Downstairs in her house, Kami Meyers (@soysativahaze) sits at the bar counter and lights a joint. Next to the bar is a pool table filled with a packed suitcase, brand merchandise and a Beyblade stadium that is lined to its corners with various Beyblades. Most of them are plastic, but some are also metal, which she said are heavier and can damage the other pieces if used improperly.
“These metal pieces are from Japan, so they’re a little harder to find,” she said, adding that her son has given her an extensive amount of knowledge on them as well. “I’ve been playing this with him since he was 4 years old.”
Meyers grew up in Valdivia, Chile, the southernmost part of the country, she said. Surrounded by land that borders the start of the Patagonia region, she would spend her days roaming around her parents’ farm.
“I grew up in between cows and planting trees every day with my father,” she said. “I would leave the house at like 10 a.m., and I wouldn’t go back until the sun is down.”
She attended a school that partnered with the University of Cambridge to teach English and assess each student’s proficiency, with the students needing a certificate to graduate.
“That was pretty cool for me because that’s how I learned,” she said.
With an ambition to teach Spanish to English students, Meyers attended college classes for two years before becoming an au pair and traveling to the U.S. She also attended community college while working here in the evenings, ultimately moving back to Chile after a year and deciding the education field wasn’t her long-term career.
Upon returning to Chile, she attended hair school and became a hairdresser. With her new career, she started working as a brand influencer for different hair care brands on the side. She said this career path was inspired by her dad, who owns a salon.
“I saw it all my life. I would spend my days there sometimes … just waiting for them to finish the day because I didn’t have a ride back home to the farm,” she said.
Meyers also said that her work as a brand influencer served as her introduction to the Cannabis industry. She first tried Cannabis in eighth grade with a cousin in Chile and said she didn’t feel anything during the first session, but noticed its effects when she began consistently smoking later in high school. She has been open with her consumption from the start, she said, despite the stigmatization around Cannabis use in Latin America and most countries deeming it illegal to possess.
“I feel that here, for example, people that are around the age of my parents are way more open-minded and will tell you, ‘I used to smoke, too.’ There, they’re still going to send their kid to rehab because of weed,” she explained.
With her influencer career blossoming, Meyers was eventually invited to work at a Cannabis fair in Chile and met Mariano Duque, a well-known cultivator whose Cannabis seeds have been planted all across Latin America and Europe. Meyers said he taught her everything she knew about Cannabis up to that point, as she began working with him to promote his line of seeds. In Chile, she said, cultivators focus on the genetics of the plant and the cultivation process as a whole rather than just the overall potency of what they’re growing.
“Each seed is different than the next one,” she said. “Because this is a plant, and we need to know that this is something organic and not made in a lab.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting her livelihood in Chile, she decided to make a permanent move to the U.S., staying in Miami with some of her extended family before heading north to Maryland.
After recurring visits to Mana in Middle River, the closest dispensary to her, she applied to work there after getting to know the staff and was hired shortly after. Given her background with Cannabis in Chile, she said navigating parts of the industry here — like the significance and characteristics of terpenes — was a challenge for her.
“We, in Chile, do more with the breeders and genetics. All of a sudden, here’s everything you need to know about terps. I only knew sativa, indica and hybrid,” she said, adding that the job also taught her about compliance and being responsible in the industry.
Utilizing her previous experience as a brand influencer in Chile, Meyers stepped away from budtending to begin working as a brand rep for a few different Cannabis companies across Maryland. She found she still could teach people in a friendly and understanding manner, just in a different setting than what she was going to school for.
“I like to be able to meet all kinds of people,” she said. “I love to teach, and that’s what I loved about working with Coast, for example, is I got to give an entire speech about cannabinoids. They learn that the plant has all these other benefits to it.”
Since coming back from her latest trip to Chile, Meyers has gotten together with a few other industry veterans to start Maryland Herb Co., a new brand set to hit the Maryland market later this year. The brand will focus on producing craft Cannabis, with an emphasis on releasing small-batch drops and hand-trimming all of their flower.
In addition to their hand-picked products, Meyers said being included in the decision-making and being able to voice her opinion on their operations also makes being involved more fulfilling to her.
“The fact that the owners text me and ask if I have any ideas for preroll packs, it’s like ‘You really want to know? You’re asking me?’ It’s nice to be included in that,” she said.
A big fan of anything sativa, Meyers said her consumption preference is always going to be flower, even though she said she normally has “a little bit of probably everything in my stash,” including dabs and some gummies.
“I’ll grab an indica for the night to relax, but I’m a sativa person for sure,” she said, preferring anything with a terpinolene or limonene-dominant terpene profile. “Terpinolene, limonene, myrcene — those are my top three favorite terpenes.”
Maryland Herb Co. aims to bring a quality brand of Cannabis to the market that can work with anyone’s budget. The team has been preparing for their first drop and building hype by bringing merch to budtenders and taking ads out in the Leaf. But admittedly, it’s been hard for Meyers and the team to contain their excitement about what’s to come.
“It’s going to be very attentive, and I think the quality of Cannabis we’re going to have will show,” she said of the company’s process. “To represent a brand that cares about the quality of their Cannabis, that it’s really craft, having minorities be a part of the team and to be proud of a brand I’m promoting, that’s what it’s about.”
