Mike Arnold is a retired attorney, cannabis entrepreneur and a large-scale farm operator. He was born in Parkville, Missouri and attended Park Hill High School, graduating in 1994. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Truman State University in 1997. Mike received his J.D. from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2001.
Mike began his law career as a clerk in the Lane County District Attorney’s office in 1999. He started practicing law as a personal injury trial lawyer with the Law Office of Brian R. Barnes. Mike went on to start his own firm, Arnold Law, in 2002 where he continued as a trial lawyer.
Mike’s first exposure to cannabis was when he represented cannabis farmers and others in the industry in federal courts in Washington and Oregon. He founded a cannabis startup in Oregon in 2017, raising over $2 million of investor money in less than four months. Under his leadership, the company quickly became one of the largest farm conglomerates in Oregon. Mike’s company grew over 9,000 pounds of recreational marijuana by the time he exited and handed off the company to an outside management firm.
In May 2019, Mike founded Silo Wellness in Springfield, Oregon. The company is focused on leveraging its “Spore to Door” vertical integration of cannabis to the emerging markets in magic mushrooms/psilocybin, ayahuasca/DMT, and peyote/mescaline therapy industries. The company does this by becoming directly involved in ownership interests, product licensing, and management contracts for cultivation, manufacturing, and therapy dosing.
Mike continues to put on cannabis and hemp seminars to educate potential start-up companies and their employees on the seed-to-sale of cannabis and hemp, corporate governance, and scaled-up farming. Mike is also the author of the book Finishing Machine. It tells the story of a client who was accused of murdering an unarmed man.
Barbara E. Bauer, MS
Barb is the former Editor and one of the founders of Psychedelic Science Review. She is currently a contributing writer. Her goal is making accurate and concise psychedelic science research assessable so that researchers and private citizens can make informed decisions.