Pubdate: Sat, 19 Oct 2013
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
Copyright: 2013 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.timesdispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365
Author: Bob Young, The Seattle Times
Page: E2

LEGAL POT ALTERS 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.

Legalization in Washington state, though, could 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 is 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.

"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, said 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 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 who 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 pinkcollar ghetto," as Chapkis put it.

But for the most part, women say sexism in the pot world is no worse
than in other industries they have 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.

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

Hilary Bricken, an attorney whose firm specializes in advising pot
businesses, 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 said. "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.

Steph Sherer, head of the national medical marijuana group Americans
for Safe Access, 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.

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.

Franklin, head of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, 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.

"Women really made Prohibition happen," said Foster, chairwoman of the
state Liquor Control Board. "And they were very much part of ending
it."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Matt