They’re Thinking of the Children

What if mainstream, non-users think that all female cannabis users sit around in bikinis and long socks, smoking bongs? It’s far-fetched but at one time, mainstream non-users saw propaganda  like Reefer Madness and believed that.

You can pick up any number of cannabis magazines and see advertisements featuring scantily clothed, beautiful, young women and online it’s easy to find young women blowing dabs into video cameras with next to nothing on. We are so desensitized by sexualised mainstream media that a teen girl in a thong, smoking a bong, isn’t shocking.

I am far from a non sex-loving woman: whatever floats your adult boat. But I have two teenage daughters that I no more want to currently see up a pole than in a magazine with a bong between their legs. There are bong stores attached to sex stores or that started out as sex stores with glass products in the back room. These places are supposed to be ‘over 18 only’ but some, if not all, of these establishments don’t ask for ID. My 16 year old bought papers from the local bong store, as well as brass knuckles and other ‘novelties’.

So never mind trying to keep your child away from porn on the internet or trying to teach them about natural and healthy sexual behaviour; they’re exposed to sex toys, porn movies, and prohibited weapons when going for a bong.

There are books easily available about pussy tokes, sexy marijuana games, and experiences that some people might find appalling though others find them entertaining. Is this the message that the entire pot industry is now giving, that pot-consumers are heavily into porn? The stigma of being a pot head and dirty hippie still stick, how is the average person’s perception supposed to be changed about pot consumers when to these stigmas they can add ‘porn addict’?

We have a right to freedom with our bodies; that I am not disputing nor am I pointing fingers or criticizing what cannabis industry moguls have done. Capitalism is alive and well and sex sells. But while not every young woman strives to be a bud babe any more than to be a playboy centrefold,  in order for them to educate themselves about marijuana many will pick up magazines or search YouTube.

I wonder how non-consuming parents are going to accept our stance on legalization—even with education, regulation, and control/prevention keeping it away from children—when it is so strongly linked to sex.

Do we advocates want to be perceived the same way as advertisers?