Book Project

My book Weeded Out: The Cultivation of Systemic Gendered Racism in the Legal Cannabis Industry (in progress) examines women's roles, opportunities, and experiences in the newly legal cannabis industry in the United States.​

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Twenty-four states have legalized recreational/adult-use cannabis markets, which remain criminalized by the federal government. To investigate what it's like to participate in this emerging, multibillion-dollar retail sector, I spent a year immersing myself in California's cannabis market, where I worked as a salesperson in dispensaries, analyzed advertising and political campaigns, and interviewed 60 women workers and entrepreneurs across different racial identities.

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I found that people attempting to participate legally in this industry bump up against structural, organizational, and ideological barriers to their success. Drawing from black feminist frameworks, I link these barriers to a process of corporate rebranding that uses race, gender, and class to legitimize and "change the face" of the business. This process systemically advantages white men elites—and in many ways, white women—while disadvantaging people of color.​

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This book will be one of the first sociological studies of the cannabis industry to center women and foreground an analysis of gender in relation to race and class. Findings support calls for the development of new policy frameworks that decenter corporate greed and tackle the roots of systemic oppression, placing those harmed by the drug war at the center of efforts to change and benefit from cannabis laws.​​