My Agency Has a Monthly Cannabis Stipend. Yours Should, Too

Like everyone else on Earth, during the first few weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was in a very bad way. Just like so many of us, aside from first responders and healthcare and essential workers, I was shut away at home, wiping down grocery deliveries and breathing through an improvised cloth mask. But I couldn’t binge-watch Tiger King, hate-watch presidential news conferences, learn to bake sourdough bread or even doomscroll. I had no time, not when I was preoccupied with saving my small business. When the world shut down, in a matter of days, we lost 60% of our clients at the agency I’d founded barely three years prior. I had to lay off respected colleagues I cared about during their worst times and even that wasn’t enough, as we had to pivot our operations and business model pretty much overnight. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat and I was a mess. But with assistance from some novel therapies, I dug my way out of it. I recovered, and so did my business, thankfully. This story illustrates one reason why I now give each and every one of my full-time employees a monthly cannabis wellness stipend. An amount of $25 to spend on cannabis, or wellness in general however they please, and I hope it inspires a closer look at what agencies can do to support their employees’ well-being beyond stocking healthy snacks and herbal teas in the break room. Every Brand Should Be Thinking Like a Wellness Brand I admit, like most good ideas, this one is borrowed. I saw what David Bronner was doing over at Dr. Bronner’s, the natural products giant. In addition to writing checks to fund legalization campaigns for psychedelic-assisted therapies, the company also provides employees a “psychedelic health benefit.” This means, along with covering healthcare and dental visits, Dr. Bronner’s also covers employees’ use of ketamine-assisted therapies, an increasingly accepted modality of mental health care for people living with anxiety, depression and other debilitating conditions that pharmaceutical-first medicine doesn’t always solve. It just so happens it was psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, using cannabis and ketamine along with talk therapy, that helped me out when I was stuck in the morass of the many unknowns during the first few months of the pandemic. Those sessions helped me grapple with everything unknown: The next twist in the pandemic, the vulnerabilities of myself and my loved ones and what was going to happen to mar-com agencies, including my business in particular. When I heard the news in February about Dr. Bronner’s initiative, my own experience immediately came back, and I wanted to try something like Bronner did while also offering my employees some support for their individual wellness goals. So, now each member of my team gets $25 a month automatically added to their paycheck, no strings attached and no expense reports needed, to spend on the cannabis or wellness products of their choice; to support our clients’ products; to explore what our clients’ competitors are doing; to keep informed of market trends; to buy the same strain from the same dispensary they’ve patronized since 2014. Or all of the above. “But $25 isn’t that much.” It’s true. The dollar is stretched thin at dispensaries and elsewhere these days. But this money is theirs. And I hope it’s just the start for agencies supporting progressive healthcare and, eventually, for insurers covering what are currently considered alternative therapies. In this new era of holistic wellness, it’s important to recognize how healthcare policy has fallen far behind the science, and there are ways to offer support for an alternative wellness regimen that most healthcare plans simply don’t yet cover. As the medicinal qualities of cannabis, psilocybin and ketamine are further established through scientific research and clinical study, it’s only proper that these treatments be treated the same way as prescription pharmaceuticals or visits to the doctor: included as part of your general healthcare regimen. In the U.S., this means covered by your workplace-offered health insurance plan. This $25 monthly cannabis stipend is a way to demonstrate our agency’s core values and a way to lead by example for other business owners to follow suit. Surprising few of us, polls show public relations to be one of the most stressful jobs in the U.S. One needs to look no further than popular representations of the field (yes, like Mad Men) for a primer on all the toxic ways professionals deal with this stress. My colleagues and I have learned firsthand that cannabis is significantly safer and a healthier stress management tool than alcohol, no matter the setting or the goal. And we want to be part of the movement to normalize cannabis use in all its forms. Agency owners should assess their benefits packages and what they’re doing to support employee well-being holistically. What could be done to help ease worries about health insurance coverage for employees and their families? What about retirement plans? What about other perks offered to make an agency seem like a desirable workplace in a competitive environment? How to Build a Company That Values Wellness I make it a point to hire good people who could succeed anywhere but who also share my values and the values of the organization. We care about drug policy reform and about changing anachronistic laws to allow for new methods of wellness. We’ve found that when we hire professionals who are passionate about our mission and that of our clients, we’re able to forge more meaningful connections for a longer period of time between us and our clients as well as among colleagues. For all these reasons, for me, this is money well spent.