Cannabis Entrepreneur Amber E. Senter Talks Industry and Advocacy

Amber E. Senter has been advocating for cannabis reform for over 15 years. She is the co-founder of MAKR House, a California-based cannabis company that houses a host of different brands. She’s also co-founder and executive director for Supernova Women, an advocacy group that seeks to empower people of color to succeed in the cannabis industry. We sat down with Senter to talk a little bit about her history in the industry and what the cannabis industry can do for marginalized people.

My first question is just how did you get started in this industry?

I got started in the industry because I suffer from an autoimmune illness, lupus. And I was looking for access to better quality and cheaper weed. So, I started growing it for myself. And I was really just disgusted at the laws surrounding cannabis considering it’s so helpful and helped me. So I started advocating for legalization. So that was like back in 2007.

And then how did that get into like MAKR House?

I moved to California in 2014 to really pursue a career in cannabis, but also because I was looking for access to cannabis. I was living in Chicago at the time, and Illinois didn’t have a medical program back then. And I was really just looking for like a diversity of products that would help. So, I moved to California in February of 2014 and started working for someone. And, after that, I was working for an activist and I knew a number of activists out here in the Bay Area. And I just started learning a lot from them.

And they were really trying to push legalization here in California. I saw how licensing was happening across the United States and a number of medical markets, but black and brown people were being left behind, even though we were the ones being locked up and taking on all the brunt of the criminalization of cannabis. The disparity was huge. Especially coming from Atlanta and Chicago and seeing people still going to jail for weed, and then coming out here and seeing all these people, like getting licenses and having dispensaries and just kind of operating with very low risk.

Really the women that I co-founded our organization, Supernova Women, we were friends at the time, and we were just talking about these differences that we were seeing in the industry and the trends. We were going to the first cannabis conferences that were popping up, and there were like no black people there, no brown people. And, it really just did not sit well with us. So we co-founded Supernova Women at the end of 2015. We started advocating at Oakland City Council for Equity programs and just making sure that people that have been criminalized by the war on drugs were included in the regulated cannabis industry.

And out of that advocacy, the first equity program was born. And so, after that, we started working in the city of San Francisco advocating for social equity programs. And then, we worked with Senator Steven Bradford at the state on SB 1294, which is the Cannabis Social Equity Act of 2018. And now it funds all the local social equity programs throughout the state of California.

And so from there, I worked a few different jobs. I ran a dispensary in West Oakland for a little while, and then I started my own company and now I have MAKRHouse where I have a lot of queer folks and women of color. We’re all women. We’re just very intentional. Everything I do is very intentional, making sure that I’m including.

It’s interesting that you talk about that because I know there are some other states outside of California that have started implementing similar programs. I know Connecticut their legalization included giving licenses first to places that were most hit by the war on drugs.

Oh yes, definitely. I’ve had influences in all of those places. I’ve flown out there, I’ve spoken to the different legislators, and worked with all the advocates in these different places: New York, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, everywhere.

So what can the cannabis industry do to better serve groups like women, queer people, people of color, and other marginalized groups? And the flip side of that, are there any things that the cannabis industry is doing for those groups that other industries aren’t?

It’s interesting because medical cannabis was born out of the AIDS epidemic. Gay men dying at incredible, ridiculous rates because of AIDS, them not having the treatment that they needed because Reagan was crazy and didn’t allow the research or just didn’t even acknowledge that AIDS was an epidemic

So the medical movement of cannabis was from queer people! And really, cannabis has always kind of always catered to the misfits of society: the queer people, the black people, the brown people. We’ve been the ones that have really carried this whole industry. And for the industry now to be formalized and [for] us [to] get cut out is just crazy.

What is the industry doing to uplift us and tell our stories and make sure people know what the truth is? Not much. And that has to change. So I think people like me, black folks, brown folks, queer folks, we’re the ones that are doing the preserving of telling the real stories on what has happened and uplifting people.

Really this whole movement of cannabis equity started with a bunch of black queer women in the Bay Area. And we’ve been the ones pushing this whole thing forward across the country. And so I think these stories are really important. They came from the most marginalized people pushing the agenda and pushing what’s right forward and really shoving it down people’s throats and making people understand that when you advocate for the most marginalized people, you’re actually helping everyone. Actually moving the needle for everybody.

Is there anything else you wanted to highlight about your business or your advocacy work?

So my company, MAKR House, we’re a house of brands. All of our brands really are just extensions of my communities. Disco Jays, it’s a sparkly, beautiful, high-quality, potent pre-roll that sparkles on the outside, it’s shiny. It’s shiny like a disco ball. But the message is that it does represent disco and disco came out of necessity for queer people, black people, and brown people needing a place to congregate and be themselves. And so I really think it’s important for people to understand that all of this wonderful music that they love and dance to today was born out of disco and that came from queer people, that came from black people, that came from brown people just needing space and creating space for themselves. So I have this opportunity to make all of these really cool products, but these products resonate. They have a reason. There’s a reason and a story behind them. And these stories deserve to be highlighted because they truly influence culture and how it is today.