Stoner Culture, White Only?

Kymberly Smith
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read

Google the word ‘stoner girl’; now take in the photos that pop up. Google ‘black stoner girl’, notice any similarities? If you’re like me you noticed one big thing these Google searches have in common: you barely get any black girls pop up. So now my question is when did being a stoner girl become a white girl only thing? I, like a good number of other people around the world am a stoner girl. I have bipolar disorder and a severe anxiety disorder and partaking in cannabis helps balance me out and keeps me mellow. When I first started smoking weed, I was over 21 and looking for as many resources as I could find on the topic. I turned to YouTube and countless blogs to help me learn more before consuming any foreign substance. To my delight, I found plenty of blogs and videos for over 21 moms who also are into stoner culture and also lead normal everyday lives. However to my dismay, not many of the women in the cannabis community are black. Even on Instagram most of the online cannabis communities are ran by white women and features mostly white women as their brand ambassadors and models. Stoner culture has become one more thing in the U.S. that has become white centered.

Stoners are thought of as hippies who love everyone no matter race or religion; however when taking a closer look at the legalization of marijuana in numerous companies you’ll see that most of your local head shops are not ran by a person of color. Even in 2017 when 26 states have legalized marijuana, the news portrays a black or brown person as a “ghetto thug” for partaking in recreational cannabis usage, however if the assailant is white you rarely ever hear a peep of their stoner lifestyle. Now that being a stoner has become more main stream and acceptable, why is it still not acceptable for women of color to openly enjoy lighting up a spliff and kicking back?

One you tube series I found pretty fascinating was Cannabis Mom’s Club. In short they’re just quick funny videos of professional moms who get together and smoke weed and talk about the woes of balancing family, work, and weed. Basically it’s a short Sex and The City with more drug use. Disclaimer none of the moms are women of color; that was very surprising to me, these women can function and parent and lead everyday lives while enjoying weed recreationally what makes the makers of these videos feel like a black or latinx woman can’t do that as well. In my group of friends we are all moms and we are all working and functioning and parenting just like everybody else and guess what we’re doing a lot of it high on Keisha. Now not by any means am I calling the stoner community out right racist, I think like most white people they’re just unaware of the lack of representation of people of color (women especially). Representation matters and it always will for us; black people shouldn’t feel like they should have to hide the fact that they smoke marijuana just to be considered model citizens, Becky sure as hell doesn’t so why should I? The cannabis industry, just like countless other industries in America needs to make a better effort to be inclusive and recognize that not everything is blonde and blue eyed. Stoner girls come in all shapes, sizes and colors and we should be recognized just like everyone else.

So now I beg the question, if our feminism is intersectional should stoner culture be to?

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