“You probably don’t expect the nice mom next door to be getting high,” starts a report on ABC’s “Nightline” titled “Confessions of a Pot Mom.”
The 8-minute segment, which aired Sept. 23, looked at a group of Denver-rooted women who partake — including ganjapreneur Amy Dannemiller, who does her marijuana business under the name Jane West, and The Cannabist’s pot-and-parenting columnist Brittany Driver.
“Confessions of a Pot Mom” presents an interesting portrait of women and cannabis, but it’s also told with the winking sensationalism that has been par for the course for most national media revisiting Colorado marijuana.
The piece talks about the prevalence of women in the marijuana industry, and it also pays a visit to the Women Grow networking organization started by Dannemiller, who lost her dayjob in early-March after her employer saw her vaporizing on an NBC News report. Women’s ever-developing role in the weed industry was the subject of this May story in The Denver Post. The “Nightline” piece also revisited Driver’s January column on talking with Child Protective Services about the risks facing parents who use marijuana.
“Consumers of cannabis shouldn’t be criticized any more than consumers of alcohol,” Dannemiller told “Nightline’s” Juju Chang, one of multiple answers that compared pot to alcohol.
The piece might have benefited from a less heavy hand. Instead of saying, “Look at these moms who actually smoke pot,” they could have delved into what it means to be a woman in the cannabis industry, what it means to be a marijuana activist who can finally voice her beliefs to an audience the size of “Nightline’s,” what it means to live in a state where you are thoroughly unsurprised to learn that the nice mom next door gets high.
