Colin Fraser’s existence has been punctuated by way of moments that will have ended him. He was once shot 8 occasions. He was once wrongly incarcerated on cannabis-related fees. He got here house with scars, a document, and the load of proving himself in a society that infrequently forgives.
What he did subsequent, then again, modified the whole thing. He was once having a look to construct one thing better than himself. Taking care of his mom all over her most cancers remedy, Fraser witnessed the gaps in clinical hashish get entry to firsthand: how older sufferers had been unnoticed in outreach, how little steerage existed past trial and mistake, and the way remoted other people felt navigating medication with out fortify.
From that have grew a constellation of projects that lately outline his paintings. Fraser is the founding father of Upling, the primary Black-owned hashish shipping app within the U.S.; the writer of Bud-E, an AI-powered genetics device that brings precision medication into hashish care; and the architect of Grass to Grace, an entrepreneurship program serving to justice-impacted other people flip legal data into legacies.
Taken in combination, those projects might sound like 3 separate initiatives, however for Fraser, they’re all branches of the similar tree: fairness. Whether or not it’s financial fairness for returning voters or well being fairness for sufferers suffering to navigate hashish remedy, his paintings is set breaking down obstacles that experience traditionally excluded Black and Brown communities.
Courses from a wounded device
Fraser’s trail carries the imprint of each and every barrier he’s confronted. “My adventure into hashish entrepreneurship didn’t get started in a boardroom; it began in a court docket,” he says. Being incarcerated gave him an unfiltered view of prohibition’s cruelty: communities dismantled, alternatives stolen, survival tied to resilience.
However there’s every other lesson Fraser performed of jail: the significance of harmony. “I noticed too many Black and Brown marketers competing for crumbs as a substitute of creating in combination,” he remembers. That realization driven him towards collaboration, now not festival.
The ecosystem he’s construction lately displays that lesson. It’s structured round shared possession and pathways for individuals who appear to be him—other people written off by way of the similar rules that now gas billion-dollar industries. For Fraser, fairness isn’t a speaking level; it’s the organizing theory. “We’re now not inquiring for a seat at somebody else’s desk. We’re construction our personal,” he explains.
Grass to Grace: From time served to companies constructed
That philosophy involves existence via Grass to Grace, Fraser’s reentry entrepreneurship cohort. Introduced with WorkSource 1st viscount montgomery of alamein, this system specializes in turning justice-impacted folks into industry homeowners.
So why entrepreneurship as a substitute of pushing for activity placement? Fraser doesn’t hesitate: “Whilst you get started a industry, there isn’t a checkbox that asks in the event you’ve ever been locked up. Consumers don’t ask about your previous. They care if you’ll be able to ship.”
The cohort is designed to shift id itself. Luck, Fraser argues, doesn’t simply appear to be individuals strolling away with viable industry plans and evidence of thought; he likes the theory of reshaping how households and communities see them. “When a player’s kid sees their dad or mum as a industry proprietor as a substitute of only a previously incarcerated particular person, that adjustments the whole thing,” he says. “That’s generational affect.”
Capital, in fact, is a barrier. However Fraser issues to one thing deeper: agree with. “Banks don’t agree with you. Traders don’t agree with you. From time to time, now not even your individual neighborhood trusts you,” he says. Construction companies that serve, now not simply promote, is his means of restoring that agree with. “If your individual neighborhood doesn’t see your worth, it’s exhausting to develop. However whilst you root your small business in affect, it turns into a legacy.”
Redefining get entry to via hashish care at the doorstep
If Grass to Grace is Fraser’s solution to financial fairness, Upling is his solution to healthcare get entry to. At the floor, Upling is a high-speed hashish shipping app, however its actual project is to take away the obstacles that stay sufferers—particularly probably the most inclined—from getting constant, dependable care.
The speculation took root when Fraser got here house to handle his mom all over her most cancers remedy. He witnessed how clinical hashish may turn into her high quality of existence, however he additionally noticed how tricky it was once for sufferers like her to get entry to the proper merchandise and fortify.
“One of the most largest gaps I realized was once how lost sight of older clinical customers had been,” he remembers. “Sufferers 60 and above weren’t being advertised to, trained, and even stated in maximum hashish outreach. The trade looked as if it would center of attention at the ‘cool issue’ of hashish, whilst seniors—those who frequently want it maximum—had been left to determine issues out on their very own.”
Outdoor the dispensary, knowledge was once sparse and intimidating. When you weren’t tech-savvy, plugged right into a hashish neighborhood, or had somebody to lead you, your adventure was once a patchwork of trial and mistake. For Fraser, that wasn’t excellent sufficient. Upling changed into his strategy to streamline all the procedure: shipping this is speedy and compliant, paired with clean knowledge and a patient-first ethos.
Fairness runs during the platform’s DNA. Upling is the primary Black-owned delivery-focused hashish app, and Fraser constructed it now not simply to serve sufferers, however to fashion a long run the place communities harmed by way of prohibition are at the leading edge of the criminal trade. “Upling isn’t only a shipping app; it’s a platform to create possession alternatives for other people like me,” Fraser says.
When AI meets hashish care
Now, if Upling reimagines get entry to, Bud-E reimagines what occurs after get entry to. Introduced throughout the Upling platform, Bud-E is an AI-powered hashish genetics device designed to transport sufferers past floor makes an attempt.
For Fraser, the foundation was once non-public. “Bud-E was once born from looking at my mom fight and knowing that maximum clinical hashish sufferers are necessarily engaging in experiments on themselves and not using a medical steerage,” he says. “We’re asking unwell other people to be their very own researchers, pharmacists, and docs. That’s now not healthcare. That’s abandonment.”
Bud-E flips that fashion. By way of examining patient-reported results, clinical historical past, and not obligatory genetic knowledge, the device generates customized hashish suggestions, finding out from 1000’s of circumstances, now not only one physician’s revel in. Fraser calls it “a cannabis-knowledgeable physician to be had 24/7.”
“At this time, we’re at midnight ages—sufferers making an attempt random merchandise in line with advertising claims and budtender evaluations,” Fraser says. “AI adjustments that totally.”
The affect is easiest understood via examples. Believe a 65-year-old lady with arthritis and insomnia. As a substitute of depending on no matter pressure is trending that week, Bud-E analyzes her prerequisites, medicines, and previous stories. It could suggest a CBD:THC ratio for daylight ache that gained’t intervene with blood power meds, and a separate middle of the night method that eases each ache and sleep with out morning grogginess. Bud-E then tracks her comments, adjusts in actual time, and contributes her anonymized knowledge to reinforce handle others.
Or image a veteran with PTSD opening the Upling app. Inside mins, Bud-E interprets their signs into secure, focused product ideas grounded in affected person knowledge, and now not guesswork. That’s the variation Fraser sees between the use of hashish and therapeutic with it.
The imaginative and prescient extends some distance past lately’s beta. Fraser imagines a close to long run the place AI can expect with 80–90% accuracy how a particular product will impact a particular affected person, combine with wearables to regulate dosage in actual time, and democratize hashish experience. “A affected person in rural Mississippi will have to have get entry to to the similar stage of refined hashish wisdom as somebody in Beverly Hills,” he says. “That’s fairness via generation.”
Set for complete free up in October 2025, Bud-E is Fraser’s try to give sufferers what prohibition and stigma have lengthy denied them: readability, protection, and agree with.
The banking roadblock
But, at the same time as Fraser builds out techniques and platforms, he’s clear-eyed about one impediment that might undermine it all: the loss of get entry to to banking.
“That philosophy additionally comes with a problem to the wider hashish trade,” he says. “Hashish legalization represents society’s acknowledgment that it were given one thing essentially unsuitable about criminalization. The trade has an ethical debt to the communities maximum harmed by way of prohibition. This isn’t charity; it’s justice.”
However justice, Fraser insists, can’t be accomplished whilst the trade stays locked out of the monetary device. Hashish is criminal in dozens of states, however beneath federal prohibition, maximum banks nonetheless refuse to paintings with hashish corporations. The result’s an trade pressured to perform most commonly in money—bad for dispensaries, restricting for marketers, and burdensome for sufferers.
“If I may trade one coverage day after today to boost up fairness, it will be banking reform,” Fraser says. With out get entry to to loans, credit score, or insurance coverage, justice-impacted marketers stay locked out of scaling their companies. Sufferers, in the meantime, are left paying money for medication when many are already suffering beneath clinical expenses.
Fraser sees banking reform because the linchpin for true hashish fairness. “Banking reform would do extra for hashish fairness than any social fairness program ever may,” he argues. “It could stage the enjoying box and let the most efficient companies win, irrespective of the founder’s background.”
When banks open their doorways to hashish companies, it sends a sign that it is a actual trade, deserving of actual admire. For marketers and sufferers alike, that shift may imply the variation between surviving within the shadows and thriving within the open.
From that viewpoint, Fraser additionally brings his equity-first lens into coverage circles. He was once appointed by way of Maryland Governor Wes Moore to the Police Coaching and Requirements Committee, chairs the Howard County Hashish Advisory Board, and serves on a couple of reentry and hashish industry associations. In 2024, the Baltimore Industry Magazine named him to its prestigious 40 Beneath 40 record—a testomony to his rising affect on the intersection of fairness, healthcare, and hashish coverage.
Breaking obstacles, construction futures
Grass to Grace, Upling, and Bud-E might look like very other initiatives: one interested by reentry, every other on shipping, and a 3rd on precision medication. However for Fraser, they’re all a part of the similar project: breaking down obstacles between other people and the assets they deserve.
“From Grass to Grace offers other people a 2d likelihood at existence and possession. Bud-E offers sufferers a clearer trail to higher well being,” he says. “In each circumstances, I’m breaking down obstacles between other people and the alternatives they deserve.”
That philosophy comes from lived revel in. Having been shot, incarcerated, and compelled to begin once more, Fraser acknowledges the invisible partitions others would possibly not see. For him, fairness isn’t simply a well-liked phrase, however the connective tissue between each and every undertaking he launches.
We will be able to be speaking a couple of previously incarcerated father being noticed as a industry proprietor, a most cancers affected person receiving clean steerage as a substitute of misunderstanding, or a neighborhood having a voice in an trade as soon as used to criminalize them. Regardless of the case, Fraser sees every as a part of the similar battle: turning exclusion into empowerment.
From grass to grace, from jail to precision
Fraser’s tale might be framed as simply every other cool, inspiring hashish entrepreneur story. Nevertheless it’s far more than that. Colin is rewriting the principles of who will get to heal, who will get to possess, and who will get to form the way forward for an trade that when criminalized them.
“I’ve been the individual ranging from 0 with a document, a dream, and a mountain of hindrances,” Fraser says. “My tale tells other people it’s imaginable to head from grass to grace.”
With Grass to Grace empowering marketers, Upling redefining get entry to, and Bud-E pushing hashish care into the generation of precision medication, Fraser is proving that hashish will also be (and is) greater than a product. It’s a reworking trail to dignity, fairness, and therapeutic for the ones lengthy close out.
