Pubdate: Thu, 03 Oct 2013
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
Copyright: 2013 Sun-Sentinel Company
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/mVLAxQfA
Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/159
Author: Bob Young, The Seattle Times
Page: 11A

MEDICAL MARIJUANA CHANGES IMAGE OF WOMEN AND WEED

SEATTLE - The female marijuana plant, sold for its sticky psychoactive
chemicals, is where the value lies in the marijuana industry.

But the industry has long been dominated by men and can be crassly
sexist, particularly in underground pot commerce.

Women are relegated to supporting roles and sometimes blatantly viewed
as sex objects, according to a study published this year. One
Craigslist ad for pot trimmers posted by a grower in California sought
a "good looking girl" willing to have sex. Another advertised that
he'd pay extra for topless workers.

Legalization in Washington, though, should give women recourse for
sexual harassment and withheld wages, and make the industry safer for
women in general, said Lydia Ensley, a Seattle dispensary-operations
manager.

She's among a vanguard of women assuming prominent business and
advocacy roles in what has long been a guys' club.

There's Alison Holcomb, the ACLU lawyer who drafted the state's legal
pot law; and Sharon Foster, chairwoman of the state agency drawing up
rules; and Greta Carter, founder of a group trying to bring standards
and ethics to marijuana commerce, to name just a few.

For support and networking, they have even started a monthly gathering
of Women of Weed, which has grown dramatically with each meeting,
according to its founder Aimee "Ah" Warner, CEO of Cannabis Basics.

"Quite literally by making cannabis a legitimate business they made it
safer for women," Ensley said. "It's a whole new day."

Making women feel more comfortable about marijuana is key to ending
prohibition, according to Wendy Chapkis, a University of Southern
Maine sociology professor. Women vote more than men, and the gap is
growing among younger voters.

"While smoking may culturally be a 'guy thing,' voting is increasingly
a 'girl thing,'" Chapkis wrote in an academic article titled "The
Trouble with Mary Jane's Gender."

The more that women influence pot culture, the more they make other
women at ease with it. That was crucial, according to Chapkis, to last
year's voter-approved initiatives legalizing weed in Colorado and 
Washington.

Initiative 502 in Washington sought to close the gender gap at the
polls by having women appeal to women in campaign ads. "Women are the
secret weapon in this business," said Neill Franklin, executive
director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "Now that women are
really starting to become involved in marijuana reform, you see people
listening."

Men are more likely than women to use pot, according to surveys and
polls.

That disparity has shaped the pot industry and reform
movement.

The industry is "heavily testosterone-driven, no question about it,"
said Carter, who owns a Seattle medical-marijuana clinic and plans to
seek a state license to grow and process recreational pot. "Men are
risk-takers," she explained.

Few women have wanted to venture into the outlaw world of illegal
dealing, with its guns and aggressive competition, said Carter, a
grandmother, retired from a career in banking.

Instead, women with a passion for the plant tended to gravitate to
medical marijuana. In turn, medical marijuana has become "something of
a pink-collar ghetto," as Chapkis put it.

As Washington state creates a legal recreational-marijuana industry,
aspiring entrepreneurs appear to be overwhelmingly male, said Hilary
Bricken, an attorney whose firm specializes in advising pot businesses.

"Almost everyone coming to see us are young white men," Bricken said.
And that gender imbalance is more pronounced, she said, than in other
industries, such as entertainment, that her firm Harris & Moure
specializes in.

That male dominance is also found in the advocacy movement, where the
top three national groups - National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws (NORML), the Marijuana Policy Project, and the Drug
Policy Alliance - are headed by men, and their boards of directors
have a masculine tilt.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) even faced internal turmoil in 2010
when seven staff members resigned over the director's alleged
inappropriate sexual behavior with female subordinates, according to
High Times.

Rob Kampia, who remains in MPP's top post, said afterward he had
exhibited poor judgment. He took a three-month leave for therapy,
reported The Washington Post, and the organization instituted new
policies and training to avert future problems.

Steph Sherer, head of a national medical marijuana group, Americans
for Safe Access, was stunned by the movement's gender imbalance when
she got involved over a decade ago.

Sherer recalled going to her first NORML conference in San Francisco,
where almost half of the registrants were women but not a single one
was a speaker. "I had never seen anything like that," she said. "In
San Francisco you have to try to not be diverse."

With her background in criminal-justice activism, Sherer gathered a
group of women in her hotel room. "They said, 'Oh, it's always like
this,'" she recalled.

Sherer is still the only woman leading a national advocacy group. "I
feel like I've been in 'MadMen' a few times," she said. "I literally
had a donor at a meeting comment on my cleavage."

But for the most part, women say sexism in the pot world is no worse
than in other industries they've worked in, such as banking and real
estate.

"The science world I came from was probably more severe," said Dr.
Michelle Sexton, who opened one of Seattle's first labs for testing
marijuana.

Warner, whose company sells soothing lotions and creams made with pot,
said all of her mentors were men. "I never encountered blatant sexism
or misogyny," she said. "I felt more alone."

Ensley said she quit working at a dispensary earlier this year where
the owner pursued relationships with his employees and withheld wages
from a woman who rebuffed him. She emphasized that the men she works
for now are"some of the most kind, capable and creative" in the industry.

"You can't run a successful business if you have Labor and Industries
claims up the wazoo and sexual harassment," Ensley said.

Male dominance at the highest levels of advocacy groups is not all
that significant, said Betty Aldworth, deputy director of the National
Cannabis Industry Association.

Two of the leading national groups are led by their founders, and
NORML's executive director has held top posts with the group for more
than two decades. "Given that the movement is so young, there hasn't
been turnover in those executive director roles," she said. All three
groups, she said, "have intentionally sought the voices of women to
strengthen their organizations."

Some women are even finding their gender to be an advantage.

Bricken said she feels well-respected when making a legal argument to
male-dominated groups. "When a young woman makes a pitch, it seems
somehow more digestible," she explained. "It's not the stereotypical
image of a backwards-cap guy" in the pot business.

"For me," Carter added, "the biggest disappointment entering the
industry was not that it was male dominated, but its lack of business
discipline." That led her to start a Seattle trade group called the
Coalition for Cannabis Standards and Ethics.

Sherer said she understands why many women still view legal pot with
trepidation.

"Not everyone has had positive experiences with marijuana," she said,
particularly women who are caretakers for families torn apart by
substance abuse and incarceration.

"A single mother who is strapped for resources, who has kids doing
drugs she can't control, has this last option of being able to call
the police," she said.

That helps explain why polls have shown a persistent gender gap
nationally on marijuana. In an April poll by the Pew Research Center,
57 percent of men supported legalization, compared with 48 percent of
women.

Initiative 502 in Washington set out to change that.

The final TV ad of the campaign portrayed a soccer mom on her porch,
flanked by pumpkins, making the case for regulating and taxing pot to
keep it away from minors and increase funding for education and prevention.

The campaign's appeal to women seems to have worked. Polling just
before election day indicated that 53 percent of women supported I-502.

To get the backing of women in other states, Chapkis concludes, a more
gender-conscious drug-policy movement - with more women in visible
leadership positions-is necessary.

Franklin, of the national law-enforcement group against pot
prohibition, agreed.

"It is extremely important when you look at people like Alison
Holcomb," he said. "She's a mother, a prominent attorney. She is
pretty much the 502 campaign out there."

Franklin sees a historic parallel to the growing influence of women,
particularly mothers, in marijuana policy: the repeal of the 18th
Amendment prohibiting alcohol.

Women, prodded by activist Pauline Sabin, pushed the repeal effort,
arguing that prohibition was hurting children by leading thousands
into illegal bootlegging and violence. Sabin also feared that children
witnessing the flagrant contempt for prohibition would lose faith in
our laws.

Those are the same kinds of arguments Holcomb and Alice Huffman,
president of the California NAACP, are making, Franklin said.

"Women really made prohibition happen," said Foster, chair of the
state Liquor Control Board. "And they were very much part of ending
it."