.6(1)(a), (3)(a)–(c), (f), .7(12)(a) (2018), historical statutory text. These citations describe the original program framework, not a representation that every provision remains unchanged.
4. Dar Danielson, State Offering a Second License to Manufacture Medical Marijuana, Radio Iowa (Apr. 12, 2018), article (reporting statements of Iowa Department of Public Health Deputy Director Sarah Reisetter).
5. Dar Danielson, Iowa’s Medical Marijuana Program Seeks a New Manufacturer, Radio Iowa (Sept. 9, 2020), article (reporting statements of program manager Owen Parker). These applicant counts are attributed official statements in contemporaneous reporting; original application logs were not obtained for this article.
6. Bud & Mary’s, A Family Business. The Story of Bud and Mary’s, company history (last visited Nov. 7, 2026); Melissa Schiller, Iowa Chooses First Medical Marijuana Manufacturer, Cannabis Bus. Times (Nov. 29, 2017), article.
7. Ashley Nichols & Shelby King, Manufacturing Success: Lucas Nelson of Bud & Mary’s, Greenway Mag. (June 2, 2025), interview. Family medical experiences are attributed to Nelson’s account, not independently reviewed medical records.
8. Iowa Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., Medical Cannabidiol Board: 2025 Annual Report to the Iowa General Assembly 11 (Jan. 2026), report.
9. Colson Thayer, The Business of CBD and THC, CITYVIEW (Aug. 3, 2022), article. The reported operating-profit milestone is distinct from cumulative investment recovery; no current audited financial statements were obtained.
10. Iowa Legis. Servs. Agency, Fiscal Servs. Div., End of Session—HF 2589—Medical Cannabidiol 2 (June 30, 2020), fiscal update; Iowa Dep’t of Health & Hum. Servs., supra note 8, at 11. The latter report describes 2025 operations; it is not, standing alone, proof of every operator’s status as of November 2026.
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