Highly Inclusive: LGBTQ+ in Bay Area Cannabis

by Veronica Irwin for SF Weekly

Supernova Women’s Executive Director, Amber E. Senter (photo by Anthony Martinez)

Today, queer women lead the fight. In fact, queer women and nonbinary people — and specifically those who are Black and brown — are responsible for some of the greatest achievements in California regulated cannabis of the last five years. Oakland’s Social Equity program, which is the first of its kind in the country, was spearheaded by Black and brown queer people at organizations like Supernova Women and The Hood Incubator. Chaney Turner, a Black nonbinary woman, is the Cannabis Regulatory Commissioner for the City of Oakland. Amber Senter, a Black lesbian, just started one of the two first shared-use, equity cannabis manufacturing spaces in the country. 

“This industry was started by — and I’ll use this term very loosely here — misfits,” says Amber Senter. Cannabis is emblematic of American counterculture, she elaborates, and outcasts have always gravitated towards the cannabis industry. Thus, it makes sense that even the legal industry attracts a disproportionate amount of LGBTQ people and BIPOC. This industry, she says, is made up of “people that didn’t fit into other industries, because people who use cannabis definitely march to the beat of a different drum.” 

See full article here.