Katie Pringle knew long before she got into the cannabis industry herself that its culture did not cater particularly well to women. But as she prepared to conduct focus groups last year ahead of launching her own female-focused cannabis company, even she was surprised by how poorly women were served in the market.She went to a head shop — a store that sells pipes, bongs and other paraphernalia related to marijuana use — and asked the clerk for their “most beautiful” smell-free jar, something the 34-year-old communications and marketing professional wouldn’t mind displaying in her home.“He brought me a Budweiser stash can,” she said, laughing. That is, a storage container intentionally made to look like a beer can. “There wasn’t much out there that was really catered towards women, or even men who were interested in more elegant things.”Read more:A new wave of entrepreneurs, including Chelsea Handler, brings ‘female esthetic’ to cannabis industry How this ‘crusader of cannabis’ is helping women step up and shape a new industryCanadians who smoke marijuana legally, or work or invest in the industry, will be barred from the U.S.: Customs and Border Protection officialPringle, who last year co-founded Canndora, which sells cannabis accessories “for elevated women,” discussed this and other issues as part of a women’s panel discussion at HempFest Toronto’s Cannabis Expo on Sunday afternoon inside the Queen Elizabeth Building at Exhibition Place.Another panelist, Sabrina Ramkellawan, president of the Clinical Research Association of Canada, spoke about the male bias present in much clinical research, including around cannabis. Ramkellawan, who specializes in cannabinoid research, said women absorb cannabis differently than men.“Our bodies are different, our metabolisms are different, our muscle mass is different,” she said.Women also have higher ra ...
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