How Companies Can Support the LGBTQ+ Community Through Small Steps and Genuine Intentions

David Letro of FLUENT Cannabis Care discusses how cannabis companies can implement authentic and progressive support for the LGBTQ+ community during Pride Month and beyond.

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As Pride Month approaches, it represents an opportune time to explore how cannabis companies demonstrate their support for the LGBTQ+ community.

But beyond the limited-time campaigns lies the question of how companies can extend their support beyond the month of June.

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© Courtesy of Fluent
Letro

In honor of Pride Month 2023, Cannabis Business Times spoke with David Letro, director of marketing for FLUENT Cannabis Care, a Florida-based medical cannabis company, to discuss how companies can implement authentic support for the LGBTQ+ community, even with limited or no funding, and how they can execute long-term initiatives that prioritize equality, representation and social progress year-round.

Andriana Ruscitto: Can you tell me about your background and journey into the cannabis space?

David Letro: The cannabis journey was a blind application through LinkedIn. There was a role posted, and I was in between positions. I had been in healthcare for 15 years prior. I dealt with hospitals and drove businesses to their facilities.

I got the offer to join Trulieve during the final stage of that interview process. It was a slightly different style of an interview, knowing that I was leaving the hospital world, [the] sort of suit and tie type of industry to join cannabis.

AR: Can you discuss the significance of the $1 million you directed to support local communities during your time at Trulieve? What impact did this have on the LGBTQ+ causes you supported?

DL: This was where $250,000 of that $1 million over the term with Trulieve was directed towards causes that support the LGBTQ+ community. So, Equality Florida and the various local pride organizations, because they are out there representing throughout the entire year. It’s not just a one-month program that comes and goes.

AR: What steps can cannabis companies take to ensure their Pride Month and other initiatives are authentic and not just performative?

DL: Inclusive hiring practices, understanding your employee base, and showing representation through your employees because we live it and speak it every day. Hiring policies, providing an avenue for the local teams to engage with other local nonprofits to drive the connection between what a store is doing because it’s made up of the local individuals, and driving a greater impact to that community area.

AR: What is FLUENT actively doing?

DL: We [announced] our corporate move from Miami to the Tampa Bay area. With that move, we are opening our outreach manager position. We are starting to hire for that role, which will be responsible for outlining and defining our program strategy through outreach initiatives and generating a scalable solution for the organization. … The move will happen in August. It’s a slow, stair-step approach as we move the workforce from Miami to Tampa.

We’re also showing representation. FLUENT hasn’t had the dollars available to support the communities directly. However, we believe that our representation matters, so getting out there, getting involved, and empowering our workforce to become engaged is part of our strategy in developing what we can do beyond just dollar means.

FLUENT is turning the page from being a smaller operator to a larger cannabis organization. We are now at the point such as hiring an outreach manager to define the programs to generate long-term scalable impacts. That’s what I see as the big positive change that it’s not going to just be for LGBT; it’s going to be for veterans’ groups, qualifying conditions for medical cannabis [and more]. We’re FLUENT; we speak cannabis. It’s, how do we engage with the local communities and show representation through those kinds of organizations? So, that’s where our drive is going to be—connecting our stores and our teams to those local organizations. Dollars are going to come into play now. We’re finally turning the page wherever we will have smaller dollars to be able to make donations, but beyond the dollars, we’ll be out there representing, volunteering, and trying to drive just the awareness of dialogue and conversation.

AR: What types of initiatives or programs do you think cannabis companies should consider implementing to show their support for the community?

DL: It’s an interesting pickle [of] how you want to go down this road, but national organizations still are hesitant to partner with cannabis organizations given the Schedule I classification. We’ve been denied when we were trying to partner with large organizations. So, more of our outreach efforts must be smaller, more grassroots initiatives. ... Like Libby’s Legacy, which is a breast cancer organization that provides services in the Orlando market [or] Smart Ride; it’s a small biking organization that supports HIV services here in Florida, which is a qualifying condition of medical cannabis. It’s those small types of grassroots efforts that we must get engaged with while the national conversation works its way out to where these larger organizations will feel comfortable partnering with us in the future.

AR: How can cannabis companies encourage inclusivity and diversity within their organizations?

DL: I think it comes down to representation, the organization’s leadership, and building those defined programs that are not just off the cuff of what somebody wants to do. Let’s put meaningful action and impact behind an initiative. Interviews such as this show that our leadership is diverse, and we are out there in the community trying to have tough conversations about cannabis and the LGBTQ [community] because we both face stigma. The conversations go hand in hand with just having that respectful dialogue to change people’s mindsets.

AR: What are the specific challenges or considerations that cannabis companies should be aware of when planning and executing such initiatives?

DL: Given the current climate of the Bud Light campaign that I think most of us are following, it’s interesting to see how a small personal representation of the Bud Light cans for an individual … has received such pushback. I view it as we have to be prepared for tough conversations of everyone’s not going to be happy with what we do, but as long as we’re founded in respect and understanding and being transparent with our actions, there’s going to be always various causes that some individuals won’t like, and we will receive negative pushback. Social media doesn’t sleep, and social media cannot be kind at times.

AR: Can you share any examples of successful Pride Month initiatives implemented by cannabis companies in the past? What made these initiatives stand out?

DL: One not publicly known is a partnership through the Tampa Bay LGBT Chamber. … We educated the membership base for that chamber because it’s bringing together businesses. Two of the businesses updated their policies for hiring practices because of our education on medical cannabis. So, it opened the doorway for their inclusion in medical cannabis. Those are the little grassroots baby steps that we are taking that may not be public facing, but it’s the incremental steps behind the scenes that we’re showing impact and change.

AR: Is there anything else that I missed in this interview that you think would be beneficial to add or include?

DL: The significance of the dollars from Trulieve to the local communities is shown and defined. … It’s shown on the website [and] on social media, and it [demonstrates] impact beyond just the single month. [FLUENT] is also doing it in small baby steps that others may not notice, but we’re out there taking these steps.

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