For Veronica Paz Booth, it always goes back to her first job in the cannabis industry, working at an Arizona dispensary during the early days of the state’s medical program. She says her time there was “critical” and she wishes more people in the modern cannabis industry shared those experiences.
“Once you work there, it’s hard to forget the patients and caregivers,” says Booth, the current director of education for Item 9 Labs Corp, a vertically integrated company and dispensary franchiser based in Phoenix. “It really and truly sounds corny, but many of them have touched my heart and they are the core as we develop programs and innovative products at Item 9 Labs Corp.”
She carries those memories today as she works to help train dispensary staffs on the basics and benefits of her company’s products, such as its live resin products, flash frozen and extracted to deliver a full-spectrum concentrate that she says is “closest to the whole plant.”
Booth may have been new to the industry when she took the job at the dispensary, but she says growing up as a child on the island of Curaçao, the use of plant medicine was common.
“We use our nature as part of healing, so plants as medicine was never far-fetched,” she says. “To me it was very normal and acceptable.”
This May, Booth is scheduled to be among the first class to receive a master’s degree in medical cannabis science and therapeutics from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy.
“I’m a person that loves to learn,” she says, “and in this industry, you never stop.”
— Brian Beckley