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See The Queer-Run Cannabis Brand Everyone’s Obsessing Over

By Stephanie Wilson
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When you feel good, you look good. Or is it when you look good, you feel good? Either way, looking good and feeling good are closely entwined, and both are at the root of the mission at Stone Road, a California cannabis brand that’s catching attention everywhere for its aesthetically curated Instagram feed featuring eye-catching, colorful, and as-inclusive-as-they-come brand images like the ones you see here—good-looking folx consuming pre-rolls that are making them feel good.

Those Stone Road pre-rolls are rather good looking as well; the joints are rolled by hand to ensure visual perfection. As a queer-led company, Stone Road is committed to harvesting and creating accessible, affordable cannabis products for every kind of smoker, so you can feel good about feeling good.

Stone Road only rolls with the best buds—and never uses shake, filler, or distillate-sprayed weed. All premium, sungrown Stone Road flower is sourced from the brand’s 57-acre off-grid farm in Nevada City, California, about an hour northeast of Sacramento and two-and-a-half hours from San Francisco. Each joint is potent, pure, and hand-rolled with love. Stone Road pre-rolls give off a strong “farm-to-table” cannabis vibe, which is by design. And Stone Road is reimagining what affordable cannabis can look like with its design-forward, sustainable packaging. The company is blazing a path for a new age of cannabis consumers in terms of what cannabis products can look, taste, and feel like.

The company’s ethos is laid out on its website: “Cannabis is nature’s best unifier, bringing people together from every place, background, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and religion. It brings out your inner child, turns parties into sacred happenings, and expands your mind. It almost feels like a secret code—a secret that’s also not a secret at all.” It’s a lowkey highkey high, in Gen Z speak.

The Stone Road website features animated bunnies and butterflies crisscrossing the screen to remind visitors of the brand’s commitment to nature. “We founded Stone Road with the conviction that cannabis is one of the planet’s great natural gifts to humans, and that all people should have access to the best of it,” it reads. “Ever since, we’ve been growing flowers to be one with hand-rolling joints as a gesture of love and friendship and bringing people from all walks of life together. So if you’re a human being, we’re here for you. We’re here for plants, too. And animals, of course.”

It goes on to say: “We believe in what nature has given us. And we believe in you. In your power to let go. To go on a journey and face your fears. To let your little seedling of an idea sprout. To dull pain and increase pleasure. To engage in emotional intensity. To open up shifts in perception. To enjoy the here and now as often as possible.”

Founder and CEO Lex Corwin says this mindset served as the inspiration for the California brand’s ethos, which runs from the farm to the branding. “The main branding behind Stone Road is based on nature, minimalism, and inclusivity,” he writes. “A lot of inspiration comes from the farm and the gorgeous landscape that surrounds it.”

The photography on all the packaging is done by two designers in New York, Santiago Carrasquilla and Alex Stikeleather, the lead designer for Snoop Dogg’s Leaf by Snoop line. Corwin dug the brand’s nature-inspired minimalism, so he recruited the designer to work her magic on his new brand, flying her out to California to capture the farm’s natural beauty for the packaging. All of the photos on Stone Road packaging were taken at the farm.

“When you’re there, it feels like another world,” Corwin writes for Stone Road. “With only half an acre worth of greenhouses on a rural 57-acre spread, the land remains 99 percent wild and untamed. All of our water is straight from an artesian well—460 feet deep at the ideal 6.4 pH, which allows us to water straight from the earth.”

Sounds heavenly? If you want to experience the Stone Hill magic IRL, farm tours are available from May through September.

All Stone Road packaging is 99 percent recyclable and made from 100 percent post-consumer recycled goods. A new initiative takes the design even further into the planet-friendly realm: a rice protein isolate is now used to create the shrinkwrap material around the pre-roll packs. Reclaimed ocean plastic is used to create the child-resistant lids to the fully recycled glass jars that house Stone Road flower.

For the month of June, Stone Road will be donating 10 percent of all profits to the LGBTQ Fund, an organization that pays bail to secure the safety and liberty of LGBTQ folx that are disproportionately incarcerated in U.S. jails and immigration facilities.

Corwin shares that he wants Stone Road to be a home for great design. “I want to sell lots of things that bring joy to the people and products that make their life easier—well-designed, well-made products that I think everyone can benefit from.”