The Come To My Window star is in the process of branding her marijuana crop, grown by Melissa and her Etheridge Farms partners, and it will soon be available to medical patients.
“There’s a balm that’s so good for muscles and arthritis,” she tells Billboard. “I have my own smoke, some edibles and some (oil) cartridges. I’m really just entering the market with what I’ve learned in the last 10 years about cannabis in wanting to bring a product to America that is focused on health and on wellness and how important this plant is and used to be in our medicinal system.”
“Seventy years ago it was on pharmacy shelves, now it’s time to get back to that; to understand plant medicine,” the singer adds.
Melissa also hopes her new cannabis products will offer the ill, ailing and just plain tired an alternative to drinking away their pain.
“That’s really where I want to enter this market…” she says. “For the person who is looking to unwind at night and not have a couple of drinks and feel like c**p in the morning, maybe this is an alternative… And wow, maybe this topical (medicine) actually helps with this inflammation. I just feel really strongly about the medicinal aspects of cannabis.”
The singer turned to marijuana as she battled breast cancer a decade ago, and she believes the drug really helped her beat the disease.
Now cancer-free, she tells the outlet, “I believe anybody who smokes cannabis is using it medicinally, whether they consider it so or not. If it’s my means of relaxing and unplugging and de-stressing at the end of the day, who’s to say that’s not good medicine? Isn’t that what you do when you take your Ambiens (pills) and your Valiums and stuff? It’s the same thing.
“My stress level and all the things I felt contributed to my cancer 12 years ago, I absolutely treat them every day by smoking cannabis and keeping a balance in my life.”