Stephen Montoya
There’s a new cannabis dispensary located in a container store on 1201 Evans Avenue that in itself is a testimony to perseverance. Yes, Queen Nomrah Cannabis Dispensary founder and operator Consquella Harmon had to go through some red tape to open this establishment as one might surmise. But this is just one obstacle of many Harmon has had to overcome to make this business a reality. In fact, this storefront may have never come to fruition if it hadn’t been for Harmon’s perseverance and research acumen. In 2018, Harmon would suffer from a brain injury that would leave her in an infant state. This means she had to relearn everything from reading to walking, and even remember who her family members were although she was already a mom and a working professional.
“I was moving into a new apartment in 2018 when the vibration, I believe from the apartment next door, shook a bi-fold door in our laundry area that was loose,” she explained. “The door fell on the backside of my head and all I could say is ‘I think, I need to sit down a bit,’ the next thing I know, I’m waking up in a hospital.”
It would take Harmon three months of rehabilitation before she would be ready to try and leave the hospital on her own.
During this time, Harmons says she didn’t recognize her own son or sister when they came to visit her. “I felt really standoffish from everyone because I didn’t remember anyone. This was a tough reboot for me, let me tell you.”
After several months of slow progress, Harmon says her son did some research to try and find out what steps they could take to help improve her status.
“This is when he brings me back some samples to try and see if anything would help,” she says.
Up to this point, Harmon says she was living in a world of severe pain in the form of headaches and cognitive recall. “It’s called post-traumatic-chronic-headache,” she explained. “It’s like a migraine that pulses in the area where I had my injury.” This left Harmon without the ability to drive for nearly a year. Plus, she says she couldn’t process what was going on around her. The physical ramifications of this accident also left her with a significant spinal injury that required her to have her C4 and C5 vertebrates fused together. This is when Harmon says she felt the inspiration to keep moving and get out of the funk she found herself in health-wise.
Stephen Montoya
“I was taking different strains of things my son would give me to try and then I would take notes and write down what the effects were,” she says. “He really broke it down to the science of everything I was trying.” According to Harmon, she started out with CBDs, which did nothing to ease her pain. Eventually, she would try some Delta 8 products that really helped her bounce back pain-wise.
“I got involved with cannabis because it was the only thing that would help with my seizures,” she says. “I was in the hospital three or four times a week for these and it left me where I couldn’t work.”
Before the accident, Harmon, who has a BA, says she worked in human resources, a stable industry that allowed her to provide for her family.
“After my accident, I only worked three months out of a year due to my injury,” she explained.
Dealing with health insurance doctors and filling out the medical forms became a time-consuming norm for Harmon who at this point was already looking for another answer to her health needs.
A year later, Harmon says a chance meeting with an old friend gave her the knowledge and confidence to try and go out on her own in the cannabis industry.
“This opportunity presented itself to me in the form of knowing how I can help my customers since I had gone through so much research and trauma beforehand,” Harmon says. “I don’t look at this industry as I am just trying to push something out into the community that already has a stigma around it. My main focus is to educate. I want people to understand the healing beauty of this flower and how much it helps with ailments like mine.”
Harmon says she takes edibles to aid with her sleep and smokes a form of flower throughout the day to help augment her seizure medicine, which has been a success.
Stephen Montoya
“I’m not using these products to get high; I am using them because it helps me manage my pain,” she says. “I was very apprehensive to try this at first, but since we’ve done our research, I have found that this is the only thing that helps.”
Harmon says she is in full support of any legalization legislation being discussed in the state capital this year. This comes in light of proposed legislation for the Tim Timmons Compassionate Care Act being sponsored by Pharmacology University and ZAR Wellness.
“I believe once we legal this, and we get the right parameters in place to educate people, that want to know about the product, then we can get past all the other negativity surrounding it,” Harmon emphasizes. “The stigma around cannabis has been there for so long because nobody wanted to do the research to educate themselves on it.”
