Jessica VerSteeg Talks Transparency, Touchdowns, Tech & THC

Just off Sunset
Boulevard in the heart of Hollywood, the Paragon offices look fairly
nondescript from the street. With a fleet of luxury vehicles parked in front
and an exclusive-looking private entrance, the space could house any number of
Hollywood studios, post-production offices or agency headquarters. But once
you’ve made it past the intercom-protected gates and been greeted by Priscilla,
a blue brindle French bulldog who trots around like she owns the place, it’s
clear this isn’t just any LA chic office space.

Sure, there are lounge-like spaces, open floor plans and even a ping-pong table, but the real epicenter of Paragon is an inviting courtyard with built-in seating, an ideal spot for opening your laptop to work and enjoying a joint in the California sun. It’s this vision for a cannabis co-working, events and networking space that launched ParagonSpace in 2018. The multi-functional space is also HQ for the ParagonCoin, a blockchain service launched in 2017 by Paragon CEO Jessica VerSteeg.

Tracking Cannabis With Blockchain

The
“model-slash-fill-in-the-blank” category is robust in Los Angeles.
Model-slash-singers, model-slash-actors and model-slash-dancers are de rigueur in a town filled with
Midwestern transplants chasing their big Hollywood dreams. But
model-slash-tech-innovator-slash-cannabis-CEO? That’s a first.

VerSteeg’s
label-defying nature is driven by her unique mix of talents. She’s strikingly
beautiful and surprisingly approachable; both of these qualities contributed to
her success as a model and a beauty queen — she was, after all, Miss Iowa United
States 2014. But you don’t have to get too far into to a conversation with
VerSteeg to see that she’s also bright, curious and bursting with creative
energy.

And these days,
the thing that’s captured VerSteeg’s imagination is the future of blockchain
technology as it relates to the cannabis industry. VerSteeg explains that the
primary mission of the Paragon team is to develop software that tracks cannabis
from seed to sale and interfaces with the state’s system, Metrc.

Simply put,
blockchain is an inalterable digital account that records all transactions and
information related to a single product. With California’s stringent
seed-to-sale tracking and products changing hands multiple times before reaching
the consumer, VerSteeg sees blockchain as offering an ideal solution for the
industry to establish transparency with consumers who increasingly care about
where their cannabis comes from.

“In the end, I envision this benefitting the cannabis industry by creating a more trusting, transparent industry,” VerSteeg says. “Let’s create an industry that’s so transparent that it’s better than Big Pharma. Why wouldn’t people choose this over opioids if we’re able to create an industry that’s transparent?”

Once Metrc is up
and running, VerSteeg says that Paragon will be too. In the meantime, she has
been working to develop a system of “smart contracts” — digital blockchain-friendly
documents that will lock in everything from testing results to cultivation
details. The benefit to tracking all of this data in blockchain is that once
the information is in the system, it cannot be altered or edited.

Paragon will also track the transaction details between cultivator and distributor, distributor and testing lab, distributor to retailer and finally, retailer to customer. Not only will all of this data be collated into a Metrc-ready format that will facilitate compliance and reporting and for companies along the supply chain, but the consumer will also have access to it via a QR code on the package.

The Roots of the Cause

“Cannabis was
never something I thought I’d be a part of,” admits VerSteeg, recalling how, as
a child brought up in the era of D.A.R.E. propaganda, she didn’t want to have
anything to do with cannabis.

But the plant became an issue in her life when her then-boyfriend Tyler Sash, who was at the time playing in the NFL for the New York Giants, came to her and asked if she thought he could smoke cannabis to help ease his pain.

“He needed ankle
surgery, and he was having neck issues, back issues, head issues. That was his
biggest thing: shoulder pains, he had six pins in each shoulder,” recalls
VerSteeg. VerSteeg discouraged Sash, reminding him the drug was federally
illegal — and banned by the NFL.

“I wish I’d never
said that to him,” she says. “We were young, and you trust the NFL because
they’re such a big corporation, and you grow up with it, especially in America.
It’s ‘America’s game.’ And you trust doctors.”

But as Sash’s journey
in the NFL continued, VerSteeg learned more about how the NFL and its doctors
operate, and says she watched them encourage Sash to use opioids with reckless
abandon.

“He literally
called [the pill dispensers] ‘candy machines.’ Just put your pill bottle under
it. Twist it like an M&M machine, fill it up and there you go. You get as
much as you want of these painkillers,” she says.

In a preseason
game of the 2013 season, Sash received what was at least his fifth concussion
during his time in the NFL, which according to VerSteeg, was the unofficial
maximum allowed by the league. The Giants cut him from the roster after
reaching an injury settlement.

“After the fifth
concussion, you’re out,” VerSteeg says. “Not just out of the NFL, but out of
pills.”

In 2017, the Boston University CTE Center announced that it had found evidence of CTE in 99% of the former NFL players whose brains it studied.

VerSteeg became
concerned when Sash’s behavior began to change, but she knew he was struggling
with adjusting to post-NFL life. “I was so worried for him,” she says. “Not
being able to have that jersey and the game day and not being able to see his
fans, and I knew he was depressed.” But VerSteeg didn’t know exactly how Sash
was adjusting to life without access to the NFL doctors and their opioid
prescriptions.

Sash began
training college athletes in exchange for pills and his behavior worsened as
his addiction deepened, VerSteeg says.

“He became
extremely aggressive, extremely depressed, [was having] crazy mood swings, was
very forgetful… hearing voices. He was very happy one moment, and then very sad
at another,” she says. “It wasn’t him. The real him was the most genuine and
loving person. This was just not him and I knew it.”

In order to get help,
VerSteeg began reaching out to the NFL.

“I started
calling the NFL, saying, ‘I think he has dementia; I don’t think it’s
depression.’ Depression isn’t going to make you forget these things and hear
voices. And at the time, the movie ‘Concussion’ hadn’t come out, and the NFL
really wasn’t vocal about CTE,” says VerSteeg, referring to chronic traumatic
encephalopathy, a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries,
and the movie about it released in 2015, starring Will Smith. “They said,
there’s no way he has dementia, he’s too young. He’s just depressed. And he was
sleeping 20 hours a day and vomiting nonstop, and they said, these are all
symptoms of depression. Let him sleep.”

At the time,
VerSteeg was unaware that the NFL had known for years that CTE was a form of dementia and that
its players had extremely high rates of incidence of the disease.

It wasn’t until early
2014 when VerSteeg found a handful of undissolved pills in Sash’s vomit that
she began to piece together what was really going on with her partner.

“I understood
then that it was an addiction,” she said.

When VerSteeg
confronted Sash about the pills, it only made things worse. VerSteeg says she
ended up in the hospital when things turned violent between the them and she
knew he needed to get clean, so the two separated and VerSteeg moved to San
Francisco in August of 2014.

“I was looking up
every alternative to painkillers. All I wanted to know was how we could get
back together,” she says.

It wasn’t long
until she came across cannabis as a pain management alternative to opioids.
VerSteeg was surprised to see that Sash had been right in the beginning, but
blames feeling a breakup-related resentment for her decision to not reach out
and tell Sash. He had a girlfriend and he seemed clean, so the two made plans
to meet up in October 2015. That meeting never took place, because Sash died of
an overdose in September 2015.

“It was really,
really, really hard for me,” says VerSteeg, who admits she spun into a deep
depression after Sash’s death. “I blamed myself for not telling him about
marijuana and what I found…. But I should have at least said, ‘You were right.
This is an alternative. And if you’re still in pain, you should feel
comfortable with marijuana, because I know you wanted it, and I’m sorry I said
no originally.’”

In the time since his death, Sash’s sister Megan Wieland spoke to the Des Moines Register, asking VerSteeg to stop using Sash’s story to promote her business.

“If she wants to
have a business that’s fine. We just wish she would leave Tyler out of
it,” Wieland said.

In 2017, the
Boston University CTE Center announced that it had found evidence of CTE in 99%
of the former NFL players whose brains it studied. Sash’s name was on the list
of players affected, with his severity a level two out of four.

Continuing Advocacy

VerSteeg said Sash’s
story has, in a roundabout way, driven her passion for transparency in the
cannabis space as she translates that to cutting-edge technologies. In 2014,
she founded Au Box, a high-end monthly subscription box (now defunct) curated
to offer high-end cannabis products to discerning medical marijuana patients.

“I created it out
of [feeling] so guilty about what happened with my ex,” VerSteeg says. “I didn’t
want anyone else to suffer, and thought that maybe if they saw cannabis in a
nicer light, they wouldn’t judge their partner or their children or their
grandparents.”

VerSteeg said she
was committed to sourcing only high-quality products and required lab tests
from all of her supplier partners before California’s adult-use regulations
passed with Proposition 64 made it mandatory. But when she came across a
supplier who had been presenting falsified lab results, she knew there was a
problem that needed to be fixed.

“I thought, sh*t,
this is not good. I was giving this to actual patients, and I wanted people
have good products. I wanted to fix this.”

That’s exactly where VerSteeg is with Paragon today — working to develop tamper-proof results that consumers can trust.

To date, cannabis
is a banned substance in the NFL, and players who test positive for cannabis
are subject to heavy fines and suspensions. In addition to its pain management
qualities, THC and CBD both appear to be neuroprotectants and have been shown
to reduce trauma following a head injury.

Armed with this
knowledge and with the memory of Sash in her heart, VerSteeg is a frequent
letter-writer to the NFL, admonishing them for their outdated policies on
cannabis, CTE and the over-prescription of opioids. One such letter concludes
with a heartfelt plea, made in Sash’s honor: “I would also encourage the NFL to allow players the option
of painkillers OR cannabis to ease their pain,” she writes. “Not every player
wants to be pumped with opioids. We all know you love your players because you
see dollar signs over their heads, but it’s time that you start loving your
players as humans and caring about what is in their heads.”

Editor’s Note: Since the reporting of this story, ParagonCoin
announced in an SEC filing that it would be selling the ParagonSpace office
building and ceasing to operate a cannabis co-working space. In the filing,
ParagonCoin said it would now focus entirely on developing its blockchain
technology.

TELL US, what makes you passionate about
cannabis legalization?

Originally published in Issue 37 of Cannabis Now. LEARN MORE

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