Trey Phillips, co-owner of Thrive Apothecary is in our community spotlight today with quite a story to tell.
If there’s one point that the diverse cannabis advocacy community in Texas proves, it’s that everyone has a unique reason to support cannabis reform regardless of their walk of life.
Veterans, teachers, doctors, parents of children with autism, business owners and those from communities greatly affected by the laughably ineffective yet horribly damaging prohibition of cannabis. Liberals and conservatives, Bernie supporters and Trump supporters, libertarians and even the apolitical. If there’s one issue that the majority of this otherwise deeply divided country can agree on, it’s cannabis reform.
However, few advocates in Texas can say that they served years in Fort Worth law enforcement and even a number of years serving in the Tactical Operations Division SWAT Team of Fort Worth . Yet, such is the unconventional career trajectory of Trey Phillips. From arguably the strongest prohibitionist stance of anyone in Texas, the journey that Phillips took from seasoned lawman to cannabis advocate and CBD store owner of Thrive Apothecary is remarkable. It is one that shows that truly anyone can change their mind regarding the plant.
And to his credit, Phillips is as seasoned as law enforcement officers come.
Learn how to become a medical cannabis patient in Texas
Learn how to become a medical cannabis patient in Texas
“In my first career, before entering the cannabis industry I earned numerous awards for bravery/valor while putting my life on the line to protect the citizens of Fort Worth. I engaged in over a thousand tactical operations, including high-risk search warrants, hostage situations, armed barricaded criminals, and dignitary protection,” Phillips said.
Phillips continued, stating that while on active duty, he held certifications in Advanced SWAT Operations, Advanced Hostage Rescue, Tactical Team Leader, Explosive Breaching, Pistol & Rifle Instruction, Master Taser Instruction, FBI Defensive Tactics Instruction, Chemical Agent Instructor, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Instruction. He even mentioned how he attended Sam Houston State University before graduating from the Fort Worth Police Academy.
And similar to many cannabis advocates, Phillips never saw himself becoming such an advocate and business owner of CBD or cannabis. Being a law enforcement officer for decades, proponent of the hilariously useless DARE program, and being raised in a traditional conservative household added up. Phillips was as strong of a prohibitionist due to both nature and nurture.
“If you would’ve told me 20, 10, or even five years ago that I would be involved in the cannabis space, I would’ve told you that you were crazy,” Phillips said.
Phillips then stated, “My views on cannabis have shifted dramatically over the years. Essentially, for the first 20 or so years of my life, I was spoon fed the lie that all cannabis is evil, it’s a gateway drug, and it destroys communities.”
Read more about TCUP (Texas Compassionate Use Program)
As is the case with a growing number of law enforcement officers, the hesitation to arrest people for cannabis possession for Phillips came from not an argument of morality, but simply for efficiency’s sake. It is the arduous process of completing a cannabis arrest and booking paperwork. Which entails they ensure the offender’s vehicle is towed, filing an arrest report, to then reporting the confiscated cannabis into evidence is quite a time-consuming one.
When accepted in the SWAT Team, Phillips and his team executed no-knock search warrant raids. The Breaking Bad style raids. Raids where a location continuously had a history of gang affiliation and drug trafficking, even cannabis in some cases. Through these action packed raids across Fort Worth, Phillips saw three different officers shot and the regular use of breaching explosives and flash bang grenades. Around 2010, Phillips and his fellow officers began to question the effectiveness and ethical nature of these no-knock raids on a plant that held medically legal status in so many other states even before Colorado fully legalized.
“This will probably never be verified or admitted, but we essentially made an informal rule with the Narcotics Unit that we would no longer run dynamic entry search warrants for cannabis,” Phillips mentioned.
Phillips said, “It was the right thing to do at the time, and we were the ones who took the initiative to stop the practice.”
In the same vein as many cannabis advocates do when they realize the decades-long propaganda they’ve been fed, Phillips was angered to say it kindly.
“As my 20-year career drew to a close, I began my own self education journey on cannabis. It was during this self-education where I learned the truth about cannabis- that it wasn’t a gateway drug, it didn’t destroy communities, and there were serious and verifiable medicinal uses for it. Part of me felt angry and betrayed by multiple government entities for misleading and lying to me about cannabis for two decades,” Phillips remarked
Due to many injuries received during a two-decade career in law enforcement and the PTSD that comes along with it, Phillips isn’t ashamed to admit that he’s a cannabis user himself. Nor is he ashamed to compliment the benefits the plant provides for someone with those conditions.
“With cannabis and THC, I am happier, I am more productive, and I think most importantly that I am much more present in my personal relationships, especially with my wife and my four children.”
As for how Phillips started the award-winning Thrive Apothecary and WelCel CBD, he provided an answer that’s very reminiscent of what my own father says on a daily basis.
“I had the good sense to marry way above my level!” Phillips exclaimed. “I am proud and honored to be married to an amazing woman and pioneer in the DFW area for medicine, Dr. Lisa Gardner.”
For reference, Dr. Gardner has been an OBGYN for exactly as long as Phillips served in law enforcement, approximately twenty years.
Watching her patients struggle in silence with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, insomnia, Gardner wrote prescriptions yet noticed little improvement among her patients from pharmaceuticals. In the same way that Phillips questioned his orders to forcefully arrest cannabis users, Dr. Gardner began to question the overall effectiveness of pharmaceuticals.
“She felt there had to be an alternative before someone succumbed to taking prescribed synthetic pills for the rest of their life.” Phillips explained. “She struggled to find that answer even from her colleagues, so she ventured out on her own with conviction and determination to discover it for herself.”
Because of CBD’s status of being unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration, Phillips and Gardner learned that many products offered were low testing or had pesticides and metals within the products supposed to provide medicinal relief.
Read more about Delta-8 in Texas
Due to this potentially dangerous lack of oversight, they opened Thrive Apothecary. They have since won Fort Worth Weekly’s Best CBD Store award every year since 2019.
“As the popularity of CBD grew, so did our reputation. We found ourselves being sought out by numerous media print publications and television news outlets to provide their insights and expertise. This unsolicited, yet welcomed platform, gave us the opportunity to share our story and passion about CBD with hundreds of thousands of people.”
As for the patients that Thrive Apothecary has assisted, that clientele is as diverse as the community of cannabis activists in Texas and shows the potential medicinal power of cannabis.
“It would take me hours upon hours, and page upon page, to detail the thousands of people we have helped with hemp, CBD, cannabis, medical cannabis, or however else you want to refer to it as. Veterans, first responders, sexual assault victims, children with neurological conditions, cancer patients, etc. You name it, and we have helped improve their life. This is about changing the stigma of cannabis. Our entire mission is to normalize and professionalize cannabis use.”
Her final point, one from a personal perspective and experience, Phillips discussed how the still strongly anti-cannabis law enforcement officers could alter their operations. How they can learn more about how damaging cannabis prohibition has been, along with how people from many different communities have come to medically rely on the plant they’re still imprisoning people for.
“For the front-line police officer, we need new training on what cannabis is and what cannabis is not. Police officers are receiving the same flawed education that I received over 20 years ago. It literally has not changed. Most officers simply don’t know what they don’t know. Most of my friends on the department that I still talk to have no idea that Texas even has a medical cannabis program, let alone what it looks like. There is simply no excuse for the lack of training.“
Most of the pushback that you hear about from law-enforcement typically comes from high- level administrators or police union groups. Both of these groups are run by people who still think the War on Drugs is a righteous fight that we will eventually win. They chase badly needed budget dollars that enforcement can bring in due to things like cash seizures.
“In my opinion, it’s more about money than safety. For example, in Fort Worth, police officers are still prohibited from taking Zero-THC CBD oil, but they are allowed to take things like Vicodin, Ambien, muscle relaxers, antidepressants, and more on duty. It makes no sense, and things have to change, both for the well-being of our first responders and the public they’re sworn to serve.”