Nashville's cannabis connection

Brianne O’Neill runs marketing for California-based VapeXhale.

Eleanor Kennedy

Staff Reporter- Nashville Business Journal

Tennessee may not be one of the two states where recreational marijuana has been legalized, or one of 23 where medicinal use is permitted, but that doesn’t mean Nashville isn’t connected to the growing cannabis industry.

Brianne O’Neill, a 28-year-old Nashville transplant, works remotely as the head of marketing for VapeXhale, a five-person shop that last year raised $143,016 in an Indiegogo campaign that sought $50,000 to support the launch of its second-generation Cloud EVO vaporizer.

Vaporizing is often described as one of the healthier modes of cannabis consumption, since it does not carry the additional carcinogens of smoking, O’Neill said. VapeXhale wants to up the health quotient of its products further, she said, by using only glass in its vaporizer, preventing additional contaminants from entering consumers’ lungs as metal pieces are heated.

O’Neill, who worked with the company at trade shows and on social media some last year before coming on board full-time as head of marketing this February, said the company has sold between 12,000 and 15,000 Cloud EVO units since its official release in November. The vaporizer retails at about $450 a unit.

I asked O’Neill, who moved to Nashville from Pennsylvania after college to work in the music industry, what it’s like working in a controversial field. These days, she told me, she doesn’t really see the cannabis industry as being that controversial.

“It’s coming,” O’Neill said of broader acceptance and legalization, at least for medicinal purposes. “I’m not really that scared … I feel really lucky to be a part of it as it’s all beginning.”

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Eleanor Kennedy covers Nashville’s health care and technology industries.

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Nashville's cannabis connection