Women’s Marijuana Event 'a Tupperware Party For Cannabis’

Women’s marijuana event 'a Tupperware party for cannabis’ In a Russian Hill apartment, 17 women passed around cannabis-infused gluten-free vegan blueberry almond granola and rubbed marijuana-based topical cream into their shoulders. The attendees — lawyers and chefs and nurses and tech executives among them — inhaled from vaporizers and erupted in laughter when a woman lauded the aphrodisiac wonders of “Sexxpot,” a new strain of Humboldt County-grown herb that she recently smoked with her husband. Part professional women’s networking group, part social group for weed-loving women, part showcase for female entrepreneurs, last week’s pot klatch stands on the leading edge of the cannabis movement. While women are being targeted with new products in the booming $2.7 billion marijuana market, many female weed entrepreneurs are frustrated that their voice is muted in a business that — much like those in the original Tupperware party era — is male-dominated. Karyn Wagner, whose Humboldt collective created “Sexxpot,” said dispensary buyers scoffed when she pitched them the strain aimed at the female libido with the marketing tagline, “the flowers she really wants.” Ramona Green got similar shrugs from male buyers when she pitched them products from her Doc Green’s Healing Collective line. The Berkeley company sells topical healing creams that combine strains of cannabis with shea butter lotion. The group gathered at Conley’s apartment included her mother, who recently rekindled her interest in cannabis, and two women in their 20s, comparing notes on the men they met on High There, a dating app for weed-friendly singles. [...] they wanted to create a broader space for women to share more than business cards. At one of the group’s first meetings, a woman shared how she had recently visited a dispensary and asked a young male budtender if he had any strains to help alleviate her perimenopausal symptoms. Part of that is due to the legacy of the industry’s “boobs and buds” imagery, in which women are largely seen as ornamental. At a January conference for high-net-worth investors looking to break into the cannabis market, Troy Dayton, co-founder of the pot industry analysis firm ArcView Group, surveyed the audience in a San Francisco ballroom and told them that “for the most part this crowd is about the whitest, male-est crowd in the world.” “I would just like to ask for your help in making ArcView and the industry not just another old boys’ network,” said Dayton, whose company was a sponsor of the event. For months, mainstream pharmaceutical drugs did little to help her recovery until her friends convinced her to try weed.