Gore and Warner: near-perfect pot partners
It was a hot day and Erin Gore and Karli Warner were enjoying the shade and the ice cream at Amy’s Wicked Slush in Healdsburg, where kids and moms had gathered for soft serve and slush.
Two years ago, when they wanted to jump-start their careers and help their community, Gore and Warner co-founded the Garden Society, a medical cannabis company that manufactures and distributes marijuana products designed especially, though not exclusively, for women.
Gore is the CEO and Warner is the VP of marketing and communications.
Pot pioneers and savvy self-promoters, they’re redefining what it means to use cannabis and to be cannabis advocates in the 21st Century. Though they’ve found the pot bureaucracy burdensome, they’re committed to following the rules and the regulations.
Gore and Warner both spoke at the August 2018 Wine and Weed Symposium in Santa Rosa; the City of Roses, which is gradually becoming a city of cannabis manufacturing.
At Amy’s Wicked Slush, they didn’t have their products on hand. They weren’t stoned and not one bit wicked, either. But they sounded like unabashed cannabis enthusiasts and near-perfect pot partners in a volatile industry with soaring profits. In 2017, cannabis sales nationwide added up to nearly $9 billion. Not bad for a weed.
The stress of the industry, which is still finding itself, has also broken up friendships, marriages and partnerships.
“We’re a great team,” Warner said and didn’t sound like she was boasting, but rather just stating the facts. “We come from different backgrounds, and have different skills, though we also share the same core values and we both work incredibly hard.”
Gore added, “We’re a corporation that provides benefits to our employees and to the community. We’re de-stigmatizing the plant, the people who grow it and the people who use it.”
Warner is a California native, while Gore grew up in Wisconsin. They were both born in 1983.
In college, Warner majored in communications, Gore in chemical and biological engineering. They’re also wives and mothers with small children; a lot happens in their private as well as their public lives.
“Cannabis won’t cure everything,” Warner said. “But it can cure a lot of things.
In fact, she has seen cannabis work wonders with members of her own family, though she herself didn’t begin to use cannabis until her 20s — late in the game for her generation.
Warner’s husband had stage-four lymphoma. Chemotherapy nearly wiped out his appetite. Smoking cannabis helped bring it back and improve the quality of his life. Another relative used cannabis to ease his physical pain and walk again without being hunched over.
Warner’s father smoked marijuana when it was part of the counterculture and not a business, so she also knows that part of the story.
Gore’s husband, Tom, grows grapes and makes wine. He works for Constellation Brands, where Warner did public relations. Erin’s brother-in-law, James Gore, is the Sonoma County Supervisor from the Fourth District that includes Cloverdale, Windsor and Healdsburg, where grapes and cannabis grow side-by-side, or at least not far apart.
Gore and Warner both said they don’t drink as much wine now as they drank when they were in the thick of the wine industry.
“Alcohol can be hard on a body,” Warner said. “Cannabis helps with wellness. It’s one of the least harmful substances you can put inside you.”
Gore eased into the conversation. “Cannabis can help women become super,” she said. “It can’t actually give women the kind of capes that superheroes wear, but it helps make it possible for their own inner capes to come out.”
She added that, “Cannabis enables people to be more present and more aware than they otherwise would be.” Indeed, for some for people it does that.
Gore has used cannabis to improve the quality of her sleep. Both she and Warner have also found that cannabis helps reduce the anxiety that comes with operating a business they have self-financed. Running a company in an industry that the county and the state of California have over-regulated and over-taxed is anxiety producing, they say.
Several times a year, Gore and Warner invite women to “pot parties” in private homes. Curious guests learn about cannabis and see their cannabis products, including pre-rolled cigarettes and what the Garden Society website calls “chef-inspired, artisan low-dose cannabis confections.”
At these cannabis versions of Tupperware parties, women who have never used marijuana — and who know little or nothing about it — find themselves at the brink of a new world.
“We urge first-time users to go low in terms of dosage and go slow,” Warner said.
Garden Society products, which are laboratory tested, are on sale in 60 dispensaries in California.
Still, Gore and Warner know that most municipalities in the state have no dispensary and no delivery service, even though adult use has been legal since January 2017.
“We plan to stay lean, develop slowly and be flexible,” Warner said.
Gore added, “Our partners, on both the growing and the selling side, help keep us honest.”
