Women struggle with pot stigma

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/10/2018 (2634 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The first time Sarah got high before work, it didn’t go well.

She arrived at her Toronto office and was stricken with anxiety.

“I got so paranoid, and was like, people are going to smell it… I’m an idiot. I’m an adult, I shouldn’t be smoking at work.”

Now 27, Sarah, who asked that her last name not be used, has been a social pot smoker since high school. Her usage spiked a year ago, when she landed a demanding job in the arts. To unwind from the stress, she began getting high in the evenings. It relaxed her and allowed her to focus on the present moment without an onslaught of worry and self-criticism.

She realized the effect of marijuana on her mood could prove handy at work. So she devised a system that lets her be high — but not too high — at the office, switching to a vaporizer to reduce odour and walking to work so her high is diluted by the time she arrives.

Discovering that pot calms her anxiety has been life-changing for Sarah, who now vapes throughout the day, every day, using cannabis to ease social anxiety or to motivate her to perform mundane tasks. Still, she’s extremely discreet about her use, “because I know there’s a general negative stigma around it.”

On the website of the female-focused cannabis lifestyle brand Van der Pop, a quote attributed to the company founder, April Pride, reads: “It’s time to put the image of the under-achieving stoner to rest and have a frank conversation about where cannabis fits in the modern woman’s life.”

Pride has facilitated “Women and Weed” panels across Canada, focusing on topics including cannabis as a complement to sex, parenting and dining. Van der Pop is owned by Tokyo Smoke, a Canadian cannabis retail chain that sells coffee and cannabis accessories in Toronto and Calgary. After pot is legal Oct. 17, Tokyo Smoke plans to open dispensing stores selling cannabis in Manitoba, Alberta and British Columbia.

The brand is one among the droves of cannabis retailers launched in anticipation of legalization on Wednesday. Many sell high-end accessories and tout the benefits of cannabis for purposes like relaxation, or the ever-amorphous “wellness.” A corner of this industry is geared to women, selling products designed to appeal to a purported female esthetic. Pictured on one of Van der Pop’s online product pages, for example, are several pipe cleaners — slender, rosy-hued devices set against a backdrop of millennial pink. In this segment of the market, the subject of stigma tends to come up in the branding, with companies declaring it’s time to bust stereotypes about women’s cannabis use.

Virginia Vidal is the founder of Mary’s Wellness, a company that sells cannabis-infused coffee, tea and edibles under a medical producer licence in Toronto (the company will require a new licensing agreement to join the market post-legalization). Vidal, who said cannabis brought relief from her own post-partum pain, depression and stress after giving birth to triplets, maintained that mothers of young children bear the brunt of cannabis stigma. In her experience, the substance can make someone a more relaxed, understanding parent.

“A few moms I know would tell only me that they consumed cannabis, because they know I’m in the business. I’m looking at these people thinking, ‘They all know each other. They would’ve had a lot more fun if they’d told each other.’”

Ashley Athill, a licensed grower under Health Canada’s medical cannabis program, and founder of Toronto cannabis education and advocacy company Sensii, said a lot of women view smoking, generally — though mainly tobacco — as unacceptable, due to the health detriments and because it’s “thought to be ‘unladylike.’” She said she hopes greater discussion of alternative modes of use, such as consuming edibles or tinctures, will lead more women to “look at cannabis in a different light.”

Women of colour may be particularly cautious about cannabis use, Athill, who is black, noted. This is due to the specific stigma facing their communities and high incarceration rates of minorities — people of colour have been disproportionately targeted by police. “That fear has gone through generations of our community,” she said.

Last year, Van der Pop released a “Women and Weed” survey of the consumption habits and perceptions of more than 1,500 North American women. Seventy per cent of the women polled felt consumption carries a stigma, while 66 per cent said they hide their usage. Felicia Snyder, senior vice-president of growth at Hiku, parent company of Tokyo Smoke and Van der Pop, said respondents across legal jurisdictions cited fear of others’ negative judgment as a reason for hiding their use.

“For example,” she said, “‘Am I a bad mom?’ ‘Will people think I’m lazy?’”

“I think when people talk about stigma for women around cannabis, it’s a wishy-washy way of saying women have never really been addressed by the cannabis industry,” said Anna Duckworth, co-founder of a content and e-commerce platform for women called Miss Grass. Duckworth is originally from Kingsburg, N.S., and lives in Los Angeles. Her brand sells products within the United States, such as CBD (a constituent of cannabis) lip balms and face serums and accessories like pipes and rolling papers. While she doesn’t subscribe to gendered notions about cannabis being “unladylike,” Duckworth said it’s likely many women don’t identify with Hollywood’s “Seth Rogen-stoner character,” perhaps because, “We don’t think it’s appropriate for women to behave like that.”

Beyond the realm of female-targeted cannabis marketing, is there evidence to suggest cannabis users who identify as women experience or perceive greater stigma for their use, or is the notion merely a convenient marketing tactic?

In 2017, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research compiled a report on how sex and gender can influence cannabis use and health outcomes. The document points to research about how sex impacts the way cannabis is metabolized and experienced. It cites studies showing that men have higher rates of diagnosed Cannabis Use Disorder, but women more often have concerns about their use and dependence. Further, men are more likely to use the drug recreationally, women for medicinal reasons. The report says that, with legalization imminent and social acceptance of the drug growing, “women may feel reduced social pressure to abstain from using cannabis.” It cautions that more overall research is needed to ascertain the health impacts of cannabis.

Canadian women do appear to be using cannabis more than in recent years, or at least admitting to it more. The Canadian government’s 2015 Tobacco, Alcohol and Drugs Survey showed that 2.2 million Canadian men and 1.4 million women reported using cannabis the year prior. While prevalence of use among men saw a negligible increase since the same survey was done in 2013, women’s use rose a fair bit, to 10 from seven per cent. (Results for 2017 have yet to be released.)

Some research suggests women who use cannabis do so more frequently than men, but that this could be a manifestation of social stigma. In 2011, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health and Addiction published a study examining gender differences in cannabis use among 134 students who identified as high-frequency users. Both the men and women who participated reported using similar amounts of cannabis in a 30-day period. But 43 per cent of the women, compared to 19 per cent of the men, reported three or more use episodes per day. And more women reported a higher number of “cannabis use-related problems.” In their conclusion, the authors posited that women may be more apt to identify their use as problematic because substance use is regarded as more normative for men. This, they asserted, is consistent with research that shows greater pressure is put on women to seek treatment for so-called substance dependence.

According to longtime Canadian cannabis activist and entrepreneur Jodie Emery, the government has long played on women’s self-concept as protectors, making them fear cannabis would “destroy their children.” The corporatizing of cannabis may have lessened stigma for women, Emery argued, but it’s also, in many ways, exploited them.

“Women are more engaged in spending, and big business knows it… any sort of marketing will try to capture women.”

Gender questions aside, Emery, who recently opened a Toronto café that sells coffee and hemp products, doesn’t appreciate the sudden incursion of brands claiming to be authorities on cannabis.

“I’ve been in the business a long time. There are all these people who’ve showed up in the last two years and think they invented marijuana.”

Sarah experiences a certain degree of shame for her cannabis use.

“I feel like I need it to feel happy, or content with myself, sometimes. Then, I think I’m doing something wrong, if I can’t feel good without it.”

She wonders how much of that feeling stems from the general stigma around cannabis, versus gender-based stigma?