Women in Cannabis: Tracee Mcafee
Hear from Tracy McAfee, founder and CEO of Cryo Cure, a new approach to processing the cannabis plant to capture and maintain its most beneficial compounds after harvesting.
Cannabis has been a part of Tracee McAfee’s life since she was a little girl when she began using cannabis as a means to deal with her childhood PTSD. “I realized that microdosing cannabis was a way for me to feel a lot of relief.” However, as an adult owning her own company dealing with Fortune 500 companies and being a public figure, she had to keep her cannabis use a secret all of the time. “It was tough, but microdosing was perfect for me,” says McAfee. “I’m 57 years old now and I haven’t had to be on any medication my entire life and not have had any health issues and I believe that’s from the power of cannabis.”
That belief in and passion for cannabis is the big motivator for McAfee as she operates and runs her business Cryo Cure. “Once I was able to remove the ‘shame blanket’ which was me thinking that there was something wrong with me because I had to use cannabis, I started to see that a lot of other people were keeping it a secret too,” McAfee explains. “And once I came out of the shadows of cannabis use, I found that I was in a position to help other people.”
McAfee and her partner Greg Baughman saw firsthand how impactful cannabis can be for individuals with severe health issues while they were living in Michigan where Baughman was working as a caregiver. “We saw cannabis do incredible things for patients with multiple sclerosis and cancer, among other things,” McAFee shares. “Cannabis was helping these people live a better quality life and that set the hook for us. We love the plant to begin with so once we saw the medical benefits, we asked ourselves ‘How can we do more of this and how can we help more people?’”
It was from asking themselves those questions and being in their cannabis facility in Michigan that Cryo Cure came to be. McAfee recalls being in her garden one day defoliating her plants for her own personal use when she thought to herself, “You know, when these buds are ready, I don’t want them looking the way they look coming out of the dry room. I want to smell them and taste them just like this!”
As detailed on the company website, Cryo Cure’s a patent-pending process applies a specific range of time, temperatures, and pressure in order to “perfectly preserve cannabis and hemp in its “live resin” state.” This tested and proven process results in a more potent and flavorful cannabis or smokable hemp flower.
Recently, McAfee relocated to Pahrump, Nevada (a town about an hour away from Las Vegas) to open her new cannabis facility. She and her team are hard at work developing new products that they’re very excited for the public to get their hands on, such as medicated puff candy and boba.
McAfee is very optimistic about the future of the cannabis industry and hopes that everyone that wants to be in the cannabis space can be. “I see a lot of creative alliances forming right now in the industry and I really love that. People that are struggling are finding that they’re better together rather than broken apart and going out of business.”