Brittney Griner, the WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist who spent 10 months in a Russian detention center after bringing two marijuana vape cartridges into the country, is set to speak at a cannabis industry event next year, organizers have announced.
Griner, who was released from detention two years ago as the result of a government-negotiated prisoner swap, will be the keynote speaker in February at the Women Grow 2025 Leadership Summit, the group said this week. The event will be held in National Harbor, Maryland, not far from Washington, D.C.
Women Grow, which supports female leadership in the cannabis industry, said in a press release on Tuesday that Griner’s scheduled appearance underscores the event’s mission and comes as both cannabis legalization and women’s rights are “under threat.”
“This summit is about more than women fighting for cannabis legalization and women’s basic rights to medicine,” Women Grow CEO Chanda Macias said in a statement. “It is a sisterhood of power that intentionally supports and trust[s] in one another for the betterment of our country.”
“Now is not the time to be divided,” Macias added.
From the court to the community, @brittneygriner is synonymous with impactful leadership and the power of resilience.
We’re excited to announce her as our keynote speaker at the WGLS! Join us on 2/17-18 for an experience at the forefront of advocacy: https://t.co/L4JtVYcjV1 pic.twitter.com/MIsFGrjJhl
— Women Grow (@womengrow) December 3, 2024
While it’s not clear from the press release what Griner will speak about at the February 17 summit, the talk is likely to include at least some mention of the athlete’s detention in Russia over cannabis and her subsequent release. The case drew widespread international attention and became a rallying cry for advocates opposed to prohibition.
Griner returned to the U.S. in December 2022 following after serving 10 months of a nine-year sentence for low-level cannabis possession. She admitted to accidentally packing cannabis vape cartridges that were found in her backpack at an airport outside of Moscow.
The Biden administration worked various diplomatic angles to get her released, and Griner’s attorneys provided the Russian court with evidence showing she was a registered medical marijuana patient in Arizona.
In the end, the U.S. negotiated a deal to get Griner released and on her way home through a prisoner swap with Russia, returning convicted arms trafficker Vikor Bout.
“It took painstaking and intense negotiations, and I want to thank all the hardworking public servants across my administration who worked tirelessly to secure her release,” President Joe Biden said at the time. “Reuniting these Americans with their loved ones remains a priority—a priority for my administration and every person in my administration involved in this. And we’re going to continue to work to bring home every American who continues to endure such an injustice.”
Advocates argued that the U.S. would have been better positioned to advocate for the athlete’s release if it didn’t also have its own federal laws on the books criminalizing marijuana.
Griner had been relatively quiet about the incident until earlier this year, when she recounted details of the experience in a memoir and media interviews. Still, she hasn’t publicly spoken about how her experience relates to the plight of other people who are currently incarcerated for cannabis—raising hopes that she may address the issue at the Women Grow event.
A representative for a speaker’s bureau that arranges talks for Griner did not respond to a request for more information about the upcoming Women Grow event.
In the wake of Griner’s release, many advocates and even some lawmakers called on the U.S. to follow up with domestic cannabis reform and stepped-up diplomatic efforts to release other U.S. citizens imprisoned abroad, including Marc Fogel, a teacher who remains imprisoned in Russia over medical marijuana.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, said in a statement following Griner’s release that he was “of course very relieved that Brittney Griner was released and on the way home to her family,” and hoped “that this can be the start of another incremental step towards more rational cannabis policy.”
“Thousands of athletes self-medicate with medical cannabis, and they should be able to do so without discriminatory interference from authorities, either government or sports bureaucracy,” he said.
Other congressional lawmakers have taken a more critical attitude toward the government’s handling of Griner compared to how it’s dealt with other U.S. citizens who remain incarcerated in Russia.
That includes Fogel, who formerly worked at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow and was sentenced to 14 years in Russian prison for possession of 17 grams of cannabis, which he said he used for medical purposes to treat back pain. The Biden administration did not give Fogel the “wrongfully detained” status that Griner got.
“I am pleased to hear the news that Brittney Griner was released this morning and is returning to the United States,” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) said after Griner was out of Russian custody. “However, I remain deeply disappointed that the Biden administration was not able to secure the release of Marc Fogel.”
More recently, in August of this year, more than a dozen members of Congress again urged the Biden administration to secure the release of Fogel—with bipartisan lawmakers, including those who generally oppose cannabis reform, emphasizing that access to marijuana is “necessary to subdue his pain” and urging Biden to declare the teacher as wrongfully detained.
That came on the heels of a historic, multinational prisoner swap in which several Americans were released but Fogel was not included. Biden said at the time that he was “not giving up” on Fogel’s case.
Fogel, who used cannabis as an opioid alternative to treat pain, is serving a 14-year sentence after being convicted of “drug smuggling” over possession of a half-ounce of marijuana. After three years of prison, however, he’s yet to be classified as a wrongfully convicted person.
In an interview earlier this year with Reuters, Fogel’s mother lamented that it “just seems like an unbelievable occurrence to think that they released all those prisoners and they didn’t include Marc.”
“It just took the heart right out of him when he heard,” she said. “He’s just shattered.”
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said earlier in August that the administration intended to “build on” the prisoner swap, “drawing inspiration and continued courage from it for all of those who are held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world, and that includes Marc Fogel, who we are actively working to get his release from Russia.”
While it seemed unclear from those comments whether Sullivan was suggesting that Fogel has been formally designated as wrongfully detained, as lawmakers have pushed for, a White House National Security Council later told Marijuana Moment that he “has not” in fact been given that status.
Russia, for its part, has taken a particularly strong stance against reforming cannabis policy at the international level through the United Nations. And it has condemned Canada for legalizing marijuana nationwide.
Image element courtesy of Lorie Shaull/Wikimedia.