Focused on Truth and Healing: Tsehaitu Abye’s Black Dragon Breakfast Club

Despite the efforts of pro-pot politicians like Senator John Fetterman, Pennsylvanians still lack a basic understanding of cannabis and culture. One woman has made it her mission to change that.

The Black Dragon Breakfast Club was founded in 2018 as an educational center and grassroots organization to politically represent the Black and Brown communities in the Philadelphia area. Tsehaitu (pronounced “say-hi-tu”) Abye founded the organization to provide a black women-led creative agency and safe place to heal the traumas of the War on Drugs.

Black Dragon Breakfast Club’s mission is to “change the perception of weed through disruptive marketing practices, outreach and engagement.”

Tsehaitu is a Philadelphia-born and raised Ethiopian who actively serves her community as a board member of the Pennsylvania Farmers Union.

She is a work organizer, political organizer, business strategist and artist. And all of these threads feed into her personal and professional cannabis practice.

Tsehaitu moved to Hawaii when he was 15 and lived there through high school and college. After graduating from the University of Hawaii, she made her way to Mendocino County, California, where she started what she says was her introduction to weed at an old cannabis farm in California’s infamous Emerald Triangle.

In Mendocino, Tsehaitu developed a basic understanding of the cultivation and medicinal benefits of cannabis. But little did she know that she was actually continuing the legacy of her father, an immigrant from Ethiopia who had met her mother in Hawaii decades earlier. Unbeknownst to Tsehaitu, her father spent ten years in an Albuquerque prison before being deported to Ethiopia when she was younger. The crime?

Growing cannabis in the mountains of Hawaii. The harsh reality of cannabis prohibition separated them for 30 years.

A generational connection revealed

Today, Tsehaitu is aware of the social dynamics that shaped her father’s cannabis use and how it impacted the black communities she supports through her union organizing work.

“[For many people,] Selling drugs is about employment and opportunity. My father was right in the middle. There was a whole conscious movement in the ’60s and ’70s, but because of the Reagan years of Prohibition, a lot of the wisdom wasn’t shared,” she says.

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As for Tsehaitu’s mother, the politics of respectability, shame and concern about poor outcomes have tainted her views and made it difficult for her to accept cannabis as medicine.

This paradoxical relationship between a father active in the inheritance market and a mother doing her best to support her first generation Ethiopian child eventually led Tsehaitu to begin her own journey with cannabis and healing on her own terms to search.

She spent three years on a farm in Potter Valley, California before returning to her hometown of Philadelphia to implement everything she learned.

Tsehaitu’s Advice: Be the person your community deserves

From hosting local events to showcasing the Black Dragon Breakfast Club brand at Roots Picnic in 2019, Abye was quickly caught up in the tiring impact of startup culture. Since then, she has dug even deeper to understand how she wants to grow her organization and advance as a church leader.

The formation of the Black Dragon Breakfast Club brings together the personal, spiritual and healing qualities of cannabis, which Tsehaitu believes are central to her day-to-day and long-term well-being.

To embody the true black dragon spirit—hardworking, progressive, and loving—she encourages other leaders in a group to do the same.

“I didn’t want to bring people into a community that’s pretty on paper, but leadership hasn’t even started on it yet [own] Cure. I’ve been in a few companies where leadership is just a reflection of our narcissistic society. Our leadership needs to be more feminine, softer, loving and compassionate, but I cannot help directing this unless I am doing my own healing.”

The Black Dragon Breakfast Club offers a range of goods and services including Dragon Affirmation Cards, branding and strategy consulting, and cannabis content marketing services.

With each new offering, Tsehaitu seeks to connect people more deeply to the reasons they are drawn to cannabis in the first place – whether it’s their need to relax, their desire to find themselves, or their dream of a successful brand or to create a business that connects with real needs and desires.

As she heals and grows, Tsehaitu will continue to serve in her community through the Black Dragon Breakfast Club, along with the other policy and campaign management work she devotes her time to.

She continues her activism locally in Pennsylvania, conducting voter registrations, organizing community events, and advocating for more healing and authenticity in our society.

Connect with Black Dragon Breakfast Club and Tsehaitu Abye @blackdragonbreakfastclub on Instagram or at www.shopblackdragons.com.

Nadir Pearson

Nadir is a dynamic East Coast cannabis leader and entrepreneur. He is the founder of SMART (Student Marijuana Alliance for Research & Transparency), a national cannabis college organization, and co-founder of Hybrid Co. Nadir also serves as project leader for Cannaclusive.

Check out Nadir Pearson’s articles

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