How to Be a Cannabis Advocate with Natasha
Fellow Advocate & CannaBestie Natasha Shares How She's Fighting for Safe and Equitable Access to Cannabis in NY + the Unique Challenges of Being a Woman in Weed
Tammy: What's up everyone? It's your girl Tammy, aka The Cannabis Cutie, and I'm back for another episode in my series on How to Be a Cannabis Advocate.
With me today, I have the lovely Natasha, a dear friend of mine and co-founder of one of my favorite brands: PussyWeed®.
So Natasha, you are a cannabis advocate.
Natasha: I like to call myself one, yes.
Tammy: I would say you're definitely one. Can you tell us a little bit about PussyWeed?
Natasha: PussyWeed is, at its core, mostly apparel and accessories and content. And we started it in college with my co-founders, Hannah and Ava.
It was really at a time when cannabis was starting to become so popular on the West Coast and in Colorado. It was starting to become a little more mainstream in New York. But the War on Drugs part of it was not changing.
And we wanted to push towards legalization, but having a market and widespread weed, but people still in jail, was not the kind of community we wanted to build.
Tammy: So your advocacy work all started in New York?
Natasha: Yes.
Tammy: Okay. Are you still involved in this work now that New York is the hot spot right now? Are you doing anything over there in regards to helping with that?
Natasha: Yeah, so I'm still on the board of New York City NORML and doing a lot of education work through that, which is cool to still be able to be a part of East Coast efforts, even though I'm here in LA.
There's still a lot to do because legalization happened, but it hasn't been activated. There's still a lot to be decided.
And this gets down to the nitty gritty, the nerdy part about New York legalization. But basically, in the way that it was set up, the Governor was given a lot of deciding power about who gets to sit on the management board.
And the current governor is an interim governor because Kathy Hochul had to step in when Cuomo had to resign.
This November is the official gubernatorial race. And the conservative opponent is doing surprisingly well because people don't love Hochul.
We could take a huge step back. So this election is going to be a big deal when it comes to policies because nothing's been set into place yet.
I think we were all hoping that things would be a lot more solid before this moment.
And that's why they're rushing a lot of stuff about the licensing, but the licenses are all conditional, which people don't know about. And that can change at any time if conditions change.
Tammy: So it could be that absolutely everything that's been celebrated and been worked on in NY can just go down.
Natasha: In one aspect, yes. Like on the activation of the compliant market.
But the part that's really incredible is the incarceration side of things. So many records were just automatically expunged.
But Rikers Island is still not closed, as they said it would be. And there's still a lot that needs to happen on a social justice level.
The part that is really cool and so incredible is that you can no longer get arrested for consuming in public. And that is so huge and equitable because not everybody has access to a private home where they can consume.
Regardless of whether you can't have your dispensary and it's not making the millions that we thought it was going to make, to not get arrested is huge.
Tammy: That is huge–you make a great point. I hear that New York City smells dank now.
Natasha: Yeah. I mean, it always smelled dank, but it's pretty outrageous now.
Tammy: We're not mad at it.
Natasha: Yeah, I’m not mad at it. But my parents didn't used to know what weed smelled like, so it was easy to get away with stuff.
But now they do because they're like, “Oh, it smells like down the street.” And I'm like, “Yeah, I guess you know.”
Tammy: Have your parents ever told you that when you came in the house you smelled like outside?
Natasha: Yeah. I used to smoke a lot of cigarettes in high school. And I would always just say, “Oh, it's because my friend's parents smoked.” That was such an easy excuse because all of our parents smoked.
Tammy: I love it. So you use a lot of your arts and crafts, and I use the word ‘crafts’ loosely because they're beautiful.
I've seen you make really dope stitch work of slogans and your accessories are so beautiful.
📸 Credit @p.u.s.s.y.w.e.e.d
But your memes–they're great, but they're so educational, and sometimes completely outrageous.
Like the DAB one. Who was it that was covered in blood?
Natasha: The Kylie Jenner one.
Tammy: So the memes you make, can you tell us about the impact that some of them have had?
Natasha: Yeah, it's definitely kind of nuts to see people we used to aspire to, in either the advocacy or just streetwear cannabis culture, resharing or commenting.
Especially because social media was such a point of contention in the beginning of our growth. It's crazy to think now in 2022 that we can be so public on social media. But there was such a need for anonymity when we first started.
It was seen as not lame, but you were ‘anti’ the true community and culture for being on social media because you are exposing to the public something that's private and sacred–and also not legal.
But now everybody's everywhere on social media. So it feels like we help to normalize sharing those experiences and creating relatability.
Whenever we get orders and I realize they're from states we've never been in, I realize there are some lonely women stoners out there who are looking for the community that we were once looking for as well.
Tammy: Absolutely. And you've worked for quite a few different cannabis entities or consulted. So you've also had the opportunity to create content for pages with millions of followers and really shake up the conversations that are happening on the internet about cannabis.
Natasha: Yeah, it's definitely been fun to be in situations with such a large audience and be able to put out content that I wish existed when I was a young cannabis media consumer.
But there's so much work. The major weed community is pretty ‘not chill.’ For lack of better words.
Tammy: Yeah. The industry is definitely going through a lot. I would say the nation, the world, everyone.
Natasha: They're just so vocal, and I get so confused as to how they become so aggressive and non-inclusive.
Tammy: Let's talk about that. Part of advocacy, and your advocacy, is that you're a woman doing it. And it's already a plant that is stigmatized, that has a bad reputation. But now let's throw into the mix that you're a woman. How does that impact your work?
Natasha: I complain about it a lot. It's not fun. But I did have a meltdown. Maybe nine months ago, I was crying on the phone to my mom like, “I hate being a woman.”
But then she reminded me that it does suck, but we put ourselves in these situations so that it won't suck as much for other women in the future.
And I've had such cool opportunities through different jobs to have interns and employees who are also women and to make their experiences better than mine.
Which is really fun. The way I compare it is people who are introduced to dabbing through a Puffco and not through a hot knife in a college frat basement.
I'm like, wow, you know safe access. And that's all I've ever aspired to in this space was creating safe access and getting people the fuck out of jail.
Tammy: Yeah, absolutely. I love it. PussyWeed is for the people.
What are some tips you would give a young girl who's watching PussyWeed? Who wants to be an advocate? That knows that this plant is helping them, and they want to shout it from the rooftops? What advice would you give them?
Natasha: Just start getting involved in anything that you can. And especially if you're not in a legal state right now.
Start conversations. If you're at a school or you live in a town, see what kind of meetups are happening.
That's how I first got into the larger New York scene. I was on Facebook Groups, and I was like, “Oh, let's see if there's any cannabis groups.
And then there was this one thing. There were four people on this page. And then one person was posting about this panel that they had heard about.
And then I went, and then I met all the Women Grow people. And I was like, “Oh, my God, Women Grow exists!”
Don't take for granted the resources and platforms that already exist. There's people out there like you.
Tammy: Absolutely. We're here for advice. We're here to talk.
And speaking of advice, if you haven't already checked out my new advocacy guide–it's a free ebook download. It gives great advice on how you can get started today with your advocacy journey.
Thank you so much to Natasha for coming through today, hanging out with us, and sharing some gems.
Hope to catch you at the next episode in our series on How to Be a Cannabis Advocate.
Natasha: Thank you for having me.
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