Hippy girl smoking weed and wearing sunglasses
According to a recent study, marijuana legalization has drastically changed cannabis marketing on Instagram.
In the study entitled "From dealing to influencing: Online marketing of cannabis on Instagram" and published in the international journal Crime, Media, Culture last month, researchers Silje Anderdal Bakken and Sidsel Kirstine Harder from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, compared 60 Instagram profiles belonging to illegal Swedish drug dealers to 70 cannabis influencers' profiles based in the United States or Canada, most of them belong to women.
They found out that cannabis influencers on Instagram are changing the stereotyped characteristics of illegal cannabis culture, almost entirely dominated by men, to a new one where cannabis is represented as a desirable accessory in certain feminine lifestyles.
"Influencers' role in transforming cannabis culture to become more mainstream and acceptable for women could potentially affect cannabis cultures globally, as well as the ongoing legalization debates," the study reads.
Social media platforms, including Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, restrict cannabis-related businesses from allowing paid advertisements for their products and services. Therefore, cannabis influencers operate in a legal gray zone, where they are allowed to promote their personal use and recommendations of cannabis without offering direct sales.
The study noted that while illegal dealers focus on selling cannabis anonymously, influencers are marketing cannabis as an integrated part of their everyday lives.
The differences between legal and illegal cannabis marketing on Instagram show how social media marketing might impact a cultural shift toward cannabis becoming a normalized practice and can trigger a cultural change.
By analyzing the Instagram profile of the 70 Swedish illegal sellers, researchers noted that the most common features they shared were anonymity, risk calculation, and amateurism. Most profiles rarely included human features, and the images of their products were captioned with short texts.
"The Swedish drug dealers on Instagram are leaving themselves out of their profiles entirely and appear to focus only on their illegal business, as their professionalism seems tied to their subculture and presenting as trustworthy sellers of an illegal substance," the study reads.
Cannabis in Sweden is illegal for both medical and recreational purposes, and its possession represents a criminal offense. However, the medical use of cannabis-based drugs is only allowed for specific conditions. Therefore, this is likely to be the main reason for drug dealers to minimize the risk of being detected or shut down by Instagram and local Swedish law enforcement to promote illegal activities.
Researchers also considered Instagram's public profiles of 70 cannabis influencers located in the United States or Canada, focusing their analysis on posted images and related textual data, including captions, comments, and short profile biographies.
While none of the 60 dealer profiles considered in the study specified their gender, almost all cannabis influencers presented themselves as women (less than 10% of the 70 collected influencer profiles did not show either women's names or women-identifying bodies).
Researchers noted that cannabis influencers post engaging content images, and some of them tied their profile and cannabis use to their gender by displaying feminine objects and subjects.
They showcase cannabis on Instagram in a stylish way, by posting photographic landscapes of cannabis fields or, more commonly, by designing flat lays (pictures taken from above) and presenting cannabis in colors such as pink and white, in opposition to the dusty green and brown colors of raw cannabis showed by the dealers considered in the study.
This difference in style may suggest that drug dealers use Instagram more as a tool to get in touch with potential customers than a showcase to display their products. In fact, their strategy is to inform followers on how to contact them on encrypted apps, such as Telegram or Wickr, to finalize the purchase of cannabis products.
In contrast, cannabis influencers relate cannabis to their own personal lives and show how they use it.
According to the study, while cannabis dealers on Instagram enforce the stereotypes about subculture, masculinity, and risky transactions, cannabis influencers present cannabis and related products as natural and safe for anyone attracted to the influencers' lifestyle.
In particular, researchers noted that female cannabis influencers represent themselves in a very traditionally feminine way, showing women's bodies as feminine, fashionable, and sexual. But at the same time, they actively enjoy "getting stoned" and recommend this to other women.
The cannabis influencers considered in the study connect their cannabis use or marketing to mainstream activities, including going to the beach or a park, hanging with friends, or walking the streets.
This approach may be interpreted as an effort to transform the illegal subculture of cannabis use into a mainstream activity.
In contrast, the illegal dealer profiles don't reveal any personal information about themselves.
According to the study, female cannabis influencers make cannabis mainstream by relating cannabis use and products to their everyday activities.
A similar approach described in the study could be found in the 1920s when the tobacco industry started to front new brands only for women. Similarly, researchers say that today's cannabis industry encourages women's cannabis smoking by promoting social acceptance.
"Social media like Instagram allows cannabis influencers to spread their messages about cannabis as an accepted consumption product to millions of people of diverse ages, genders, and nationalities. While all the illegal dealer profiles observed on Instagram maintain a focus on men or gender neutrality in their presentation of products, the cannabis influencers present themselves as women and their cannabis products as ordinary or ideal women's accessories," the study concludes.
