How to Balance Your Professional Life and Smoking Cannabis

By Melissa Sherrard

As consuming cannabis becomes less taboo and as mainstream as a cocktail at happy hour, many wonder how to balance their professional life and smoking cannabis. These days, responsible and productive cannabis users have taken on nearly every profession, regardless of the laws surrounding the herb in each state, but all have had to figure out how best to incorporate both their marijuana use and their jobs into their lives.


Even though some people claim that smoking cannabis actually helps them in their line of work, we must remember that using marijuana while you're on the job is usually only a good idea if you're using it for medical purposes. Deciding whether it's right to be under the influence of marijuana at your place of employment is ultimately up to you, but it's generally a good rule of thumb not to show up to work stoned. Here we touch on a few ways of how to balance your professional life and smoking cannabis.

1. Educate yourself about the laws surrounding the use of cannabis in your state, and if you work for a company be sure to know what its policy is on marijuana use. This will help guide how open you can be about your cannabis use with your supervisors, co-workers, and clients, as marijuana is more accepted in some areas of North America than others at present.

2. Don't drive while you're under the influence of cannabis (especially if you're driving a company vehicle) as driving while you're impaired is illegal no matter what the marijuana laws are in your state.

3. Don't buy or sell cannabis at work. Even if you're down with your co-workers, keep the deals off-site, or all of your professional lives could go up in smoke.

4. Don't use the effects of cannabis as an excuse to not perform your usual work tasks. It's unprofessional to say “I'm too high” to do anything, and you won't say it too many times before being shown the door.

5. If you find that smoking cannabis is having a negative affect on your ability to focus or do your job, you should reconsider your consumption habits to achieve a better work-life balance.