It’s time for us to get off our high horses about parents who like to unwind with a little cannabis.

It’s been more than a year since recreational cannabis use became legal in Canada, yet parents who like to smoke a little marijuana to unwind after a long day of wiping boogers and taming tantrums say others look down on them for doing so.

That’s unfair given that so many of us engage in a socially sanctioned form of drug use — drinking alcohol.

That stigma is what prompted two Ontario moms to start a Facebook group called Canadian 420 Moms in November 2018. It’s since grown to more than 2,300 members. They’ve also started a website.

“Alcohol is so socially intertwined with being out and being social that no one really bats an eye,” says co-founder Riley Parratt, of Kingston, who has a two-year-old daughter.

She and Brampton mom of two, Hollie Quinn, started the group to create a safe space for moms who want to connect with each other about both everyday life with kids, as well as their preference for weed over rosé.

“In other mom groups there’s a lot of cattiness” — including on the subject of cannabis, says Parratt. “As soon as anyone mentions that a mom indulges in cannabis there’s a huge stigma.”

That stigma suggests that if you’re under the slightest influence of cannabis, you’ll be unfit to parent. Yet our culture is perfectly comfortable with moms parenting their way through “wine o’clock” any day of the week.

Rebecca Brown is a mom of two from Toronto and the founder of Crowns Agency, a strategy, creative and media agency for the cannabis industry.

She says it may be a while yet before the cannabis stigma to shift.

“This was an illegal substance and all of the narrative surrounding it is ‘reefer madness’ and ‘stoner culture,’ and you can’t reverse that overnight,” says Brown.

That’s especially the case given the tight regulatory environment surrounding cannabis messaging.

“Health Canada, and the federal government, in all of their statements are very clear that it is not their intent to normalize the use of cannabis,” she says. Instead, the intent was to decriminalize.

“Meanwhile, the use of alcohol is absolutely normalized and there are no restrictions on depicting the use of alcohol as this benign, hilarious, ‘mom’s best friend,’ ‘it’s rosé o’clock’ way.”

Cannabis companies aren’t allowed to create advertising campaigns that promote equally benign use of marijuana. “You cannot say, ‘It’s weed o’clock,’” says Brown. “That’s not a thing.”

Hence, there’s little out there to normalize the idea of being a good and competent parent who happens to like cannabis.

“Where’s the image of the super high-performing mom who chooses to hit her vaporizer at the end of the day instead of drink a glass of wine?”

Even though she works in the industry, Brown says she still isn’t as comfortable talking about her own cannabis use as she would be with social drinking. “I’m pretty out. I run a business that is part of this industry.”

Yet, Brown says she feels compelled to hide her cannabis use from her kids. “And I don’t feel that way about wine.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

It’s still a culture where eyebrows are more likely to be raised if her kids are, say, visiting a friend’s house and happen to mention that mom was sharing a joint rather than a glass of wine when a few friends were over, she says.

That’s interesting given rising alcoholism among Canadian women.

In November 2018, Canada’s chief public health officer raised an alarm about a rise in heavy drinking among women. In fact, Dr. Theresa Tam’s report said that women are dying from alcohol abuse at a faster rate then men, increasing by 26 per cent between 2001 and 2017.

During that same time frame, alcoholism increased by about five per cent among men.

Tam said the cultural norm linking alcohol use to reducing stress is part of the reason why problem drinking among women has spiked.

Just wander the aisles of the LCBO and you’ll see a nearly endless array of attractive wine bottle labels that clearly link the beverage to a good time with the girls.

But oddly it’s cannabis that’s up against a reputation for being a “gateway drug” that leads to serious addiction problems to increasingly hard drugs. Yet the lifetime risk of development dependence on marijuana has been shown to be lower than it is for most other drugs, including booze.

Parratt said she is keenly aware of the damage alcohol can do.

“I have a family history of alcoholism, so I’ve seen first hand the negative effects that alcohol can have.”

What she and Quinn are advocating in their group — along with open dialogue about parenting trials and triumphs — is responsible consumption.

Without revealing names (the group is private and carefully moderated), Parratt shared some of the feedback she’s had from members.

“I like this group because I can connect with other moms without feeling judged for my recreational pot use,” wrote one member. “It seems a bottle of wine comes with motherhood but there’s still taboo with pot and that shouldn’t be the case.”