As more states move to legalize marijuana, a widening array of products—many with higher concentrations of THC and backed by aggressive marketing—have rapidly changed the nation’s cannabis culture.
At the recent Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders, LaTisha Bader, PhD, chief clinical officer at Women’s Recovery in Denver, Colorado, delved into emerging trends regarding cannabis use, potency, and marketing practices, as well as the impacts of today’s cannabis products on users’ mental and physical health.
Ahead of her session at the Symposium, Dr Bader spoke with Addiction Professional about cannabis-related developments within the past 5 years, how currently available products have a more impact on users’ health than cannabis products of the past, and how public health policies, public perception, and consumption trends are being reshaped.
Addiction Professional: What new trends are we seeing regarding cannabis products and the marketing practices that are being used to promote them?
LaTisha Bader: The product has made a pretty good boom within the last 3 to 5 years. Anything that we could have created with cannabis, we have. … What we’re seeing is that we have figured out how to put cannabis in everything from morning to night, [and] from toothpaste and face wash. We can put it on our bodies, we can put it in our bodies, we can literally insert it into ourselves now. You name it, we have figured out a product to make from that.
That boom happened pretty quickly, from when we first industrialized cannabis and then started putting out products through dispensaries. As soon as we moved from that drug dealer dark market, where you were just mostly moving flower and concentrates, now there’s shelves to fill, and so, we fill them. We’ve turned it into candles, we’ve turned it into clothing. There’s CBD-infused socks.
What we’ve seen with products is that it’s moved into very intimate places within our home, within our purse, within our hygiene. [Another] trend that we’re seeing in the most recent years is taking a lot of those products and really continuing to up the potency.