Commercial hemp, which contains virtually no THC, the psychoactive ingredient in recreational cannabis, has a long history in America. Hemp is an incredibly versatile plant that humans have been consuming in some form for 18,000 years or so.
In fact, the first recorded hemp crop in the state was planted in 1820, one year before Missouri achieved statehood. Twenty years later, Missouri hemp farmers had produced 12,500 tons of the crop, with much of that shipped through St. Louis en route to New Orleans. It was a key ingredient in both rope and textiles.
Today commercial hemp is used as both an insulator and as construction material in homes. The auto industry makes plastics from hemp-based oils to shave weight off luxury cars. BMW imports hemp grown in Kentucky to make the fabric for car seats and plastics for door panels of its cars built at its assembly plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina. A Canadian company is even building small airplanes out of the hemp plant. And researchers at the University of Connecticut are experimenting with hemp biodiesel fuels to power cars and airplanes.
Yet, despite the potential upside of hemp in all its uses, making a go in the cannabis industry in Missouri is "frustrating because a lot of times you're going backwards or sideways and it's hard to plan," Meyers says. "But it's also exciting because it is the beginning of a new industry and you can be part of it, and you can be part of the team that's trying to help the people get what they want. And they're ultimately going to get it."
Missouri wasn't the first state Meyers targeted for her cannabis-based business plans. First she looked to her home state — Illinois.
Meyers grew outside Carlyle, about an hour's drive east of St. Louis. Her grandparents raised corn, soybeans, some chickens and a few cattle, and she helped out on the farm.
In 1977 Meyers earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and then in 1980 a master's degree in finance.
She started her career at Emerson Electric. Growing bored with finance, she moved on to a marketing job at 7UP.
After some upheaval there, she found a home at Anheuser-Busch, where she flourished, eventually becoming director of marketing for the beer giant. At that time, in the late 1980s, she was the highest-ranking woman in AB's corporate marketing division.
But it was after those years at AB, and then fifteen years at Zipatoni, that Meyers found her current calling.
She'd said goodbye to corporate life for a while and began spending time at her family's second home in Colorado. It was the early 2000s, and the state had recently legalized medical marijuana. A friend of hers who lived nearby had become certified to serve as a cannabis caregiver.
"And a caregiver can grow a certain number of plants based on patients they have," she says. "I was fascinated that someone without a medical degree can really be treating people with brain cancer and prostate cancer and lupus and Crohn's. I was always peppering her with questions and watching her."
What struck her, Meyers says, was how her friend was using her knowledge of pot to "truly help people, extend their lives, keep them alive."
By 2012, Illinois had passed a law setting up a pilot program for medical cannabis. Meyers, who has a home in Glen Carbon, watched in fascination as the new plan took shape. It allowed for a series of cultivation centers and dispensaries across the state.
An investor approached Meyers to see if she wanted to get involved.
"I said I absolutely would," Meyers recalls. "I said I've seen firsthand how it works."
Meyers became the public face of the investor group seeking to build a cultivation center outside Marissa, Illinois, about 40 miles east of St. Louis in St. Clair County. In this role, she had to speak to community groups concerned about what would happen to their town if the cultivation center got built.
"It was very controversial, very controversial," she recalls. "I was not prepared for the pushback. But you know, having never done it before, nobody says, 'Here's the road map, go do it.'"
It was an expensive education. By late 2014, Meyers' Nature Care Company LLC had already invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into a potential cultivation center and dispensary. A first-year registration fee to the state added another $200,000 in start-up costs.
But in February 2015, when Governor Bruce Rauner granted the first set of cultivation and dispensary licenses, Nature Care was passed over.
Meyers' company did win a license to open a dispensary in Rolling Meadows, outside Chicago. But the roll-out of Illinois' pilot program has moved more slowly than expected.
So far the Illinois Department of Public Health has approved medical cannabis applications for 20,600 qualifying patients since it began accepting applications for the program in September 2014. Trouble is, investors had expected that by this point in the pilot program Illinois would have more than 120,000 qualifying patients.
One of the reasons for the relatively low patient base in Illinois is the paucity of physicians willing to sign off on recommendations for patient qualifying cards. Also, insurance companies refuse to cover the cost of legal cannabis, which means patients must pay hundreds of dollars per month for medicine entirely out of their own pockets.
"Nothing's moving in Illinois," Meyers says.
