Stormy Simon was a single mother when she started as a temp worker for Overstock.com in the early 2000s. The internet was just coming into widespread adoption in the United States and Utah-based Overstock was one of the world’s very first “ecommerce” platforms. Stormy immersed herself in the business and worked her way up through the ranks to President as she created and reshaped marketing campaigns, customer care and infrastructure of the company, that grew from an early internet startup into a billion-dollar ecommerce giant.
Simon left Overstock at the height of her career and relocated to Denver so she could dive into the cannabis industry. She started at the ground level working in a grow. Through industry work and advocacy she has since traveled the country working as a public speaker advocating cannabis reform. She joined the board of High Times Magazine in late 2017, and in early January 2020 became its first female CEO. Since leaving High Times, Simon splits her time between Los Angeles and her small farm of miniature animals in Tooele, Utah, including two miniature horses, a donkey and a pygmy goat. In March, Simon registered to run for Utah State representative District 21.
Salt Baked City was lucky enough to talk to the candidate shortly after this announcement in April; while still working with High Times.
Salt Baked City: When you first started working at Overstock, ecommerce was brand new, and so was the “dot com” concept. New industries like tech and cannabis are really hard for people to wrap their heads around sometimes, especially what the role of government should be in in these new industries. From your perspective, what sort of lessons have you learned working in tech that prepared you to deal with the unique challenges in cannabis?
Stormy: When I joined Overstock we had an industry that wasn’t fully developed. I would go into work every day and it was a white board. That’s what I did, I loved just figuring it out.
When I decided to join the cannabis industry I had the same idealism, I was totally unprepared for how different it was going to be. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do within the industry, but I knew history was being written. I decided to jump in and get my hands dirty, and spent about six months working in a 90,000 square foot grow with two medicinal dispensaries. That led me to learn more about the start of prohibition and where we are today. Three years later, having gained that knowledge, I ultimately decided to raise my hand to run for state congress in Utah.
Salt Baked City: You travel the country speaking about cannabis while maintaining home bases in Utah and, more recently, California. Because of this you end up culturally straddling a lot of lines. How does that shape your perspective and your approach to cannabis policy in Utah?
Stormy: Every state has a different playbook, every state has different rules or hurdles that you need to go through. Seeing how the different states behave just sheds more light on how conservative Utah is and how controlling the government wants to be on this issue.
Salt Baked City: What lessons do you think Utah advocates can learn from your unique perspective on how to move the program forward in a more functioning way?
Stormy: In the state of Utah, H.B. 3001 was designed as if we’re going to behave like criminals. That was insulting to me as a citizen of Utah. My belief is that citizens can act and conduct themselves with appropriate behavior and when they don’t is when enforcement or the government needs to step in.
Salt Baked City: High Times has been the locus of the culture in the cannabis community. Deep in that culture of “legal” states a lot of people don’t have an understanding of what life is like in places like Utah. Now, you’re in this unique position to shape the conversation from within both Utah and the culture. In what ways are you able to incorporate the struggle and the perspective of people in states like Utah?
Stormy: What I want to incorporate is people’s power as citizens. High Times was built on delivering a message that the majority of people didn’t understand at the time. It was these people, not a government, that had carried this message for 40 years and now we are learning, they were right. Federally, church and politics aren’t supposed to mix, Utah is a state where they seem to mix a lot. Prop 2 being a prime example of that. There was a similar situation with Proposition 3, which would have expanded access to healthcare. I am running because I believe in democracy and believe our elected representatives should serve the will of the people.
Salt Baked City: High Times is getting into retail. Is there a possibility that we’ll see a High Times store in Utah one day?
Stormy: Absolutely, why not?
Salt Baked City: High Times tends to have a little bit more of a recreational connotation than a medical connotation. Do you think Utah should be pushing for adult use?
Stormy: I do. I believe this is the beginning of a more mainstream movement of plant medicine. There are all kinds of medicinal benefits to so many plants, I’m hoping that cannabis will shed the light on the rest.
Salt Baked City: The Latter-day Saint pioneer culture embraced herbalism as essential to adherence with the Word of Wisdom. How do you bring that culture back, the right to use the plants that God gave you to take care of yourself?
Stormy: That’s my fear of not having recreational access because we’re saying, “Hey pharmaceutical companies, you get to own a plant!” If you read High Times over the years it shows you how to make your own medicine at home. This was also another reason I decided to run for office. When I met with the men leading the Proposition 2 campaign, I was coming from a very different place than them and I’m proud of that. I let them know that this was about education. I wanted to bring women together in this state to talk about it and their response was “The women are soccer moms’.
They make their decisions while talking in the field. They’ll vote however the church tells them to. This campaign is about convincing the church. The women will vote however we or the Church tell them to.” My response, on defense of all Utah women, was that when we’re alone in a voting booth we will make our own decisions. All of them assured me they would not. That’s how they spoke about the women of Utah. I was prohibited from participating in the campaign. I find it really hard to align with people who hope their wives vote based on someone else’s opinion, instead of based on facts. I should note, the men from that meeting also went on to tell people that my Overstock success was because they decided I was the CEO’s girlfriend.
Salt Baked City: Moving forward, how do you overcome that sort of divisiveness and push the movement in a direction everyone can get on board with?
Stormy: I guess running for the Utah House of Representatives, listening to what the people in my zip code want and serving them directly through my representation. Government is about the people, not the politicians. Maybe I don’t get elected and that’s OK too, but I’m not afraid to raise my hand and try.
