Service and Sacrifice: How Starting A Cannabis Business Cost This US Veteran Her Military Career

We talk a lot on this show about how hard it is to get into the cannabis industry. There are the upfront costs, but then there's the permit process itself, which often has serious problems. Just for an example, take a look at our article last week on the alleged corruption in Illinois' recent permit lottery, not to mention there's issues with access to capital and working with banks. It makes sense that we do though because those licenses represent millions of dollars and perhaps more importantly, a huge head start. But once you have that permit, that's only the first step in the process.

Jesse Betend talked to Mariah Dodson, a veteran and co-founder of CBD retailer United Herbalism as well as Dust to Diamonds. Back in 18, Mariah and her partner Vanessa Macias made history by becoming the youngest license holders in California. But because of a confluence of factors two years later, they still haven't been able to start the company. They dreamed of building and speaking of dreams, this is actually Mariah's second attempt at achieving hers. In addition to the difficulties mentioned before, for Mariah, getting into cannabis came with an additional cost. In this case her career in the military.