Queer-Owned Cannabis Brands to Support This Pride Month
Article written by
Jordan WoldSEO Content Writer
Olivia SwannMarketing Associate
Content reviewed by
Mike ReddyContent Strategist
Table of contents
Celebrate Pride Month by supporting gay pot brands and cannabis companies. Support comes in many forms, from purchasing a specific brand, visiting a local dispensary owned by LGBTQ+ people, or simply learning about queer history. There are many great ways to observe pride as a cannabis consumer.
Queer people have a long history of fighting for cannabis legalization during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Many queer people used medical marijuana for symptom relief during the AIDS crisis, despite the stigma and extensive criminalization.
Despite this tireless advocacy, queer people are underrepresented in the legal industry. Here is a look at nine queer-owned cannabis brands worth supporting during Pride Month and all year.
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Sundae School/Sundae Flowers
This brand is two in one. Sundae Flowers is a California-based company that sells what it refers to as “high-quality weed for high-minded people.” It sells a wide variety of pre-rolls and unique offerings, such as mochi gummies, which contain a range of flavors and differing cannabinoids.
The company’s founders, siblings Dae and Cindy Lim, have been in the cannabis industry for a long time, though their flagship brand, Sundae School, was not cannabis itself but rather hemp-derived smoke wear. The clothing is Korean-inspired, as a nod to Seoul, South Korea, where the Lim siblings were born and raised. Co-founder Dae Lim is openly gay and is an absolute trailblazer in the cannabis industry.
Sonder
Sonder is perhaps one of the most well-known queer-owned cannabis brands. It was founded in 2018 by Faun Chaupin and M. Paradise, a couple who care deeply about LGBTQ community representation in the cannabis space and product innovation. One of the duo’s most popular cannabis products is Space Crystals, an edible-sublingual tincture hybrid.
The candy-like product comes in flavors like Cheers Queers — a sign, confirmed by Chaupin and Paradise,that brand and product authenticity is much more valuable to Sonder than an attempt to appeal to an “as wide as possible audience.” In an era in which some companies attempt to place a veneer of inclusivity for one month a year, Sonder puts its values at the forefront 24/7.
Green Qween
Green Qween prides itself on being more than a cannabis company, noting that its founding was inspired by some of the early medical dispensaries in the Castro region of San Francisco by early medical cannabis forefathers like Dennis Peron, who would give cannabis to people with HIV and AIDS during the AIDS crisis.
Green Qween continues to make efforts to do genuine social good for the LGBTQIA+ community. The company donates some of its proceeds to creating a downtown Los Angeles-based community center. The location will work on helping those in the local queer community find housing, employment, health services, and more.
If that wasn’t reason enough for Los Angeles-based cannabis users to consider checking out Green Qweens, maybe their Monday through Friday happy hour deals and massive inventory will convince you to make your way down to DTLA — and don’t worry, they have free parking!
Ziggy’s Naturals
Not only is Texas-based Ziggy’s Naturals a queer-owned brand (one of its owners, Jordyn, is trans), but it is also a family business. Jordyn Pollack and his dad, Marc, founded Ziggy’s Naturals, primarily producing CBD-derived products like tinctures, edibles, topicals, and more.
Given Texas’ stringent cannabis laws,even when it comes to medical cannabis, this focused approach to breaking into the cannabis space makes sense. Still, Ziggy’s Naturals appears to be breaking into the delta-8 space and even sells some hemp-derived delta-9 products. The company has made an apparent effort to define itself as one where LGBTQ individuals and allies should feel comfortable shopping.
Peak Extracts
Kate Black and Katie Stem with Peak Extracts Chocolate
Samuel Gehrke
Peak Extracts is one of Oregon’s prominent LGBTQ+ cannabis brands. It was founded in 2014 by two openly queer women, Katie Stem and Kate Black. Even before Peak Extract’s founding, Katie Stem had been baking cannabis edibles to manage medical symptoms. Since Peak Extracts broke into the cannabis industry, the Oregon-based company has had a highly refined cannabis cultivation process.
Using single-strain production to ensure consistent quality, Peak Extracts focuses primarily on chocolate edibles. The company also sells tinctures, extracts, and topical products. Peak Extracts’ cannabis products are only sold in Oregon as of now, but we can hope for an expansion effort in the future.
Grass Queen
Grass Queen is an all-women-owned, majority queer-owned cannabis company in Vermont. It specializes in small-batch smokable flower, botanical blends, and low-dose edibles.
Grass Queen says it’s “normalizing the presence of women and the LGBTQ community in the cannabis marketplace. Not only that, but to share with the world [that] women smoke weed!”
Stone Road
Stone Road is a queer-run, family-owned, sustainable cannabis brand founded in 2016 by Lex Corwin. It sells pre-rolls, cannabis flower, and concentrates. You can buy Stone Road products in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, and they are coming soon to New York dispensaries.
They believe that “cannabis is nature’s best unifier, bringing together people from every place, background, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or religion. It brings out your inner child, turns parties into sacred happenings, and expands your mind.”
FLAMER
Flamer is a queer-owned cannabis brand based in New York City that says they are “born out of New York’s Queer community, we are chosen-family owned and operated.”
They prioritize growing with natural ingredients, without pesticides, and investing in third-party testing and transparency to guarantee FLAMER products are consistent in quality and potency.
They specialize in pre-rolls sun-grown at Janes Garden, a family-run farm located in the foothills of Hooker Mountain in Schenevus Valley, New York. Products are available in New York only at this time.
Sway
Illinois cannabis consumers who want to support veterans, the LGBTQ+ community, and BIPOC-owned cannabis businesses should consider stopping by Sway next time they need to pick up.
Sway is Illinois’ first all-minority, LGBTQ, and veteran-owned cannabis dispensary in the Northalsted neighborhood on Chicago’s North Side. It sits across from Sidetrack, one of the most successful gay bars in the country.
LGBTQ+ civil rights and business leaders Art Johnston and José Peña, the co-owners of Sidetrack, teamed up with social equity cannabis advocate Edie Moore. They view this dispensary as a “continuation of a long history of our communities fighting for cannabis equity and the right to love freely.”
Honorable Mentions
There are a few other queer-owned cannabis brands that should be on your radar. Drew Martin Co., owned by Drew Martin, specializes in pre-rolls. All flower comes from a small family farm in Mendocino County, CA.
Laganja Estranja, a drag queen well-known for their cannabis activism, is actively developing her lifestyle brand, which includes apparel and pipes. Laganja Estranja also partnered with Trixie Mattel’s makeup brand to create a 420-themed “ExtravaGANJA Collection.“
The Bottom Line
Pride Month might be in June, but the LGBTQIA+ community deserves to be celebrated year-round. Supporting queer-owned, women-owned, and BIPOC-owned brands can help underrepresented communities that have helped make cannabis legalization in this country possible thrive in the cannabis industry.
Whether or not you check out any of these queer cannabis brands for Pride Month, we hope you check out the cannabis products they offer. And if none of these products are to your taste, consider amplifying them to the people in your cannabis community who might feel seen by these brands.
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Updated: May 2024
Published: May 2023
