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Canada: Cannabis legalization a breath of fresh air for closeted users Hamdi Issawi Toronto Star Thursday 18 Oct 2018 Matzner, 20, is a casual cannabis user who pegs her consumption at once or twice a week. She said she’s experienced discrimination from acquaintances at school after they realize she smokes. “They just stuck up their noses and wouldn’t talk to me that day because they thought I was a different person,” she said. “I know a lot of people associate smoking weed with being stupid.” On Wednesday, the federal government’s Cannabis Act ended almost a century-long prohibition of the substance, finally allowing adults to legally buy, grow, and consume recreational marijuana. For many Canadians, the move opens the door on drug use that was once kept in the closet, or at least the shadows. Matzner, a University of Alberta student studying at the Augustana Campus in Camrose, travelled to Edmonton for legalization day to stand in line at Numo Cannabis, a shop in the city’s Alberta Avenue neighbourhood. She used to rely on her friends for a toke, but now she can finally buy her own. Now studying psychology in her third year, she said she first tried cannabis in her teens, and came back to it in her first year of university after experiencing anxiety and insomnia, finding it helped her relax and get some sleep. Complicating Matzner’s situation is that she’s more than an academic. As a vice-president with the Augustana Students’ Association, she’s an elected advocate for her colleagues on campus, and held to a higher standard than her peers. “I don’t want to be public about it,” Matzner said of her cannabis use. “I’m worried because I am in front of a large audience of students. They hold me accountable for a lot of my actions because … they’re looking to you to lead.” Geraint Osborne, a sociology professor at the University of Alberta who studies recreational cannabis use, said the federal government’s landmark bill is one of the final steps to normalizing the drug and removing the stigma around it. According to Statistics Canada’s latest national cannabis survey, 4.5 million Canadians aged 15 and older (or 15 per cent) said they had used cannabis in the last three months. In a 2017 study that asked recreational users, particularly white-collar workers and graduate students, for their perspectives on legalization, Osborne found that the vast majority of respondents were in favour of legalization, in part because of the stigma associated with cannabis use. But that doesn’t mean the old attitudes have gone up in smoke. “They’re quite secretive about their use because of the stigma that’s attached to it,” Osborne said. “A lot of people have the old stoner stereotypes in mind when they’re thinking of your average cannabis user.” Citing the portrayal of cannabis users popularized by comedy duo Cheech & Chong in the 1970s, he said that many people still view smokers as messy, lazy, unemployed, and unambitious. But the stigma could be traced even further back, Osborne said, to the 1930s and Reefer Madness, an anti-cannabis propaganda film that placed the plant at the edge of a slippery slope to addiction, criminal behaviour and life-shattering consequences. That perception of pot and its users, which persists today, has had a hand in causing some smokers to feel like they need to closet their consumption, and disclose it only to a select and trusted few. “They wait until people get to know them really well before they reveal it, so that people don’t just focus in on the cannabis use and recognize that these are people who hold down jobs, volunteer in their community, raise kids, and are law-abiding in all other ways,” Osborne said. But in the months leading up to legalization, Matzner has noticed a positive shift in attitudes toward the substance and the people who use it. And although she’s not sure if she will ever be completely comfortable smoking in public, she at least feels at ease talking to her family about it — something she has avoided in the past. “We’ve grown up our whole lives thinking that it’s this bad drug,” she said. “And (as) it’s become more accepted, I’ve been able to talk to my mom about it, and have comfortable conversations.” Legalization, Osborne said, is one of the keys to eliminating attitudes that cause users to withdraw, as well as the hazards that come with closeted use. If people are ashamed to be seen purchasing product in public, “they’re not going to rely on legal outlets,” he said. “That’s defeating one of the main aims of legalization, which is to get a regulated product out there that people can buy and consume safely.” Recreational cannabis has only been legal since Wednesday, and the stigma won’t disappear overnight. Rather, it will take a more concerted effort from all rungs of society, Osborne said. “Hopefully prominent Canadians, respected Canadians, who use will come forward and talk about their use, and how they’ve integrated it into their daily lives. That’s a move toward a full normalization of cannabis in society.” https://www.thestar.com/news/cannabis/2018/10/17/cannabis-legalization-a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-closeted-users.html
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