Hooking Women onto Having It All

"In order to successfully market to women, you need to make it seem like it's part of the well-balanced life ... the good, happy life that includes yoga and running."
"I think lots of these activities are going to be tied to marijuana as a way to get women as customers."
"Maybe we want to be a bit more reflective about what we want our lives to look like."
"If you think, 'Naturally, I'm stressed out, and grouchy and angry and this is going to put me in a better mood', rather than thinking: 'Things here have to change for me to have a reasonable life', then I'm not so sure."
"I don't think the answer can be have another glass of wine, or a joint, and everything will be OK."

Samantha Brennan, feminist theorist, bioethicist, dean of arts, University of Guelph

"Is there a cohort effect happening there [in the 20-to-24-age group]. Or is it simply that women are starting to use at a frequency that's more parallel to men [similar to the way more women are tippling more like men]."
"[We didn't see that same level of increase [in pot use] in the 15-to-19-age group."
"[The federal Cannabis Act prohibits advertisement aiming for kids and youth, or the type associated with] glamour, recreation, excitement, vitality, risk or daring".
Rebecca Jesseman, director of policy, Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction 

"If women truly are more likely to have a more rewarding experience with the drug perhaps we will see greater rates of addiction."
"You look at how quickly the rats learn: 'Hey, if I hit the lever on the left I'm going to keep getting the drug'."
Mohini Ranganathan, psychiatrist, associate professor, Yale School of Medicine

"In a society where prohibition has been the overlay that we've all experienced for so long, it feels illicit even when it's legal."
"Once you've titrated and figured out your ideal dose, you're just not intoxicated the way you would be with alcohol."
"Even if after the kids are in bed and you're enjoying a little bit of cannabis and one of the kids wakes up with a nightmare, you're still going to be equipped to take care of your child. If you'd had those three or four glasses of wine maybe you wouldn't be."
"It's smelly [smoking], it's inconvenient, you're going to draw attention to yourself and your kid is going to notice it [so the choice would be micro-dosed edibles, teas, tinctures]."
Jenn Lauder, co-founder Splimm, online pot and parenting newsletter

How we've matured as a society! How complicated the ordinary things of life have become...on our way to the future. At one time, not all that long ago, say the last fifty years, when women decided they'd have children they resigned themselves -- or looked forward -- to raising those children. In their own personal presence. From infancy to their teen years, women were there, emotional support built into their roles as mothers, along with the cleaning, cooking, baking and social steering that mothers have always relied upon to give their children a sound foundation into society.

All that was compromised when women were persuaded by the women's liberating feminist movement that raising children and providing comfort for a family was a waste of their ample, creative resources which could better be put to use in the world of business and commerce. Have children if you like, but plan for a career. Learn to juggle children's needs with your own. No problem, women are capable of multi-tasking and more than able to fulfill themselves and their offspring emotionally in the process.

Except it is complicated, and stress-inducing, and tiring, and quite, quite impossible. Of course, meal preparation was given a boost with the use of processed, pre-prepared and eating-out options. Maybe not quite as healthy as home-cooked meals, but no one can possibly do everything. And in that same spirit children were farmed out to day-care providers who would do for children what their parents hadn't the time for. "Quality time" was set aside in the evenings, when work-exhausted parents might read to their children, help with homework, bathe them, tuck them into bed.

Wearying, albeit rewarding, but stressful and irritating. No.time.for.yourself. Well, always time for a relaxant, and wine might do that, come the evening hours. Have another. And another. And suddenly but stealthily another problem erupts when the wine becomes a necessary part of the relaxing ritual and eventually a vital part. And now, with the recognition of cannabis as a soft alternative, there's the new relaxant, pot.

"A lot of moms, a lot of women, are starting to see that it's not this dangerous, scary thing. The moms who are using cannabis recreationally tend to be self-medicating for stress -- 'I have so much anxiety at the end of the day, I can't take it'. It's an alternative to wine", points out New Jersey-based registered nurse, Jessie Gill, cannabis advocate and MarijuanaMommy blogger.

The "pinking" of booze, which brought "Skinny girl" and "Girls' Night Out", and other low-calorie, ready-to-serve cocktails and wines to the rescue of maxed-out moms, is now passe. Enter cannabis. Doctors alarmed at the rise of female binge drinking where in 2013 over a million American women landed in an emergency room resulting from heavy drinking, now have an alternative to recommend to exhausted, played-out women. Can't tell a woman to stay at home, ditch the job, look after the children, and yourself. But can prescribe pot to keep the kettle boiling.

Pamele Wible, M.D.

Women dosing themselves with marijuana isn't new, according to sociologist Wendy Chapkis, co-author of Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine. While it remains more a male than female issue, the gap appears to be narrowing. The 2015 Canadian Alcohol, Tobacco and Drugs Survey reveals that the percentage of women aged 20 to 24 reporting pot use in the previous year saw an increase of six percent between 2013 and 2015, with an increase of five percent among 25-to-44s.

The situation of legalization, yet new on the horizon: how industrious in promoting cannabis the industry will be permitted to be is unknown. The Coalition for Responsible Cannabis Branding, an independent group proposes to absent sexual language or imagery in naming pot strains, and to focus on flavour and taste advertising: "Factually based claims" on brand attributes. For her part, Dr. Brennan is uneasy about health claims linked to pot, from menstrual cramps and insomnia to weight loss and improved sex drive.

Dr. Ranganathan of Yale, is troubled by the acute effects of THC in human females, looking to understand the mechanisms underlying gender differences. Women appear on the basis of initial research, to be more receptive to the 'high' effect of cannabis. On the other hand, committed pot enthusiasts claim cannabis leads to greater introspection, euphoria, creativity and relaxation along with relief from physical aches and pains.

Using sophisticated PET brain imaging, Yale scientists have concluded that women experience greater cannabinoid receptor (CBI) responses, widely distributed in the brain, in comparison to men. In experiments with female rats trained to hit a level to self-administer cannabis, when the tap is turned off the rats keep hitting the lever, receiving no reward. Male rats tend to discontinue hitting the lever; female rats take longer before they stop whacking that lever.

Pot for what ails you, when what ails you is being driven to commit to greater production and less satisfaction in life? Where women respond to the demands of motherhood, often complicated by the stress of looking after the needs of aging parents, while holding down a job and struggling to do it all, managing somehow to hold it together by contracting out child care, house cleaning, cooking, and selling everyone short. Enter pot? That's the solution?

Does that help your depression, my dear?

Canadian Press