CANNAHEALTH Diversity in The Cannabis Industry | Page 44

ASIAN AMERICANS FOR CANNABIS EDUCATION

Causes begin with a question that leads to a conversation that culminates into action; that is how Asian American for Cannabis Education (AACE) began, with a simple question, “Where are the Asian Americans in Cannabis?” The conversation began after Ophelia Chong founded the company StockPot Images® when speaking to one of her contributors Monica Lo, and from there they began. Ophelia Chong, Tiffany Wu and Monica Lo launched AACE in May 2015, both Monica and Tiffany left AACE in the summer of 2016, Ophelia has run AACE since their departure. Ophelia's company StockPot Images® was created to break the stereotype of the cannabis user, from the general public’s view of us as “stoners”, “lazy”, “addicts”, “law breakers” – and minorities get a double dose with the inclusion of their heritage.

public’s view of us as “stoners”, “lazy”, “addicts”, “law breakers” – and minorities get a double dose with the inclusion of their heritage. StockPot Images is the “Getty” of cannabis stock photography, it features only real cannabis patients, and the industry from seed to sale. The epiphany to create StockPot Images was when Chong saw a relative suffering from an auto-immune disease use cannabis, Chong's first thought was “that’s a stoner” to the creation of her company to break her own view and to share that with the public.

The mission of AACE grew out of StockPot Image’s mission to break the stereotypes of Asian Americans and to educate about how cannabis is a medicine not a drug along the heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote,

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