Illustration by Luke Flowers
For Nathan Fete, it’s not easy being green, selling green, or making green. The St. Louis native moved to Colorado to manage a medical-marijuana dispensary run by a friend a few years back, and he now finds himself a partner in the Beacon Wellness Group (beaconwellnessgroup.com), which owns two “happy pharmacies.” He’s proud to be helping people in pain medicate themselves with legal doobage, but the business involves more than a few giggles between buds.
“My job changes have been like a roller coaster,” Fete says. “Every single year, there has been a big change in tracking, licensing, and fees. It’s been very challenging to stay in this industry.” On the frontier of weed legalization, the conservative banking industry often refuses to work with companies like Fete’s (though the feds now allow it).
Despite such business headaches, Fete enjoys giving people a way to feel better. “We help cancer patients going through chemo keep their food down,” he says. “I have a 90-year-old patient who has lowered her OxyContin prescription drastically thanks to marijuana tinctures.”
The community around his dispensary in Mancos, Colo., seems to have accepted the business with equanimity. “There haven’t been any angry villagers with torches outside the door yet,” he jokes. “We’re good neighbors, and we even sponsor a local youth softball team—but we didn’t put our name on their uniforms.”
Fete and his business partners are preparing to take advantage of the recently relaxed marijuana laws in Colorado and will begin selling the plant for recreational use in June. That expansion could even grow to include St. Louis someday. In early January, Mayor Francis Slay posted an online poll about marijuana legalization in which a whopping 91 percent of respondents favored “complete legalization of marijuana for any purpose by adults.” And later that month, state Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, filed a bill that would legalize recreational marijuana here.
“I’ve been in contact with the executive director of Show-Me Cannabis,” Fete says. “They’re working for legalization in Missouri, and we’ll be working with them, hopefully.”
