Chris Chesley: Best Volunteer of 2019
Chris Chesley got his start volunteering his time supporting medical marijuana reform with the Show-Me Cannabis campaign in 2016. Since then, he’s served the Greater St. Louis NORML chapter and helped the New Approach Missouri campaigns. He is present at industry, patient, and community events throughout the state.
His motivation to work towards legalization starts close to home.
“I started after seeing how much it helped my Aunt Kathy during her battle with pancreatic cancer,” Chesley said. “She was the first and only person I know of to get a written prescription for cannabis in Missouri.”
“Working on marijuana issues is a very important thing to me. It started with medical marijuana and the benefits I saw from friends and family using it medicinally, then the more I got involved I started to see what the war on drugs was doing to people getting caught with this plant, whether it was for recreational or medical use the punishment whether it’s being arrested or getting a small ticket was far more harmful than cannabis itself.”
“This work had to be done and still needs to be done. I believe anything we do to push legalization has a domino effect to big pushes down the road. I try to remind myself often that legalization started with a small group of activists that got a law passed in San Francisco that eventually lead to California becoming a medical state. As we now push state by state we are forcing the federal government to take notice and hopefully, things will change at the federal level soon.”
Chesley hopes to one day see all 50 states have as good a medical program as Missouri, where “doctors decide if cannabis can benefit someone, not politicians or some list that was thought to be acceptable conditions at the time it was passed.”
To Chesley, full legalization must include home cultivation and no more arrests.
“It’s absolutely crazy to me that there are people willing to arrest and convict people for possession of cannabis,” Chesley said. “I’ve seen the legal system destroy families over these arrests that up until then were happy productive families.”
Chesley was recognized in the August 2019 issue of Greenway Magazine as a leading industry advocate. He is also part of a facility applicant group that received licenses.
