Hey Smoke Fam! Thanks for taking the time to check us out, we are Alex and Stephen, great friends from College Station, Texas and founders of Elevated Stash.
While serving in the Marines, Stephen was stationed in Jacksonville, NC as a 6672 Aviation Supply Specialist for MALS-29. He served overseas with the 22 MEU and spent time in Kuwait, Iraq, and Pakistan. After getting out of the military, Alex and Stephen came up with the idea for a smokers subscription box about 3 years ago after Stephen experienced several bad trips to the VA Hospital. Most veterans will understand what we mean when we say “bad experience at the VA,” haha. As a Marine veteran, Stephen was suffering from several issues, but one of the main ones being insomnia. He was seeing several doctors at the VA Hospital to help with the issues, but quickly realized that the only options offered to help were pills on top of more addicting pills. One of the main pills being ambien, which if you aren’t familiar with the side effects, just do a simple google search and you’ll see!
Around the same time, Alex was working his full-time career while Stephen was enrolled in school via the GI Bill at Southern Methodist University. After research and writing his thesis at SMU on ‘How Medical Marijuana affects Veterans with PTSD,’ he discovered that veterans fall under Federal law, not state law, and have barely any to no access to alternative medicine versus prescription pills, which are harmful, cause more issues, and are extremely addictive. As times are changing, Alex & Stephen both found that slowly but surely, veterans are gaining access across the nation and being allowed to smoke as a form of medication, but the items and accessories needed were very pricey. Not only that, but there wasn’t a solid avenue pertaining to veterans in which we could even discuss this topic yet alone shed light on it.
In June 2017, while Stephen was attending summer school at SMU and Alex adapting to a challenging career promotion, they both decided to dive into launching a smokers subscription box business. Elevated Stash is a veteran-owned smokers subscription box and unique online headshop. We create new boxes each month and deliver them discreetly to your doorstep. Our main box, “Pikes Peak,” costs $29.99 and features a brand new smoking device each month with seven to ten other smoking accessories (cancel anytime). We take pride in building a solid box each month, and do our best to design new / artistic glass, find the latest smoking gadgets on the market, all while providing you value. We put our money inside the box, not on the outside of it.
What makes us different is that we also strive to give back. Since the beginning of launch, we decided to be this impact, and from every single sale, we donate a portion of sales to charity to help veterans. Each month we partner with a new charity, in which we extensively research and reach out to. We also donate gift boxes, glass pieces, and accessories to various Operation 1620 Breakfast Buds events, NORML organizations, and veterans events across the nation. We attend meetings, rallies, and speak at various groups such as DFW NORML and HCC.
This is the forefront of our company, and we want the public to know the truth about medical marijuana and the benefits it can have for not only veterans, but anyone suffering from pain, certain illnesses, insomnia, among many other things. The public needs to understand that laboratory created pills are not the ONLY answer. Veterans should be able to have a legitimate conversation with their doctor to find out if alternative medicine could potentially be a second option.
The thing about veterans, and we can’t speak for them all...but from our own perspective of what we've seen and been told, and also how we feel personally...we just want to stop the pain, to be able to sleep, to be ourselves. Taking 10-15 prescription pills does not do that. Change is coming.
#StayElevated
Stephen & Alex