This group of nuns who have a very interesting habit. A convent in California is now raking in around $1,000,000 (£850,000) a year in cannabis sales.
A documentary will be released on Saturday to mark the weed users’ holiday of 4/20. Sister Kate Meeusen started the Sisters of the Valley in 2011 with just twelve plants. But now it’s an international operation that helps treat people with health or addiction problems.
The ‘Breaking Habits’ film, directed by British filmmaker Rob Ryan, explores the history and sustained survival of the weed-growing nuns.
‘I’ve seen the film so many times I’m sick of it, I didn’t like it but everyone else likes it so I’m happy about that,’ said Sister Kate, 60, who resides in Merced County, California with her community of sisters.
The film explores how Sister Kate and her team have fought bitterly against ‘white man rule’ including the obstructionist country sheriff and black market thieves.
‘We don’t like the white man rule,’ said Sister Kate, who makes and sells CBD products such as salves and oils with her sisterhood. ‘Farm people are very slow to adapt to new ideas, people are stuck in the 1950s with their ideas towards the cannabis plant for medicinal use.’
So far Sister Kate has attempted to cure eight people of addictions using her CBD products, and she says they have all recovered. ‘We have a 100 percent success rate in curing people of their addictions admittedly we don’t have a huge sample size. ‘We worked with eight people who were addicted to either alcohol, tobacco or meth, but they all got better,’ said Sister Kate, who used to work as a high-flying corporate executive before turning to weed farming. ‘That’s a better success rate than Alcoholics Anonymous,’ she added.
The nuns also use CBD to treat everything from epilepsy to cancer. ‘It’s a wonderfully healing plant, gradually the world is starting to open up to the idea of cannabis as medicine, rather than treating it as a dangerous drug,’ said Sister Kate.
Breaking Habits director Rob Ryan says that Sister Kate’s fight to change the cannabis industry from ‘stoner to healer’ is genuine and heartfelt. He said: ‘It’s a story about a woman taking on the local establishment to change the law on cannabis in the healing sense.’
The sisters’ plan to expand their medicinal-marijuana empire. Sister Kate said: ‘We intend to have enclaves in every town and province in the next 20 years. ‘We’re going to be doing more and more with Hollywood, because that’s the megaphone to the world. ‘We’re also planning an edgy, political series, done in cartoon form.’
On Monday the activist weed nuns will be protesting the ecclesiastic privilege, which allows some abuse to go unreported. ‘We are accustomed to fighting for the rights of the marginalized,’ said Sister Kate. ‘It’s an important bill that would allow California to join some 20 other states and Canada in denying this privilege as an excuse for not reporting abuse.
‘If a clergy-person, an elder, a priest, a pastor sees abuse, they must report it. Just like cops and nurses and teachers are required to do. ‘They don’t get to hide behind their sacred code of protecting one another anymore. It is the age of the divine feminine and there is no divinity in harming children.
‘There is no divinity in granting men access to children for perverse victimization, for ruination of their lives. ‘Yet, these male-run, male-founded, male-protected organizations don’t want us messing with their privileges.’
