Sabrina Fendrick's tour of duty in cannabis advocacy is chronicled in her memoir, Tokin' Female: Women, Weed and the War on Prohibition. During her seven years working at the the NORML national office from 2008-2015, she spearheaded a movement to unify women around issues most concerning to them, like child custody cases, equal pay and sexual harassment.
Fendrick takes cues from Patrick Anderson's 1981 book, High in America: The True Story Behind NORML and the Politics of Marijuana. She picks up where he left off, starting with her hiring as assistant to NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre in 2008. The daughter of career diplomats, Fendrick lived around the world growing up when the family wasn't in the Washington, DC area, which is where NORML's based. As a stoner in college she was busted for marijuana and hence wanted to change the laws by working for the original cannabis reform organization
Fendrick immediately discovered a major gender imbalance in favor of men both at NORML and the greater cannabis world of conferences, meetings and expo-type events. In 2009, a scandal broke at NORML's competition, Marijuana Policy Project, whose director Rob Kampia was charged with sexual harassment and general bad behavior around staffers. He was eventually fired.
"With this book, Sabrina Fendrick's place as a pioneer in cannabis is secure."
Fendrick found St. Pierre to be obstinate and unsupportive of her ambitions at NORML. She was underpaid (below male staffers with equal or less tenure) and often disrespected by St. Pierre and certain board members. NORML founder Keith Stroup took her side but also deferred to St. Pierre, who she descibes as his "protege."
Her efforts to launch the NORML Women's Alliance dominate the book and define her years in Washington. Despite board approvals for Fendrick to start up NWA as a sub-group within NORML, St. Pierre continually blocked funding it. He showed disdain and even suggested NWA raise money by holding knitting parties. "I couldn't believe my ears," she notes.
Fendrick details two incidents that occured with then board chair Steve Dillon in 2012. The first was at the office the day before a board meeting. "Following a consensual goodbye hug," she remembers, "Dillon's hand settled on my back before moving slowly down my waist to pull me in closer.
"'You're so sexy. I can't stand it,'" he whispered. "'I'd love to see you wet and naked in the shower.'"
"An unsettling sense of violation washed over me."
Several months later, it happened again, this time on stage at the NORML Conference in Los Angeles.
"As I pivoted from the podium, Dillon was a looming figure inches away, waiting to greet me with a hug... His voice, a low and intimate rasp, sent a shiver of unease through me.
"'You're voice is so hot,'" he said. "'You sound so sexy when you speak.'"
Fendrick was stunned but failed to report Dillon's transgressions for fear of reprisal. "I'd be reporting the incidents to St. Pierre or the NORML board itself," she explains. "All seemingly bad options for me."
The author's ire is not only directed at men. When it was decided to rebrand NWA to NORML Women's Alliance Foundation and remove it directly from NORML's purview, Fendrick lost control of her creation. It's her biggest beef in the book. A former ally turned board member Kyndra Miller oversaw NWAF, but refused to let Fendrick run it. "This breakdown with Miller cut even deeper," she writes. NWA and NWAF no longer exist.
Fendrick had had it with Washington and convinced the board to open a NORML satellite office in Denver, where she relocated to in 2014 as the nascent legal market was just getting off the ground in Colorado. But after another financial dispute with NORML, Fendrick resigned in 2015 and took a job at Berkeley Patients Group in California. Her cross-country move West was complete.
Women Grow certainly was an outgrowth of NWA and now there are so many more women in the advocacy and business spaces. Fendrick's place as a pioneer in cannabis is secure, and with this book, more people will learn about her compelling, ground-breaking work.
Note: Steve Bloom and CelebStoner are referred to on pages 62 and 135.
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