The Cannabis revolution has been raging for the past few years as many states in the US have legalized it, but its standardization, regulation and overall functioning as an economic ecosystem has been heavily fractured. This has caused Jessica Versteeg to head up Paragon to try and revolutionize the Cannabis industry on Blockchain technology.
Versteeg witnessed first hand how Cannabis could have saved her former boyfriend, Tyler Sash of the New York Giants, as she thought back to the times he would ask for her approval on using cannabis to help manage his pain vs the cocktail of painkillers dished to him by the NFL doctors.
However, Versteeg had fallen victim to the stigma and outdated image of Cannabis and has now witnessed first hand the difficult regulations and lack of standardization despite the drug gaining legal legitimacy in a number of states.
Versteeg has now decided to take another disruptive and revolutionary technology, the Blockchain, and utilize its power along with the healing power of Cannabis to hopefully push its image right up there to the white list alongside Big Pharma.
The pain of Sash
Versteeg’s story of how she became a believer in the power of Cannabis stems from her experiences with Super Bowl winning boyfriend Sash. The New York Giants player was in constant pain because of his vocation and would beg Versteeg to let him opt for a natural painkiller in Cannabis rather than the handful of pills prescribed to him.
The former Miss Iowa US would not allow it as her image of Cannabis was that it was a dangerous drug that could take your life, and conversely her understanding of opioids was that they were 100 percent safe. She also worried about the fallout of testing positive in a random drug test.
Versteeg recounts how Sash would throw up almost daily after retiring because of concussion symptoms, she was told that’s all it was from. Later she found numerous pill bottles with the labels ripped off and while doing some research she realized he was hiding an addiction from her and that addiction to pain killers can take a toll on one’s stomach, causing them to throw up. She mentioned that he was already falling into depression and after she confronted him about the pills he would bring up wanting to take his life.
Breaking the stigma
It took Versteeg a while, but through her research she started to understand the power of Cannabis and how its reputation was all wrong.
This led Versteeg to start a monthly subscription box for Cannabis products that was aimed for anyone to use without the negative stigma attached, breaking the grimy black market feel of Cannabis.
However, the young entrepreneur soon encountered the real problems within the Cannabis industry. Despite legislation in over 20 states, the marketplace for legal Cannabis is broken, fragmented and unregulated.
Creating Paragon
Versteeg has now identified the ability that Blockchain technology has in disrupting certain sectors of society and business, and she hopes that Paragon can be the vehicle that pushes the Cannabis revolution into something more mainstream.
Paragon uses Blockchain technology to store data from the seed to sell with everything from the water quality to fertilizers used, from the labs it was tested in to the actual lab results, in an immutable ledger that can be checked by anyone to ensure quality and standardization.
Additionally, doctor certification, patient ID’s and prescription details are stored on the blockchain and remain tamper-proof. Importantly, not all patient information will need to be stored on the blockchain as some may be personal and will be stored offline to remain HIPAA compliment.
The Paragon coin emerging from this blockchain is also supposed to solve the problem with funding a marketplace that is still unregulated and not accepted across all states or even the world.
Paragon Space
VerSteeg and her team at Paragon will also be erecting co-working spaces as part of their business model. Cannabis related startups in the industry will be able to utilize these spaces not only for working remotely but also as a specialized hub with industry specific guidance from Paragon – this model forms part of the Paragon incubator program.
