Eager to reap the rewards of what would become the world’s largest market for regulated cannabis at the time, speculators poured untold amounts of cash into the state to stake their claim.
But it wasn’t long before they realized that deep-pocketed companies with the resources to secure the limited number of licenses and properly zoned commercial properties threatened their way of life.
And she was struck by “the number of women entrepreneurs who were speaking up in the cannabis industry seemed like more than any other market I’ve ever seen,” Russo wrote in her director’s statement for the film.
Russo had been introduced to cannabis as medicine at an early age when a family member used the herb during treatment for breast cancer in the 1990s.
Lady Buds follows the journey to legalization as experienced by second-generation cannabis farmer Chiah Rodriques; Sue Taylor, an African American retired Catholic school principal turned septuagenarian dispensary owner; Latinx queer activist Felicia Carbajal; serial entrepreneur Karyn Wagner; and Humboldt cannabis community elders Pearl Moon and Dr.
The film documents Rodriques’ struggle to gain licensing for her small Mendocino County cannabis farm and Taylor’s rise from working at Oakland, California’s groundbreaking medical cannabis retailer Harborside under the tutelage of co-founder Steve DeAngelo to starting a dispensary of her own.
As Russo researched and produced Lady Buds, the award-winning independent filmmaker saw elements of herself in the women featured in the project.
“The films I make have always been informed by my experience living as an outsider, as a woman, as a lesbian who’s had to fight for her own rights and visibility in our society.
I’ve documented stories about legalization and the cannabis industry in my home state of California, the nation’s largest legal marijuana market, and beyond, receiving input in the process from a host of sources including C-suite executives, congressmen, illicit cultivators, and sack slingers.