Aaron Newsom: Compassion Through Care and Cultivation
Written by Jessica Peralta
Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance co-founder Aaron Newsom gives back to veterans through cannabis.
It was the day after 9/11 when Aaron Newsom signed up as a Marine. He was looking for purpose — and he found it — but not exactly in the way he’d intended.
It was when he returned home from military service suffering from anxiety and hyper-vigilance, and without work prospects, that he began his purpose-filled journey with cannabis and safe access.
“Originally when I got out of the service, cannabis helped me quite a bit with my transition issues, pain, things like that,” Newsom said. “And it was a huge tool that I utilized. It kind of helped me get back on my feet after service and I wanted to share that. I was lucky enough to be able to start growing myself and producing my own medicine, and I wanted to give a portion of that back to the other veterans that I knew in the area.”
Aaron Newsom runs his hands through plants in SCVA’s Cultivation center in Watsonville, Calif.
How SCVA Started
Back to His Roots
“I enjoyed my time in the service,” he said. “I also had quite a difficult time transitioning out and kind of figuring out what my role in society was. You know, when I got out and I didn’t have the military structure.”
Newsom was in the Marine Corps from 2002 to 2008, with a deployment to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005.
After his return, he was living in Orange County, Calif. with his wife when he read in the newspaper that cannabis had been decriminalized in the county of Santa Cruz and was last on the priority list for the local sheriff. They were bouncing around homes at that time and trying to figure out what to do next. So he asked his wife about moving up north to grow weed. Born and raised in Santa Cruz, he thought it was a good time to return. They moved up there in 2008.
“I also got out with some shoulder issues and neck issues and, you know, some mental health issues, trying to readjust back to normal, civilian life,” Newsom said. “You know, there was a lot of camaraderie in the military. There’s a brotherhood, sisterhood, and you kind of lose that when you get out. And that was a big part of my transition was just trying to find a community to be a part of again and was able to kind of build that by providing a portion of what I grew back to the community.”
Newsom found a location to start growing — and learning as he went. Prior to his venture into cannabis cultivation, he had a long history of using it himself — but he had never grown it.
He bought all the books he could find and worked with some experienced friends to figure it out. Though he failed multiple times, he knew he’d get it. And he did.
“I started growing my own medicine, learned how to grow, how not to grow — all the wrong ways of doing it, all the right ways of doing it — and figured out that not only was cannabis a huge benefit to my personal well-being, but the process of cultivation was as well,” he said. “Horticultural therapy played a huge part in my personal recovery.”
Horticultural therapy also became something offered to other veterans through the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance — in addition to free cannabis. He said spending hours gardening by himself, working with the plants, is a meditative process for him — and other veterans.
“So being a grower or cultivator was something that I really wanted to pursue and continue. I got a degree in organic agriculture. And yeah, we started off as cultivators 100 percent,” Newsom said. “We got into the retail game because we kind of had to for us to continue our SB34 mission of giving free cannabis to veterans in need. We needed a retail place to legally dispense those donations and that medicine, so we moved into the retail space to accomplish that.”
Kathleen Andersen collects her monthly SCVA compassion bag at Cultivate Dispensary in Aptos, Calif.
How SCVA Grew
Veterans Serving Veterans
“Many veterans face issues of addiction, overdose and being forced to go onto the street to try and self-medicate, and having access to clean, safe medical-grade cannabis is one tool in the tool belt,” Newsom said. “It’s one option. It’s one thing that we should have safe access to. And so, again, this is one little area where I can help and try and push legislation forward.”
Newsom said he thinks many veterans join the military because they want to be of service. He certainly did.
Since starting the Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance in 2010, he feels he’s doing that now. While the profit side of the business has employees, it also helps fund the nonprofit component serving veterans. Cannabis is provided to veterans suffering from a range of issues — including PTSD, anxiety and other forms of mental stress as well as those with conditions like cancer. He wants to offer veterans an effective and safe alternative to highly addictive and often-prescribed opioids.
The SCVA was initially developed under California’s Proposition 215 — the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 — that allowed for use of medical cannabis. But it was still a time that cannabis was less accepted, so he and co-founder, Jason Sweatt, still had to operate under the radar.
They started receiving testimonials from veterans and their families about how much cannabis was helping. These veterans were well-known, upstanding citizens in the Santa Cruz community — from football coaches and business owners to known war heroes.
“A lot of the veterans that we work with are on fixed income, they’re on disability, they’re retired on Social Security, and they might not have the funds to purchase enough of this medicine to help them with their issues,” Newsom said. “So we try to do what we can to give out enough to each veteran to at least try to get them through the month.”
As their business grew, so did their ability to donate cannabis to local veterans, and even to some outside of the area. It started out with a handful or two of veterans that then grew to hundreds for a time. They started coming in from as far as the Bay Area and Los Angeles.
At some point, Newsom and Sweatt had to have a discussion of either going a different direction or jumping feet first into the fire. It wasn’t without risk, considering that cannabis was still illegal in California. But they knew it was helping veterans.
Part of the evolution also involved the vertical integration — so that they became cultivators, distributors and retailers.
“We’re a vertically integrated company, so we cultivate our own medicine, we distribute our own product, and we obviously have a retail where we distribute it as well, which gives us the ability to also donate to whatever patients we see fit,” he said. “And our group is mostly, you know, veterans that we donate for our compassion.”
Aaron Newsom discusses Santa Cruz Veterans Alliance’s compassion program at Cultivate Dispensary in Aptos, Calif.
The Future of SCVA
Making Progress
“We need to create an environment that makes it easier for us to provide for our patients, not harder.”
SCVA worked on a peer-reviewed cannabis study with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that was published a few years ago to help move the cause forward.
They’ve made progress, but also have plenty of work left to do.
“You know, initially when we started this, we were giving away a lot more, because we knew that some of them really needed it,” he said. “We really tried to align ourselves with the way that Canada does it because Canada is actually prescribing veterans cannabis and paying for it, the VA pays for it. And so we’ve really tried to align ourselves with them, but obviously our federal government isn’t there yet.”
When the 2016 California Proposition 64 (Adult Use of Marijuana Act) legalized cannabis in California, the fine print in that and local laws created some challenges for small-time cultivators like Newsom. Though Prop. 64 allowed for cultivation licenses up to 22,000 square feet, counties and municipalities could allow anything up to the state standard. Watsonville in Santa Cruz County, where he has his facility, allowed for 5,000 square feet — which is the size of Newsom’s facility. But Prop. 64 allowed for multiple licenses so that large corporations could have many 22,000-square-foot licenses — translating to multiple acres. Essentially Newsom’s 5,000-square-foot facility is competing with big companies with 20 acres worth of product.
And then there’s the taxes. He said there are elements in Prop. 64 that need to change.
“There’s multiple stages of taxation on cannabis, and so by the time customer walks out of the door, we’re taxed upwards of 40 percent on the product,” he said. “There’s no other product on the market that’s taxed that heavily.”
“We need to create an environment that makes it easier for us to provide for our patients, not harder,” Newsom said. “And so Prop. 64 is what really needs to be adjusted. The regulatory and taxation model that regulates recreational and medical cannabis now makes it almost impossible to do business in the state.”
It’s all really about affordability.
“Affordability is a huge issue and that’s why the black market is thriving so much right now, because overtaxation on this product drives people to the black market,” he said. “We’ve been saying this from day one and unfortunately, it hasn’t been heard at the legislative level, again because there’s a lot of greed in the government and the industry and the community.”
As a result of these kinds of issues, Newsom has entered the political realm more than he’d like. They’re always looking toward the next election and who the next person sitting in a particular government seat is going to be — and how they’re going to educate them and create a line of communication.
“So our number one push is just to stay in an industry that allows us to be here and that we can survive in,” he said. “It’s getting harder and harder with the overtaxation and overregulation. But a new mission is becoming politically active and learning how to lobby, learning how to educate. And that’s where we’re at now.”
Newsom continues the fight and advocacy on behalf of veterans. The SCVA works locally with other groups like the VFW to support veterans however they can.
“I’m a cultivator. I want to get my hands dirty and grow plants and grow medicine and create the access to that stuff that I think the veterans deserve,” he said. “Education, lobbying, political work was never my realm, but something I’m willing to do to continue the mission.”