When Sarah ElSayed won a ticket to the 2016 High Times Cannabis Cup in Southern California, it changed her life. Though ElSayed wasn’t able to attend, she was determined to turn the missed opportunity into an inspiring life shift. At the time, she was working with Mariah Carey and top-tier New York chefs; then she began to use her impressive PR skills to champion cannabis brands she believed in. Though at first it wasn’t easy to change people’s minds about the stigma surrounding cannabis, ElSayed’s passion for educating herself and others has helped her break through.
Three years later, ElSayed has worked with brands like The Legion of Bloom, SensiChew, Flow Kana, HelloMD, Ardent, Rosebud CBD, and Reed’s Remedies. She also founded her own PR company, Grass Is Greener, whose stated mission is to “de-stigmatize a healing plant and reverse the social narrative enforced by decades of prohibition and the war on drugs.”
We spoke with ElSayed about what inspired her to begin working in cannabis, how she aims to change people’s minds about consumption, her personal journey with the plant and connecting with cannabis aficionados, activists and tastemakers around the world to build a greener future for us all.
Q
How did you get involved with cannabis professionally?
A
It all started in 2016, when I was working in celebrity and culinary PR. I was at the office working late and I had found out earlier that week I had won a ticket to the High Times Cannabis Cup in SoCal on Instagram out of the blue. But I wasn’t prepared to just up and leave that weekend on a trip to California. But I felt like I should have been there, I was like ugh, I want this. I had to give my ticket to a friend in Cali who went and was like “Wow! Thanks, it was amazing,” and I had the worst FOMO. So, I kept looking at the website and I was seeing the same vape company winning cups over and over in different vape categories. Since it was 2016, it was still a little bit new.
Vapes were becoming really popular for the first time and I thought this company really must be the best in the industry if they keep taking all these cups. So, I just sent them an email and said, “Hey, I know this sounds crazy, but I work in PR.” At the time I had done work with Mariah Carey and a lot of celebrities and top-tier New York City chefs. I had enough faith in my skills that I could apply them to any industry. Of course, cannabis PR existed, but it wasn’t so much of an industry where people were really getting their names everywhere yet. So, this company gave me a chance to start on a freelance basis. And it turned out I really had a knack for it. But for the first time, certain journalists I had worked with in the past were like, “Oh, this is what you’re going into? I don’t know if I can write a story about that. My editor won’t be into it.” I would tell them, “Well, have you heard about CBD?” and tried to normalize it. One job turned into another, and I ended up leaving my fulltime job and starting my own agency. It’s what I love. Now I don’t want to take any clients that aren’t cannabis-related.
Q
When you first started, what did you feel you were up against? And how did you change people’s minds?
A
One of the things with PR is lasting relationships. Because I had always gone out of my way to help journalists I’d worked with in the past, they were willing to give me the time of day to really explain cannabis. When CBD came onto the scene, people didn’t understand exactly what it was. They didn’t understand how it related to cannabis. So initially, it was a lot of education. For me, in my free time, I am constantly being a student. I’m watching shows on VICE, and YouTube videos, I’m checking out all the new cannabis influencers, scrolling through Instagram looking at hashtags. I was able to get a lot of the industry knowledge right away because I was really looking for it. That helped me be a good educator. I was able to look at my contacts who had trusted me for a long time in celebrity, culinary and real estate — they knew I wasn’t going to waste their time if I asked to sit down and talk about cannabis.
Q
Did you find that once you started being open with people that you were working in cannabis and CBD that they in turn opened up to you about their own cannabis use?
A
Definitely. That was absolutely something that happened to me with the older generation. It wasn’t so much that they would tell me they smoked, but that they had smoked in the past. And they felt comfortable admitting it.
Q
That’s great.
A
Yeah, they had always denied it like they were doing something wrong or bad. But now it was kind of nostalgic, and my work sparked their curiosity. My mentor in college, she was one of my PR professors and was a legend at my school because she was such a great teacher. After school, I told her I was working with celebrities and she thought that was amazing. Then I shocked her when I said, things are changing a bit now [laughs].
Q
[laughs] Amazing.
A
But she trusted it, because it was me. Then I ended up making her topical creams at home to try with my own cannabis. I remember a hilarious moment where she posted on Facebook something like, “Shout out to my supplier” and tagged me, and I was like, oh my god, people are going to think I’m a drug dealer. I was like, “Maybe don’t put that on your professional Facebook.” That caught me off guard.
Q
I’d love to talk about your personal journey with cannabis. When you started smoking, and when you realized it was not something you needed to hide, not a stigma, something legit.
A
I smoked for the first time when I was 14, and I pretty much didn’t stop. When it became available to me, I felt more like myself than I ever had. I didn’t want that feeling to go away, and pretty fast it became a part of my daily ritual. I feel like when I was younger it wasn’t as fun, because now I really am a cannabis connoisseur — I chase all the strains I want to smoke by the cultivators I love. Back then, you didn’t have that many options. It was always Sour Diesel [laughs]. Things have gotten better since then. I am more curious than ever before. It became something that really helped me manage my ADD, without knowing it. They have blurred the lines between medical and recreational cannabis. I think that really explains it. Through daily and weekly cannabis consumption, I was overall improving my wellness and mental health, but I was attributing it to a recreational activity.
Q
Interesting. You’re the first person who’s explained it that way to me, and that is really on point.
A
That is very much how it feels for me. I wasn’t willing to admit it or stop hiding it until I started working in the industry. It wasn’t until a little while after being in the industry that I had my coming out. I did a piece with this magazine and was like “Hey Mom, check it out.” My mom was taken aback. But at that point no one could say anything, because I was actually making money legally doing what I was passionate about. It didn’t stop me. It was time to be like “Guys, all that success I had in my career? I was high while doing all of it.” People were like, whoa.
Q
I recently had a conversation with my brother talking about how, if people knew how much I’ve accomplished while stoned, I don’t even think they would understand. People still have this perception that if you’re stoned, you’re on the couch eating Pringles. And it’s like no, that’s not at all what it is.
A
Exactly. I think it’s a bell curve. If you consume cannabis enough, it becomes part of the conditions you’re establishing for yourself.
Q
Let’s go back to the idea of not realizing cannabis use is actually helping us in all these ways. How can we help people understand that?
A
The more people who are open about it, the better. Being around people who are cannabis-positive is a gamechanger. With my boyfriend, I guess you could say I’m in a cannabis relationship. I mean real smokers, who travel for weed like we do, are going to the Emerald Cup next month. We’re trying to go to Spain in March, which I did last year.
Q
What’s in Spain?
A
Spannabis, it’s a big cannabis convention in Barcelona. People from all over Europe and cultivators from all over the world go there. I met people from Berlin and Ireland who are cannabis aficionados. Being around those people inspires me to do this every single day, knowing there are people out there seeking the best in cannabis, who want to talk about it, explore and research. I think the introduction of non-intoxicating cannabinoids is going to be that barrier changer. Because the paranoia that people get sometimes from smoking or taking edibles, and the current legal parameters, is what I think is most off-putting. When both of those are eliminated with CBD and CBG, that will change everything. Once you hear suburban moms like, “I take my CBD every morning before I take the kids to daycare,” that’s normalizing it. That makes people think okay, this is for your wellness, this is for your health and however you choose to consume it, whatever cannabinoids work with your body best, that’s not for me to judge. And I don’t think that is for other people to judge either.
