Join us for a conversation with experts from across cannabis on how we can use the plant as an intersectional organizing and movement-building tool while framing a new economy around its impacts (with strong policies, of course). Cannabis has the potential to replace plastics, building materials, and addictive medications and address sustainability efforts meant to slow or reverse the damage of climate change. For that to happen, leaders, strategists, and organizers need to understand how to talk about cannabis in an intersectional framing that inspires stakeholders and decision-makers to take action.

RELATED: Hemp clothing for a fashionable, sustainable future

Using cannabis as an intersectional organizing and movement-building tool

Movement equals change. By definition, a movement is a group of people collaborating to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas. The organizing component adds strategy to the mix. It ensures that a plan has been created and the people involved in the movement are operating with it centrally in mind. 

The interesting thing about the cannabis plant is that historically, it has been noted as assisting with artistry, aiding in breaking social barriers through the promotion of homeostasis and wellness, and politically charged both in the fight for peace and the war waged against its consumption. It was the smoothness and awareness of jazz musicians—the spirit and protest of hippies that fueled the inception of cannabis prohibition. Cannabis is all about intersections! 

RELATED: Get high and give back with these weed brands

Most of us have heard of the term Social Determinants of Health. Even if you haven’t specifically, once a discussion ensues, you understand and know it to be true. It is the acknowledgment of how one’s economic stability, social and community context, living environment, healthcare, and education all play a role in overall health. When we look at statistics around asthma or diabetes, you can deduce how a highway or waste site plays a part in breathing issues or food desserts aid in poor eating habits. From there, you dig into demographics. Pictures start to be painted. 

It is said that the idea of this concept dates back to the Industrial Revolution. Rudolf Virchow, a German physician who specialized in pathology, social medicine, and forensics, wrote: “If medicine is to fulfill her great task, then she must enter the political and social life. Do we not always find the diseases of the populace traceable to defects in society?”

In this same vein, I often think about the impact of cannabis prohibition. Not only were lives lost and families destroyed, but so much more harm was felt in the aftermath. Because of harsh sentencing, most convictions result in felony charges, and once that label is placed, second-class citizenship begins. 

RELATED: Michigan study highlights racial disparities with newborn drug testing

Drug offenders are often banned from receiving public housing assistance or even residency, securing employment (especially positions offering decent wages) is extremely difficult, financial aid for educational advancement and the right to vote are all areas that are negatively affected. Again, speaking to intersections, all of these areas tie into the health of a community. They suffocate the development of a much-needed new economy because, let’s be real, the U.S. has a trade deficit; we import much more than we export. 

The cannabis plant has the potential to usher in a new economy and replace highly addictive and damaging medicine. We haven’t begun to scratch the surface of truly understanding its depth, but according to an NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) briefing in 2022, 47 states regulate the cultivation, processing, and sale of industrial hemp and or cannabis products. An estimated six million patients currently participate in these programs, as do some 30,000 healthcare practitioners. 

Based on a compilation of studies regarding the relationship between cannabis and opioids, NORML concluded that “Cannabis access is associated with reduced rates of opioid use and abuse, opioid-related hospitalizations, opioid-related traffic fatalities, opioid-related drug treatment admissions, and opioid-related overdose deaths.”

Returning to the idea and need for intersectional framing, I’d like to offer the idea of the:

Social Determinants of Cannabis:

• Economic stability: access to grants, loans, and non-predatory funding
• Education, Access & Quality: Wrap around services from inception to sell
• Healthcare Access & Quality: Addressing retail deserts, expanding conditions that are accepted under medical cannabis, approved product types, research…
• Neighborhood & Built Environment: Community reinvestment, business accountability to reinvestment
• Social & Community Context: Support systems, community engagement, stress, exposure to trauma, policing and repurposing harm

If we are dedicated to building a successful and sustainable cannabis community, if we are ready to acknowledge the potential of cannabis to usher us into a new economy, then we must do as Rudolf Virchow suggested and look at its full impact on life. 

*This article was submitted by a guest contributor. The author is solely responsible for its contents.