Our COO Sabrina Ramkellawan speaks at International Women’s Day Event on the topic “Women and Plant-Based Medicine”

Women and Plant Medicine the Focus of International Women’s Day Event

An International Women’s Day virtual event hosted by Canndora has shone a light on female leaders in the psychedelics and cannabis industries. The event included two panel discussions and a networking opportunity. Panelists discussed sex differences and psychedelics, and the barriers facing women entering plant medicine.

By EMILY JARVIE

(March 9, 2021)- Female leaders in the psychedelics and cannabis industries have marked International Women’s Day 2021 with a virtual event hosted by Canndora. Held on March 8 and attended by about 65 participants, the event featured a panel discussion on sex differences in plant medicine between Wake Jamaica CEO Terri Smith, Wake Network chief scientific officer Olga Chernoloz, researcher and entrepreneur Susan Chapelle, and HRVSTR Cannabis CEO and co-founder Ashley Athill, moderated by Knowde Group chief operations officer and co-founder Sabrina Ramkellawan. The event also included a question and answer session with Chapelle, a panel discussion about bringing cannabis products to the market in Canada, and an opportunity for networking.

What Science Says About Women and Plant Medicine 

Moderator Ramkellawan questioned the panelists over sex differences in terms of response to psychedelics. “Historically women haven’t been as well represented in drug trials, meaning a lot of medicines that have come to the market have been taken away. There are so many differences between women and men that it can’t be expected the drugs are going to work the same way,” Ramkellawan said. She added that a lack of diversity was also a problem in psychedelic clinical trials. 

Chernoloz, a neuroscientist working in psychedelic research for Wake Network, said sex differences in relation to psychedelic medicine were actually unknown because research in this field has been restricted for decades. “To get your hands on these substances for a clinical trial is very complicated to this day,” she said. “For researchers to go down to the nitty-gritty of looking at how genders respond differently to these compounds  — we’re just not there yet. It is needed research because we need to account for potential differences in how our genetic makeup and corresponding hormonal changes may interfere or interact with anything we put into our bodies.” 

Chapelle added that the National Institutes of Health in the United States now requires that gender differences be included in grant applications. “In the old days you could pick all men for a study but now you have to include gender representation and I love that,” she said. 

Transgender and Non-Binary People and Psychedelics 

Answering a question about how psychedelics such as psilocybin may be helpful for transgender and non-binary people, Smith said, speaking as a minority (a black woman) growing up in a majority culture, what psychedelics had done for her was give her the emotional and intellectual space to not care about what other people thought. “Whether I’m dealing with issues of my sexuality or my skin colour or my age, I am now confident in my skin,” she said. “Ten years ago, if you’d talked to me about a 60-year-old woman, I would think that’s a really old woman who is beyond any use in society. I’m now 63 and I have accepted where I am in the universe. I don’t need your permission to be who I am and that is the gift of psychedelics.” 

Athill added that psychedelics also allowed her to be free from other people’s judgments. “For those individuals who are transgender or those who have a different sexual appetite, that might be beneficial for them as they move through their journey,” she said. 

Barriers for Women Entering Plant Medicine 

The panelists spoke about the barriers facing women entering plant medicine, with Chernoloz reflecting that they mirrored the barriers for a woman entering any industry. “They pertain to access to capital, business development, and this aspect of illegality that can be a bigger deterrent for females who are generally more averse to the criminalisation aspect of working with these substances,” she said. 

Smith added that mushroom cultivation in Jamaica was being taken more seriously now that men had come to the table wanting to talk about it. Smith has worked with female growers on the island producing mushrooms for 10 years. “The women of Jamaica are rural, poor women and now they have become artisan creators,” she said.