 Viola Cannabis was founded in 2011 by 16-year veteran of the NBA, Al Harrington. Green Market Report had a chance to speak with Al during the recent MJBiz conference in Las Vegas. Viola is a company that I started in 2014, I actually started in 2011 when I saw the benefits of cannabis, helped my grandmother who was suffering from glaucoma, 79 years old, was able to convince her to just give cannabis a try to deal with her eye pain and an hour and a half later after her trying it, she was downstairs reading a Bible. She was crying and telling me that was the first time she did that in over three years. So that's what really inspired me to learn more about cannabis. That's when I first realized that a lot of the stigma that had been taught to me over my whole life was pretty much a lie that cannabis was actually medicine and for me a miracle plant. And that's when my journey started with cannabis. We named the company Viola, which is my grandmother's name because she's the one that inspired us to get to this point. Viola just opened its first medical marijuana dispensary in Detroit, Michigan. Michigan has been a big challenge for us to be honest. We identified the Michigan market about three and a half, four years ago now. One of the main motivating factors for us coming into Michigan was that we wanted to be able to empower the black community through cannabis by obviously offering jobs, but also creating environments where we could help young entrepreneurs get ownership in the cannabis space. And we felt like a place like Detroit is a place that we could have huge impact. When we first got there, we got derailed. We had a raid by the police back in 2018 and really set us back. It was a situation where obviously we were in the right. We had our day in court and the police was wrong for what they did, but it definitely put us in a spot where it was kind of we want to keep doing this or do we want to leave. But we decided to stick with our guns. We felt like this market was very important to what we believe in and the people that we can actually affect and help through this plant. And I'm proud to say that we was able to open up our retail location about two weeks ago. Right now we are a medicinal dispensary because the city of Detroit decided to opt out of recreational uses first time around. Don't understand, you know, really why they did it, but you know, I figure they will fix it pretty soon. Detroit's a market, especially with the fact that it's thriving and more business and more things are coming there. I think that they can benefit from, you know, having a recreational play, you know, in a city that's as big as Detroit, where, you know, obviously, you know, with tax money and different things like that can do a lot of good, you know, in the community and, you know, just, you know, through the city of Detroit. And, you know, I think that a lot of players are coming in because, number one, they are users. And, you know, with CBD, I think it's a safer way for them to kind of, you know, test the industry before they can, you know, cross over and start telling that truth about, you know, their relationship with TAC. So, you know, the one thing I always try to encourage with these athletes is, you know, if you don't have a McDonald's contract that may be voided because you talk about, you know, the benefits that you, you know, benefited from cannabis, tell your story, man up.