Brooke Butler, Simplifya

Ellen Lee Scanlon (00:00):

This podcast discusses cannabis and is intended for audiences 21 and over. Welcome to How to Do the Pot, a podcast demystifying cannabis for women. I’m Ellen Scanlon. This series is dedicated to women sharing their stories because buying your own weed can feel a little overwhelming. And doesn’t having a friend along always make you feel better? The women in the series have been so generous to share their stories with us. Some were psyched, some were scared, some were in shock, and everyone had questions. I hope hearing how they did it helps you feel more confident when you’re ready to go shopping for cannabis. And we would love to hear your story. Just send a voice memo with your three to five minute story to high@dothepot.com. That’s H-I@dothepot.com. Brooke Butler is the Colorado-based Vice President of Partnerships at Simplifya, which provides easy to use tools that help proactively ensure business compliance in order to protect your cannabis license, company, and investment.

Brooke Butler (01:10):

I actually lived abroad for 10 years and wasn’t really paying attention to a lot of the news that was going on in the US. And when I moved back to the States in January of 2017, I found out that there was this thing called legalized cannabis. And got in my car from Texas, drove up to Colorado to actually attend one of the NCIA’s, I think, Seed to Sales Shows back then in Denver. And as soon as I cross the border into Colorado, I was so nervous and so excited at the same time because I knew I was going to stop on the way to Denver and go into a dispensary for the first time. And didn’t know what to expect. But once I got to about Pueblo, Colorado, I had gotten up the nerve to stop. And as fate would have it, I’m a Bob Dylan fan, and I saw a sign for Maggie’s Farm on the side of the highway and was like, “Okay. I have to stop there and check this out.”

Brooke Butler (02:13):

And so pulled over off the highway in Pueblo, got my car into the parking lot at Maggie’s Farm. Probably for a minute, sat in the parking lot, looking around, thinking that cops were going to come get me because I still couldn’t believe that cannabis was legalized and I was about to be able to purchase it legally in America. And went into the dispensary and was immediately overwhelmed because there was so many different products and things I had never even heard of, that they had manufactured cannabis into. And so went with my old school tendencies and bought some flower. And I will remember that I bought two different strains. One was back then called Gorilla Glue. I think now it’s GG4, maybe. And then I also bought a string called Lavender, which sounded really great to me because cannabis is something that I use for insomnia or just helping me get to sleep.

Brooke Butler (03:14):

Sometimes when I’m really stressed out, it can calm me down. And Lavender did just the trick, just what they told me it would do. But it was a great experience. But once they gave me the bag and I went back out to the car, I think I was sweating bullets the whole ride all the way to Denver, knowing that I had a quarter of an ounce of cannabis in the trunk of my car locked up. But it was a great experience. And I ended up moving to Denver. And now I get to frequent mini dispensaries and continue to enjoy legal cannabis. But it was definitely really exciting, but also nerve-wracking experience the first time I bought it, just because I couldn’t believe that it was real and that it was legal. And I was finally able to consume and get something that I thought was medicine for me in a legal setting.

Ellen Lee Scanlon (04:05):

Thanks for listening to this episode of How to Do the Pot. If you’d like to share your story about the first time you bought legal weed, please send a voice memo to high@dothepot.com or DM us, @dothepot. For lots more information and past episodes, visit dothepot.com. And that’s also where you can sign up for How to Do the Pot’s newsletter, which comes out every other Friday. If you like How to Do the Pot, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find the show. Thank you to our producers, Madi Fair and Nick Patri. I’m Ellen Scanlon, and stay tuned for more of How to Do the Pot.