While medical marijuana can help various people cure their ailments, advocates for its legalization generally focus on certain subgroups, like the elderly, young kids with mental disabilities, opioid addicts, and cancer patients. But maybe there’s a whole gender that should be added to that list.
As Whoopi Goldberg recently wrote in the Orange County Register, cannabis can help deal with “everyday women’s health issues.” The actress and The View co-host has made it her mission to promote the specific therapeutic benefits that women receive from using cannabis. Her medical marijuana company, Whoopi & Maya, creates cannabis products specifically designed to do so.
But still, Goldberg believes many women have been left in the dark about how the plant can affect their lives.
“Cannabis is effective at relieving menstrual pain because of the high concentration of endocannabinoid receptors found in and around the uterus,” she wrote in the op-ed. “Skin care is essential to women’s health and topical products are effective for treating skin conditions and protective against environmental stresses. It is only female cannabis plants that blossom into buds, and the botanical has been documented in treating women’s issues since ancient times.”
Even those women who know how cannabis could benefit them “have been persecuted and vilified for far too long for using cannabis products,” writes Goldberg.
“Now that the tide is turning, women are still often in the dark about the specific and tremendous benefits they can receive from this female plant and this budding business. I’ve spent my whole life delivering messages I believe in. I’m proud to be on the front lines of women’s health with a product I believe in. I want to get the word out to everyone with two X chromosomes that there are holistic and therapeutic ways to mitigate the pain of our natural cycles.”
Goldberg’s words remind us that medical cannabis has benefits far exceeding the typical rhetoric peddled in medical and political communities, and even, frankly, the cannabis community. Moving forward, it would be wise for these industries to serve a group that constitutes one half of the population.
“Many women still believe that legalized cannabis products are all about getting stoned or high,” Goldberg writes. “Nothing can be further from the truth. In this age of feminist awareness, it’s important for women to realize that our needs are as unique as a budding flower.”
