Two free courses / Two directions
Recognize cannabis stigma around you, or examine the messages that may shape how you understand yourself.
For workplaces, organizations and communities
Identify cannabis stigma, distinguish it from legitimate concern, and respond with greater precision.
For people reflecting on their own cannabis experience
Examine inherited cannabis stories and build a more factual, intentional relationship with cannabis and yourself.
Free · Evidence-informed · Practical
Learn to spot old assumptions, check the evidence of harm, and respond without reducing people to labels.
The gap after legalization
Rules may change while older beliefs, labels, and habits still shape how people understand a situation.
Old stigma is not always obvious or openly hostile. It can appear in a medical note, a workplace assumption, a housing rule, a joke, a family expectation, or a person’s fear that sharing information will change how they are treated.
This resource does not ask you to approve of cannabis. It asks you to be specific, use evidence, choose a response that fits, and be fair.
Choose your starting point
Every part of the resource is free, self-directed, and designed to work in print as well as online.
Learn what stigma is, what it is not, and how a real concern can still be handled in a stigmatizing way.
Read the guideUse five clear questions to separate facts, assumptions, evidence, decision-making power, and response.
Open the CLEAR toolExplore realistic cases from health care, workplaces, housing, family life, parenting, and cannabis business.
Browse scenariosA repeatable method
CLEAR slows the jump from “cannabis is present” to assumptions about risk, motive, ability, or character.
Start with the facts you can support. Separate what someone saw from what was written down, assumed, or left unknown.
Notice any label, motive, identity, or broad character claim that was added to the facts.
Look for a real risk, impairment, injury, work problem, broken boundary, or unfair result.
Hear the affected person. Then ask who has the power to decide and what information they truly need.
State the real concern clearly. Remove unsupported character judgments and choose a response that fits the situation.
A patient seeking care for recurring nausea reports using cannabis most evenings and says it helps with sleep. The clinician writes ‘admits marijuana abuse’ before asking about dose, timing, frequency, other symptoms, or the patient’s goals.
What do the facts show, and what assumption was added?
Built-in guardrails
These principles guide every case, suggested response, and system change in the resource.
A negative opinion, unpopular rule, awkward phrase, or hard conversation is not automatically stigma. Look for a label or stereotype, a power difference, and a harmful result.
Do not assume impairment, irresponsibility, dependence, poor ability, criminality, or medical benefit without useful evidence.
Forms, charts, reports, tests, and witness accounts can hold useful facts. They also reflect choices about what was noticed, asked, labelled, or left out.
We can directly address unsafe storage, impaired driving, unwanted smoke, misleading marketing, poor work, or harmful use.
Legal behaviour can still cause harm or cross a boundary. Illegal behaviour does not automatically make someone a bad or unworthy person.
People deserve a say in how they are described, and we should hear their account. Their account still does not settle every medical, legal, or historical question.
Before calling silence dishonest, ask whether the information was truly needed, required, safe to share, and protected.
A concern is stronger when it relates to the decision, has evidence behind it, uses the same rules for everyone, and gets a response that fits.
Start with one judgment