Christine Meeusen, who goes by the name Sister Kate, grew up going to a private Catholic school and was taught by nuns. The sense of sisterhood and honorable work appealed to her.
But these days, Sister Kate, 58, answers to a different, higher calling.
Sister Kate is a self-proclaimed nun, though not of the Catholic order, and the founder of a medical cannabis company that operates out of her home in California's Central Valley. Her mission is to erase the negative stigma around the plant and create jobs for women who believe in its healing powers. In 2016, Sisters of the Valley generated roughly $750,000 in sales.
"No matter what we read about cannabis in the last 20 years, we didn't listen to it," Sister Kate told Business Insider last year. "Because we knew we were dealing with a healing plant. We knew, intuitively, without having the science [to back us], that it was being demonized."
Business Insider visited the Sisters of the Valley in March 2016. Take a look inside the most pot-friendly abbey in America.
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In a California ranch house, the seven members of the Sisters of the Valley wear white blouses, long denim skirts, and habits made from old pillowcases.
They might look the part, but the Sisters of the Valley are hardly the convent types.
The sisters make a line of salves, tinctures, and oils derived from hemp, a type of cannabis plant that contains only trace amounts of the psychoactive ingredient in weed.
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