Unmasking Cannabis: Beyond the Stoner Stereotype

"Marijuana. Pot. Weed. Grass. Ganga. Dope. Herb. Cannabis. Reefer. Mary Jane. If you don’t partake in it, you know someone who does. From smoking, to vaping, to cooking, to baking, to ingestible oils, to tinctures, to topicals, and to dabbing, there’s so many ways to enjoy the effects of cannabis. But when we think weed, we don’t think success. Weed has long been characterized by “stoner-like” caricatures we’ve seen in movies or on tv, like Cheech & Chong, Pineapple Express, Half Baked, or Workaholics – young men of little responsibility and even less drive, with a love of tie-dye and a propensity for recklessness. As Wendy Chapkis, a sociologist at the University of Southern Maine, puts it, the stoner’s slacker attitude “relies on a mismatch

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As the push for the legalization of marijuana continues, it is vital that marijuana users are diversely depicted in order to show the commonality of marijuana through a multitude of experiences. Women or men (trans or cis), people of color, gay, lesbian, bi or straight, and people from all social classes – there is true diversity among marijuana lovers. Showing how these diverse experiences are reflected in pop culture is a novel way of legitimizing marijuana use.

Despite the fact that a majority of the population supports the legalization of marijuana, women trail men in support of a retail commercial cannabis model by an average of five to ten percentage points. If we ever want to achieve widespread legalization, then we have to reach out to female voters, smokers and abstainers alike. Women are the largest group of voters and single most important demographic to ending