Kate Steinberg
Kate Steinberg has seen firsthand how therapeutic treatment with medical marijuana transforms lives young and old, and she now spends her days spreading the word about its benefits.
In some circles, the industry to which Kate Steinberg has so thoroughly committed herself remains stigmatized. But when she encounters a person who rolls their eyes when she mentions that she works in the medical marijuana field, she doesn’t get angry.
She gets energized.
“At the end of the day my goal is education,” says Steinberg, 25, who is manager of outreach for Curaleaf, a nationwide dispensary with several locations in Massachusetts. “I love helping people understand that cannabis really is a therapeutic alternative treatment option.”
Steinberg started working at Curaleaf’s New Jersey dispensary before she graduated from Drexel, where she majored in psychology and minored in culinary arts. She was immediately struck by how effective cannabis was for patients who had tried conventional drugs — with mixed results — to manage their pain. One such person was her sister, who contracted Lyme disease.
“To see how much relief she got from the program was such an inspiration,” Steinberg says. “Once I started working at the dispensary I had one adolescent patient… They had severe autism; they were nonverbal and would get very violent. We sent the parents home with cannabis oil and they called me back crying because they were now looking at Disney World vacations. Everything changed so rapidly in just a few days. It was life changing for me to see firsthand how it’s helping.”
Advocates like Steinberg say cannabis can act as a sedative, calming people with anxiety. It can induce appetite and reduce nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and it can help those suffering from mental health issues like depression.
Not everyone who uses medical marijuana becomes glassy-eyed and giggly. It’s the THC in marijuana that makes users “high,” but CBD oil can be extracted from the plants and used to treat patients who want to avoid the euphoria commonly associated with THC.
Steinberg sees the benefit in both.
“We have some patients who have been in the program for three years and have only used CBD products, so they have never felt high,” she says. “We have patients who prefer to use THC, so they do encounter that euphoria. If you have terminal cancer, if you have severe PTSD, sometimes that euphoria is what you need to bring yourself to a better place.”
In her outreach role, Steinberg speaks to patient support groups, physicians interested in the program, and recently organized the first community blood drive at a dispensary in Massachusetts.
“I am so passionate about this,” she says. “We had a patient I spoke with at an ALS symposium. He was initially very wary about using cannabis, but he decided to give it a try. His wife told me that before he was diagnosed he would whistle all the time, but after his diagnosis he had stopped. Just the other week his wife walked downstairs and heard him whistling again. There is something so beautiful about that to me.” — Mike Unger
