There is a question I have been sitting with for a while now:
Is my only value getting people high?
That is a strange question to ask when cannabis has been part of your life for roughly 20 years. It is even stranger when you built a business around it.
Owls Oil did not begin as some carefully mapped-out corporate plan. My relationship with cannabis started when I was young, long before I understood business, regulation, responsibility or myself particularly well. Over the years, cannabis became tied to work and money, then risk and eventually family.
Now I am a father. I have children watching the choices I make. The things that felt important to me in my teens or twenties do not necessarily carry the same weight anymore.
So this is not an article about whether cannabis is good or bad. It is not a lecture telling anyone what they should consume.
It is a reflection on what happens when the thing that helped build your life also forces you to ask what kind of life you are trying to build.
When Cannabis Becomes a Commodity
One of the biggest changes I have watched in the cannabis market is how much of the conversation has shifted toward one simple question:
How high can we get someone for the best possible price?
Potency goes up. New cannabinoids arrive. Tolerance rises. Another product comes along promising to be stronger than the last one.
From a business perspective, I understand it. The market tells you what people want, and a small company ignores that at its own risk.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
At one point, we wanted to avoid disposable vapes because I believed the more sustainable choice mattered. Customers made a different choice. They bought disposables somewhere else.
That humbles you quickly.
You can have principles, but a business still needs revenue. People need wages. Products need to sell. Bills do not care about your philosophy.
The harder question is what happens when following the market begins to pull you away from what you actually believe.
My Relationship With Cannabis Changed Before My Business Did
Cannabis supported me for a long time. I used it to relax, cope and change how I felt.
Eventually I had to ask why.
That became part of a much bigger period of self-examination. I spent years looking at my own drinking, drug use, ambition, fear and the need to appear strong. I went through a period of sobriety and started paying closer attention to what I was reaching for when I felt uncomfortable.
I do not believe everyone who uses cannabis has a problem. I also do not think the answer is pretending a substance can never become a crutch.
Sometimes something works for you until it does not.
For me, cannabis had filled a space for years. As I began working on what was underneath that space, I did not need it in exactly the same way.
That changed how I looked at the products I sold.
The Cannabis Business Can Make You Feel Invincible
There was a period when I genuinely believed I could make almost anything work if I pushed hard enough.
I bought an extraction machine for around half a million dollars without having the background in solvents or science that I probably should have had before making that decision. In my head, the business model looked obvious. Put cannabis in, produce extracts, make money.
Reality was much less forgiving.
Facilities cost money. Equipment costs money. Compliance costs money. Safety matters. Staff need leadership. Markets move.
I made expensive mistakes.
Earlier in my cannabis career, I had already seen the other side of the industry. We were robbed more than once. There were threats. There was the constant pressure of being responsible for other people while trying to look like I had everything under control.
Eventually I wanted out of that life. I moved to Oregon and tried to build something different.
But moving does not automatically remove the patterns you bring with you.
Owls Oil Grew, and So Did the Pressure
Owls Oil went through the same kind of painful learning.
At one point I had too much overhead, too many people and not enough management. I tried to give everyone what they wanted. I was the main person bringing in revenue while also trying to hold the whole operation together.
Eventually I had to cut costs by roughly 92%.
I lived in the warehouse. My wife and kids went to stay with family. I remember waking up in the middle of the night trying to work out how I was going to keep the company alive.
That kind of pressure does something to you.
It also exposes you.
You start finding out whether the decisions you are making come from clarity or fear.
Europe Gave the Business Another Life
Then Europe opened another door.
HHC took off. The business found momentum again. For a while, it felt like we had caught the right wave.
Then regulations began changing.
That is the reality of working in cannabinoids. What is available today may face a very different legal environment tomorrow. HHC, THCA and newer compounds all sit inside a market where laws, enforcement and testing standards can change quickly from one country to another.
As HHC came under tighter restrictions, THCA became part of the conversation. Readers who want the current Ireland-specific background can start with our THCA in Ireland guide.
THCA interested me because it is much closer to the cannabis world I already understood than some of the newer compounds appearing in the market. But that does not mean every question disappears.
The industry keeps moving.
Once one cannabinoid becomes restricted, another appears. Then another.
At some point, chasing the next compound simply because it produces an effect stops feeling like progress and starts feeling like a game of cat and mouse.
That is where I have become uncomfortable.
Legal Does Not Automatically Mean I Am Comfortable Selling It
This may be the most important thing I have learned.
Legal does not automatically mean good.
It does not automatically mean responsible.
And it definitely does not mean we understand everything about a product.
There are newer psychoactive cannabinoids on the market that can produce an effect while testing standards and scientific understanding lag behind. For me, that matters.
I cannot control what every company chooses to sell.
I can control whether I am transparent about what we sell.
That means testing where appropriate, being clear about what is in a product, avoiding made-up certainty and letting adults make their own decisions with as much information as we can reasonably provide. Our current lab documentation is available on the Owls Oil Test Results page.
Owls Oil has customers who want stronger products. We have released lower-potency options and heard that they were not strong enough.
That feedback is real.
But customer demand does not remove my responsibility to decide what I am willing to put my name on.
Fear Has Made Some of My Worst Decisions for Me
One experience brought this into focus in a way I will never forget.
I was stopped at San Francisco airport while carrying HHC and terpenes to Ireland. I had invoices and testing. I believed I could document what I was carrying.
The airport test told a different story.
I was arrested and spent time in jail before the case was ultimately dropped.
Even though the case went away, the experience did not.
I lost time and money. Travel became more complicated. More importantly, I had to ask myself why I had put myself in that position.
The answer was fear.
I was scared of losing the company. I was scared of not making payroll. I was scared of letting people down. I was scared of failing my family.
Survival can make reckless decisions feel responsible.
That does not make them responsible.
Missing My Son's Birthday Hurt More Than Losing Money
Business can convince you that every emergency is the most important thing in the world.
I believed I needed to be the person who fixed everything.
At one point that mindset cost me something I cannot buy back: I missed my son's birthday.
I remember sitting alone in a room, calling him and feeling ashamed.
That moment stays with me because it cut through all the business language. Revenue, expansion, inventory, regulations, launches and cash flow suddenly sounded much smaller.
What exactly was I building if building it required me to become absent from the people I said I was building it for?
I Do Not Want Owls Oil to Exist Only to Get People High
I am grateful when customers tell us our products are some of the best they have tried. I am grateful when people notice the testing, the ingredients or the work that goes into what we make.
Those things matter to me.
But I keep coming back to the same question.
Is that all I have to offer?
Do I want my children to look at my life's work and see that I became good at selling increasingly powerful ways for people to change how they feel?
I do not have a neat answer.
Maybe part of the future is focusing more on the United States. Maybe the European market changes again. Maybe Owls Oil changes with it. Maybe parts of the business need to become smaller. Maybe some things need to end.
I genuinely do not know yet.
What I do know is that I no longer want to make decisions from panic.
I want to listen to the market without worshipping it.
I want to run a business without pretending money is the only measure that matters.
I want our products to be transparent enough that people can make informed decisions for themselves.
And I want to be present for my wife and children while I figure out what comes next.
If you want more context on where Owls Oil came from and the standards behind the brand, read About Owls Oil.
Building From the Inside Instead of Reaching Outside
When I was younger, I constantly looked outside myself for something to change how I felt.
Cannabis. Alcohol. Psychedelics. Money. Business wins. The next deal.
Over time, I started learning how to sit with myself instead.
That does not mean I have everything worked out. This entire reflection exists because I do not.
But I have become much more interested in what is happening inside me before I reach for something outside me.
That lesson applies to business too.
You can always chase another market, another product or another revenue stream. Sometimes that is exactly what a company needs to do.
Other times, the harder move is asking why you are chasing it in the first place.
For me, that is the question now.
Not simply, “What can Owls Oil sell next?”
But, “What is worth building next?”
Where Owls Oil Goes From Here
I am sharing this because I would rather be transparent about the uncertainty than pretend I have a perfect five-year plan.
The cannabis and cannabinoid markets are changing. Regulations are changing. Customer preferences are changing.
I am changing too.
Owls Oil is a small business. We are not creating the wave. Most of the time, we are trying to read it and decide which ones are worth riding.
Whatever comes next, I want the decision to come from a more conscious place than fear, ego or the need to prove that I can keep everything alive by myself.
If you are researching our current THCA vape range, the THCA Vapes in Ireland guide explains the category, while the THCA Vapes Ireland collection shows what is currently available.
If you have questions about products, use, testing or the brand, our FAQ is the best place to start.
If you watched the full video or have followed Owls Oil for a while, I would genuinely like to hear what you think.
What should a responsible cannabinoid company look like now?
Where is the line between giving adults what they ask for and deciding what you are willing to sell?
And if a business grows beyond the values that created it, is growth still the right goal?
Those are the questions I am sitting with.
Maybe you are sitting with some of them too.