Women in Weed Are Breaking the ‘Stoner Guy’ Stereotype: Women Who Travel Podcast

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This is part of a collection of stories on the intersection of weed and travel, from Women Who Travel. Read the full guide—with practical tips, travel experiences to check out, and more—right here.

“If women make 80 percent of the spending decisions in the American household, if we buy the beer and the food and the clothes, we're going to buy the weed,” says this week's guest Nidhi Lucky Handa. Nidhi, who launched LEUNE, a cannabis-forward lifestyle brand available in California and Arizona, joins us this week to talk all things weed—from the male-centric stereotypes that led her to launch LEUNE in the first place, the importance of cannabis criminal justice reform groups, what she wishes we all knew about dosage (she's a self-proclaimed "lightweight"), and more. Thanks to Nidhi for joining us—and thanks, as always, to Brett Fuchs for engineering and mixing this episode. 

This will be our last episode before we come back this summer with some new tricks up our sleeve. In the meantime, you can listen to previous episodes of Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode when we return later this year.

Read a full transcription below.

Lale Arikoglu: Hi, this is Women Who Travel, a podcast from Condé Nast Traveler. I'm Lale Arikoglu and with me as always is my co-host, Meredith Carey.

Meredith Carey: Hello.

LA: Somehow we are well into April, which means we are wrapping up our mini-season before taking a break and, drum roll, re-launching the podcast with some new bells and whistles later in the summer. Make sure to subscribe to Women Who Travel on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts to stay up to date. And in the meantime, sit back and enjoy today's new episode with Nidhi Lucky Handa, founder of LEUNE, a cannabis-forward lifestyle brand based out of Los Angeles. And yes, the date today really is 4/20. To kick things off, how did you get into the cannabis industry in the first place?

Nidhi Lucky Handa: Well, I came into the industry the same way I've done most things in my life: ass-backwards. I was very much a consumer first. I've been a weed consumer since I was a teenager. I am a brand geek by background, so when cannabis went recreationally legal in California where I live, I was so excited to go to dispensaries and the whole brand experience. All of a sudden it wasn't bags of weed in plastic bags or scary gummies, TBD what the dosage [was].

And I was really struck by how none of the brands spoke to me. There seemed to be this incredible bifurcation of either these very male-oriented, super misogynistic, girls in booty shorts and bikinis marketing or alternatively it was super wellness, super, super wellness. Like, "Let me help you with your sleep. Let me help you with your anxiety. Let me help you pretend you don't want to get high." And I was like, "Okay, what's in the middle?" Who are the brands that speak to me that are not patronizing and making me feel like I actually belong here? And that was really the genesis of how I got into the industry. So it started really from this place of, I noticed it, I started talking to my friends about it. Everyone sort of had a similar thing. I mean, don't get me wrong, we were all thrilled that you could walk into a store and buy weed, but it was definitely a glaring hole. So that led me down the path of being like, "What would it be like to build a brand?" And LEUNE was born.

MC: What do you think LEUNE brings to fill that hole that you were seeing as a consumer?

NLH: So as a consumer, aesthetic, aesthetic, aesthetic. I am a diehard consumer and feminist who believes that women pay the pink tax at the drug store when we start separating CPG products by gender that don't need to be. I don't go to a bar and say, "I'll have a Kettle soda and my boyfriend will have a Tito soda," right? That's not a thing. And what I was really noticing was there seemed to be this really weird separation of female brands to male brands. And I wholeheartedly believe that if women make 80 percent of the spending decisions in the American household, if we buy the beer and the food and the clothes, we're going to buy the weed.

And the aesthetic is first, right? We want all the things. We want great value, we want great branding, we don't want to be patronized that products are value products because that's not cool. We want Target pricing and “Tarjay” branding, right? That's the vibe. So LEUNE really came from this place of, all right aesthetic first in terms of what I was thinking about for brand identity and then also consumer arc. So at LEUNE, we do a lot of different products. We do all kinds of vaporizer products, we do edibles, we do pre-roll joints, we do jarred flower. And I really saw this really interesting thing happen, which is still happening. The entire industry seemingly was focusing on the consumer arc of this one consumer, this stoner guy, this meme of this stoner guy that we've all grown up seeing in the media. And that guy comes to the table with a very different arc in the way that he consumes. He's smoking flower and he's graduating to concentrates and dabs. I don't think that's true for the mainstream consumer though. I think the mainstream consumer comes to the party and is like, "I maybe haven't smoked since college and I want to get in on this, but also I don't know if I remember how to roll a joint or if I really want that commitment, or I don't know if I want to charge something or have this extra piece of technology." 

So everything at LEUNE has really been about putting the consumer first and building out a brand that sort of both honors that journey, but also is ready to pivot at any moment because cannabis is an incredibly onerous industry. It's state-by-state regulations. It's incredibly difficult to even understand where and what the regulations are, what packaging should look like. So for me, it was like, okay, this is a really interesting puzzle. I believe in cannabis. I don't think there's any two ways about it. And I think I have an opportunity to bring something new to the table.

LA: Do you think that it's been more of a challenge to navigate those regulations and how onerous the spaces are or do you think it's been more difficult to navigate the perception of cannabis and the kind of wider idea of who that consumer is and kind of what that industry looks like and is for?

NLH: It's a really good question, both things are happening concurrently. So as an industry, I think that most of us agree that the biggest barrier to consumer anything is stigma. I mean, living in California, we're very spoiled. The stigma seemingly is gone or very close to gone. You go to the fanciest restaurants or private members' clubs in L.A. and people put their vapes down on the table and happily say, "No, I'm not drinking, I'm smoking weed." It's a very sort of zero stigma place. But as we look at newer markets, we see the stigma curve is pretty consistently similar. It just is moving along faster. COVID has actually been statistically very good for cannabis stigma. We've seen a bunch of new states went recreationally legal during COVID. Consumers are more and more and more speaking louder and louder across both party lines that they want cannabis to be legalized and they don't view it—I mean, it's still scheduled as a Schedule I drug, which is like heroin, cocaine. It's crazy. So that's the consumer piece.

And on the other side, the question about the onerous regulatory environment, that piece is much murkier. The good news is that most states that have legalized either medicinally or recreationally or both understand that this is a fantastic means for tax revenue for their state and it is. And right now we need more jobs everywhere. Cannabis creates jobs everywhere. There's also some really interesting statistics around cannabis legalization in states and opiate consumption going down in the same states, alcohol consumption going down in the same states. These should be drivers—I don't know if they really are for politicians. They should be. But I think the real drivers are tax revenue.

It's just incredibly complicated, if you can imagine trying to build businesses in an ecosystem where LEUNE is a brand that exists in California, in Arizona, we’ll soon be on the East Coast. We have multiple markets launching this year. Every state that we're in supply chain for the products has to be completely different. So you can't take cannabis from California to Arizona or to Maine or to wherever, even though we grow a lot of cannabis here. And that's unfortunate because that doesn't really make sense. If you think of the way that our ecosystem, the farming ecosystem, works in the United States, that's nuts. If you were to say that, "Oh, you can't get tomatoes if they don't grow in your state, our salad bowls would look very different." So there's a lot of those, the regulatory environment is I think a lot murkier and harder to navigate than the consumer piece. That's what I've learned over the last few years and that's what we sort of consistently see.

MC: I feel like when we talk about legalization, obviously the past criminalization of consuming, selling, all of these things, when it comes to cannabis, have to come into play. And I know that LEUNE has a pretty vocal affiliation with cannabis criminal justice reform groups. And I'd love to just know why that was important to you to have as a part of this company from the beginning and the journey that you guys are on?

NLH: I am a kid of immigrants who grew up on the East Coast and I was front and center for the war on drugs and coming into this industry and understanding, just in black and white terms, how this plant has been weaponized as a tool to keep folks in jail and both to support the prison system, which is incredibly corrupt, and also to really keep entire communities of color disenfranchised from each other. To keep fathers away from their children, mothers away from their entire lives missing out for literally, we have states in this country today where, including California, where we have people serving time for nonviolent cannabis crimes and concurrently people growing weed. It doesn't make sense. I think it's a moral imperative, quite frankly, for anybody in the industry to not just take it as a passion project but to make it part of mission.

At LEUNE, that was never an afterthought. It was always part of the plan. I knew that selfishly, if I want to sleep at night, this is something that needs to happen. And I think altruistically, if I want to really be part of building something that we can be proud of, we're building a new industry, it's very, very young. There's a lot of things wrong with it, but we have time on our side and we have money on our side. And I always say to my team, "The best behaved part of the supply chain in cannabis are the consumers." The consumers are literally the most excited, eager, interested when we share content on social media about social justice reform mission, anything, the response is overwhelmingly positive. I think that consumership has moved towards value system a lot more than it used to be. I think we all care about, we learned this during COVID, while we were all at home watching front row brands get canceled and also brands getting elevated for what? For a value system.

So as a business person, there's no downside to talking about it. You used to, 20 years ago, if you were in business school, you were taught, "Don't talk about your values. You need to be everything to everybody." We live in a different time now. And that works really well for me because I'm incredibly passionate about social justice reform. I think that while it seems really scary and depressing to think about how many people are still serving time, I think the number right now is 40,000 people. I think that's not an accurate count, it's a lot more than that. The good news is there are fantastic organizations that are completely dedicated to this one thing, to getting folks out of jail. Last Prisoner Project, for example, they're doing amazing work. And the good news is whether performative or not, companies in our industry are getting involved.

LA: It's such a new industry. And you founded your company four years ago, but you mentioned that you were consuming weed yourself, starting as a teenager, like so many people have. How do you think your own relationship with cannabis has evolved over that time but particularly in the last four years as you've grown this business?

NLH: I just have so much information in my head. When I think about when I started consuming as a teenager, I grew up between Europe and the East Coast. My introduction to consumption was probably hash or a spliff, that's the way weed is consumed in the U.K. if it's consumed. And in college, I went to school in New York, whatever cannabis was being consumed, TBD where it was grown. We knew nothing about anything. Fast forward to moving to California 14 years ago and getting these gummies that put you out of commission for two days, because you have no sense of dosing or anything.

And in the last four years, the amount that I've learned about this plant and all the things we don't know. I mean, I think something that the average American doesn't realize is that because of the war on drugs and particularly the demonization of this particular plant, there was essentially an embargo on any kind of research to be done on this plant, and still is in this country. So we haven't been studying or understanding what this plant really is, what it can do, both psychoactively and medicinally. So there's over 200 cannabinoids in the plant, we most commonly talk about THC and CBD. Those are the popular ones, but there are so many others. And the way that they behave together, these are things that are just now being talked about. It's not new, it's just that it's new to us because we haven't been able to really study it.

In cannabis, we're just on the other side of prohibition—I mean, we still are technically in prohibition federally. So the conversation is still very, very basic. And that is not for lack of a desire to know more, I think it's just because it's young and we don't know how to talk about a lot of things. But my relationship, because I have done R&D on 50 products and I've learned so much and I go to all these cannabis conferences and it's phenomenal in just understanding the different ways that one can consume by form factor, like the difference of onset time. There's a time for a vape and there's a time for flower and there's a time for edibles. I don't think I ever understood that before. I definitely didn't. Now I do. Now, it's really interesting.

Also, we're at a point now where micro-dosing is a thing. So we make raws and gummies that are micro-dosed in two and a half milligrams and five milligrams. And that is not a conversation that ever existed before and now it does. I'm a lightweight, and I now better understand when to consume what and how to consume and dosage and how to sort of calculate my perfect sweet spot. So if I'm cleaning my house, that's a very different high that I'm looking for that's not going to put me into couch lock versus, I really need to sleep through the night and I want a gummy that's just going to knock me out. So yeah, my relationship has changed a lot for the better, and I already was a fan so it's just gotten better and better.

LA: If you think of the way that if every consumer was that informed, the choices they could make and the different ways that they could spend their money in the industry would, I imagine, just multiply.

NLH: For sure. The missing link is that there's many, many things that we cannot market about our products. The regulatory environment also applies to communication so the way that we talk about our products in our industry in general is narrow. We can't talk about effects, or we can't make promises about because we don't have clinical trials. We wouldn't want to make promises about something we don't understand, but anecdotally what we hear from consumers every single day is, there are consistent things that we hear about certain products. "This product really helps me with pain," and "this product really helps me with sleep," and "This one is the best party-time weed product I've had." So it's interesting to see all of that. And yeah, you're right. Once consumers really have their head around it, it's a completely different experience.

MC: I'd love to know for people who, like Lale was talking about earlier, might just be coming to this space from a high school or college situation, and are now grown adults who might be intimidated by a new dispensary that's opened, should their state legalize cannabis, what advice do you have or confidence boosts do you have for women who might be exploring this space for the first time?

NLH: I think it's try, don't be afraid. Understand one thing: that if you're in a legal dispensary, a licensed, legal dispensary, the testing standards for cannabis are incredibly high. To give you this perspective—and I think women will understand this really well—if you go to a supermarket and buy an organic apple, that apple is tested. There are very onerous standards to test for organic. The testing is within millions of a percent. The testing for cannabis is within billions of a percent. It's incredibly onerous to get product on the shelf, because as you can imagine, I mean, we hear all the time about flower failing testing because the neighboring artichoke farm uses a certain kind of pesticide and the wind blew it over into the cannabis farm, right? That's how onerous it is. So, number one, don't be afraid to try different products.

Talk to your budtender and really come in honest. Number two, really ask a lot of questions about dosing. Particularly if you're talking about any kind of edible. Edibles are all, it's all about dosage. So, we think that the most common dosage for an adult, a new adult consumer, is between five and 10 milligrams. I, for example, am really happy with a two and a half milligram edible. I'm probably more in the lightweight category, but I also consume every day so it's really interesting that my tolerance hasn't moved much. So that's another thing to really look at, or to ask about, ask these questions, right? When a budtender sometimes tries to sell you something, they assume that you're looking for value, or you're looking for the most bang for your buck in terms of THC or in terms of potency. And I don't think that's right for most of us, I think most of us are scared of that. We want first to just sort of crawl, walk, sprint to understand the whole thing. So ask the questions, know the term “dosage,” start with a little bit, whatever you think you should start with, start with half and see how you feel. Wait a full two hours because everyone's metabolism is different.

The other thing is vaporizer products, oil products, understand that onset is very different for different products. So the fastest way to feel an effect is to smoke something, whether you're smoking a joint or you're smoking a vape. The onset is going to come fast and it's going to leave fast. So if you are just looking for that sort of instant feeling, that's probably the right way to consume. If you're looking for something that's a longer term high, that's when an edible is the way to go. I think that there's a lot of fun in just trying different products. And now, I mean, depending on what market you're in and the maturity of it, you're going to find really, really cool form factors. You're going to find chips and gum and mints and obviously smokeables. And you're going to find all these different ways to consume and I think everybody's so different.

And then the other thing is the cannabinoid thing, you're going to see in every market cannabinoid ratios are a big, big conversation. So we're moving more towards understanding this thing called entourage effect, which basically means that these cannabinoids are great on their own. THC is great on its own, CBD is great on its own, but when you put them together, CBD and THC and CBG or CBN or whatever, you get into a completely different level of experience, that's when they really shine. They actually create, when they're together, they actually do something pretty magical so this is another thing to start understanding.

MC: A lot of the episodes that we've had in this kind of mini-season of Women Who Travel have been about wellness. And I know you spoke a little bit earlier about some products kind of being relegated to the wellness space. Where do you feel cannabis fits into wellness? I'll just preface that by saying a lot of our conversations about wellness have been that wellness is not one size fits all, but what does that look like to you?

NLH: I think, listen, it's really important to understand the history of this plant. This plant has been used in almost every culture globally pretty much since the beginning of time. When the United States was formed, every apothecary in the country was required to carry cannabis oil, because it's an excellent anti-inflammatory and pain management tool. I grew up in an Indian household where my parents are incredibly interested in Ayurveda. Cannabis exists in Ayurveda. Cancer patients have been using cannabis for years as both a pain reliever and also we're learning more and more and more from Israeli studies about cannabis shrinking tumors. Cannabis has pretty much now been widely accepted as the way to help epilepsy and, just in general, seizure control. So I think the only gap and for consumers to understand this is really important is what brands in the industry are legally allowed to say.

We're largely not allowed to talk about things that we can't test, right? So it's this weird vicious cycle. And this is again where I think one thing we've learned in the last 10 years, I'm a big consumer of wellness and alternative medicine. And the number one takeaway I've learned in the last decade is you’ve got to be your own advocate—particularly if you're trying to stay away from pharma culture and you're seeking a more holistic life. There's really not going to be one person or one piece of advice. And I think cannabis fits really well into that sort of archetype. If that's the culture that you're subscribing to, then you'll understand this, right? It's really interesting as we evolve, as the stigma goes down, as we stop politicizing this plant, hopefully we'll get to a place where we can talk more intelligently about it.

LA: As we talk about the industry growing, there's also the people like you who are shaping it. Who are some of the women to watch in the cannabis space right now?

NLH: Well, I will answer this very, very self-servingly. I am on the advisory committee for an incubator or rather accelerator for social equity applicant winners called Momentum. There are some phenomenal women in our cohort this year, so this is a great organization. Winners get a $50,000 grant and more importantly, they get access to an entire advisory committee of people working in the industry. They get legal support, compliance support, basically all the tools that they probably can't afford to just get into the industry. I would really encourage everyone to go to Momentum's website. It's Eaze Momentum. You can find it easily online. And there are some fantastic women in the cohort this year. Eunice Kim is one of those women, she's a California local, she's been in the industry for a minute. And she understands both how to respect the plant and also is looking to build some really interesting sort of business around it and I think we need more folks like her.

In the last cohort, there were a couple of winners where a couple of women from the dispensary Josephine and Billies, here in L.A. Yes, Eunice Kim, Whitney Beatty from Josephine and Billies, there are many, many, many other phenomenal women in this industry. There's all kinds of listicles that I'm sure you can imagine like in every industry, but yeah. Invest yourself in knowing who are the female-owned dispensaries, who are the female-owned brands and support them.

MC: If people want to support you and LEUNE, where can they find you on the internet?

NLH: Our Instagram is the best way to follow along with what's going on. It's @LEUNEbrand, that's L-E-U-N-E brand and our website LEUNE.co. We keep it really well updated and all the where to buys in your local state are always updated. And we love hearing from our consumers so reach out, say hi.

MC: Amazing. I'm @ohheytheremere.

LA: And I'm @lalehannah.

MC: While we're on break. Be sure to follow Women Who Travel on Instagram, @womenwhotravel, and subscribe to our biweekly newsletter, which will be linked in the show notes. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast, wherever you're listening so you're alerted when we come back and we'll talk to you soon.