I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a scout with the U.S. Army’s 110th Cavalry. An IED nearly killed me. I survived the blast, but it ended my career and left me with permanent damage. In 2014, I medically retired as a Service-Disabled Veteran.
Coming home wasn’t a victory. It was the beginning of a very long journey of discovering how much we fall short in supporting our wounded warriors and Veterans.
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Doctors put me on seven prescriptions to manage my injuries—painkillers, muscle relaxers, and antidepressants. On paper, I was “stable.” In reality, I was numb, exhausted, and barely functioning. The medications kept me alive, but they didn’t give me a life, and I had to make a change.
I didn’t leave the “traditional” medical system because I wanted to. I left because I had to. Their treatment very well may have killed, had I not intervened, as it has killed so many who have succumbed to suicide.
Cannabis was the first thing that helped without taking something away. It reduced my pain, let me sleep, and gave me my head back. No fog. No dependency spiral. Just relief. For the first time since combat, I felt like myself again.
That’s when the math stopped making sense. Why was the government spending so much on keeping people sick and depressed when the answer was clearly right in front of them?
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Veterans make up about 13 percent of the homeless population. I’ve met guys who lost limbs overseas and came home to discover the system had no plan for them beyond prescriptions and paperwork. You can’t recover without stability. You can’t have stability without money. And the system doesn’t fund long-term recovery. It manages decline. The system has no intent of lending a hand until it is forced to.
So I built something else.
I built a cannabis business not because I was looking to get in on the green rush, but because my passion for cannabis combined with my leadership and business abilities made sense. I knew it would work. The revenue now helps fund housing, jobs, and long-term support for Veterans. We help where we can and when we can, while creating real employment in communities that have been hollowed out for decades. Cannabis isn’t just medicine. It’s manufacturing. It’s logistics. It’s economic infrastructure.
And yet the most absurd rule in American healthcare remains intact: VA doctors are banned from prescribing cannabis. In fact, they cannot even suggest it as a treatment option.
They can prescribe opioids. They can prescribe benzodiazepines. They can stack drugs that destroy lives slowly and legally. But they can’t prescribe the plant that helped me get off seven medications and function again. They cannot recommend the one treatment that offers the least amount of harm and the most amount of promise.
That isn’t medical caution. It’s political cowardice and a pharmaceutical industry that is terrified that nature has been producing a better, cheaper, more accessible option since the dawn of civilization.
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As cannabis moves toward federal rescheduling, we need to stop pretending that research, banking reform, or symbolic progress is enough. If we actually care about veterans, VA doctors must be allowed to discuss, recommend, and prescribe cannabis openly.
This isn’t about ideology. It’s about honesty.
Cannabis didn’t give me my old life back. It gave me a future that still works.
The system shouldn’t force veterans to break rules, move states, or suffer in silence just to find relief. We already paid enough.
*This article was submitted by an unpaid guest contributor. The opinions or statements within do not necessarily reflect those of GreenState or HNP. The author is solely responsible for the content.