Actor Joaquin Phoenix, singer Billie Eilish, pro-basketball player Jermaine Dupri, musician and producer Deandre Jordan, and WWE fighter Amy Dumas are among the vegans who support Veganuary.
Created and led by a British nonprofit organization of the same name, this annual initiative encourages non-vegans to go all January without consuming any animal-derived products. When you add vegan cannabis – not all cannabis is vegan, no – to the challenge, you up your game by going “veganic.”
How could any kind of cannabis not be vegan? And why would anyone want to adopt a veganic lifestyle? Read on to find out.
What does it mean to be a vegan?
Differing from sister lifestyle vegetarianism, veganism has a 100% animal-free diet and 100% animal-free policy for clothing (e.g., no leather or fur), cosmetics (e.g., no animal fats or testing on animals) and all other things in our everyday lives.
Whereas a vegetarian diet excludes meat (minus seafood, eggs and milk for some), a vegan diet excludes all foods containing anything that comes from an animal. This includes not only meat (all kinds, no exceptions) but also dairy products (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, whey, etc.), eggs, honey and gelatin, among other things.
So, what do vegans eat if they rule all of that out? Some of the staples are:
- Nuts
- Seeds
- Fruits
- Vegetables
- Rice
- Pasta
- Beans
- Oils
In addition, non-vegan foods can be prepared with alternative ingredients to render them animal-free. Bread, for example, can be made without eggs and milk. Also, plant-based protein shakes, nut-derived milks (almond, etc.) and faux meats (plant-based sausages, etc.) are options. Veganuary has a free, downloadable vegan cookbook that you can check out, along with Head Magazine’s list of vegan-friendly 4/20-themed recipes here.
You don’t have to wait until 4/20 to make a vegan pineapple upside-down cake or vegan Banshtai Tsai, but that date is special for those dishes for reasons you’ll discover here. Photo by Kimberly Vardeman from Lubbock, TX, USA, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
How could cannabis not be vegan?
Plants are central to most vegan meals, so you would think that cannabis, a plant, would be unquestionably vegan.
However, animal-derived products can work their way into this plant – or the plant itself can (avoidably) harm other animals – when cannabis is:
- Fertilized with bone meal, blood meal, manure or fish emulsion
- Grown with synthetic pesticides that harm insects and destroy microbiomes
- Planted with extensive digging that kills microorganisms and breaks up the natural drainage they created
One non-vegan cannabis fertilizer, bat guano, is so valuable that countries went to war over it in the 1800s.
As GreenState explains in its analysis of the vegan status of weed, many animal ingredients used in cultivation come from slaughterhouses and fish mills. Not surprisingly, those places don’t align with the cruelty-free ethics of veganism.
How can you tell if your cannabis is vegan?
There are two things you need to know to answer this question: how the cannabis was cultivated, and what the ingredients are in your cannabis-derived consumables.
Growing Your Own Cannabis
When growing cannabis, use plant-based inputs, employing something like the illustrated process provided by Humboldt Seed Company here. Rather than using chemical pesticides, rely on nature to take care of pests – cannabis itself is even a natural pesticide, keeping mosquitoes away. And if you need help deciding on indoor or outdoor growing, consult our article comparing the two options.
If you’re new to growing cannabis, Head Magazine can be of assistance to you! Read our feature “How to Grow Your First Marijuana Plant.” Photo Credit: fukume / 123rf.com
As Royal Queen Seeds explains, growing veganic cannabis not only meets the demands of a growing market but also yields cannabis that is safer and sustainable. Moreover, it does this more cheaply while not compromising the potency of the cannabis, according to Veriheal.
Shopping for Cannabis and Cannabis Products
When buying cannabis-derived products (edibles, tinctures, etc.), look on the packaging for a label indicating that the product is vegan. If packaging is unavailable, ask the grower about the cultivation methods, or ask the manufacturer about the processing methods. Certain cannabis companies even highlight their use of veganic practices, such as Pure Coast Veganics. And certain products, such as rosin, are naturally vegan.
Rosin is organic, gluten free, kosher and vegan, and many consider it to be one of the purest forms of concentrated marijuana, as we explain here.
Why would anyone want to adopt a veganic diet?
Health
Vegan diets have been proven to improve heart health, manage or prevent diabetes, reduce the risk of cancer and dementia, and more. Studies published in 2019 by the American Heart Association concluded that diets higher in plant foods and lower in animal foods were associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in a general population. Also, a vegan diet is a great partner with medical cannabis (so long as your physician approves).
For those making the switch from non-vegan to vegan, Harvard Medical School has a detailed six-week plan to ensure a sustainable nutritional adjustment. For ideas on how to incorporate raw, veganic cannabis into your nutrition plan, see our article on the benefits of doing this, along with recipes. And if this is part of a goal you’ve set for yourself, Head Magazine has a goal-tracking template that you can download here.
Veganic cannabis fits neatly into any health regimen owing to its versatility in boosting your wellness.
Ethics
Love and concern for animals as non-human sentient beings motivates many vegans to abstain from taking anything from animals. As The Vegan Society points out: “In every ‘livestock system,’ no matter how high the welfare standards are supposed to be, non-human animals will suffer. The Five Freedoms, frequently used to measure welfare, will never be met completely.” These are the freedom from hunger, thirst and malnutrition; pain, injury and disease; discomfort; and fear and distress, as well as the freedom to express natural behavior. Thus, someone who loves both animals and cannabis might be drawn to pursuing a veganic lifestyle.
Additionally, ethical concerns arise in terms of protecting the body, from a spiritual standpoint. Some belief systems hold that ingesting anything obtained through violence, such as slaughtering an animal, introduces the harm from that trauma into your body. Other belief systems focus on contents in animal-derived products that affect the body’s functions in a way unacceptable to the belief system’s ultra-high standards for health. Whatever the motivation, combined interests in cannabis and the body could lead to adopting a veganic lifestyle for spiritual fulfillment.
Rastafarians, whose philosophy we cover here, are among the cultures that focus on a plant-based diet and lifestyle for ethical and spiritual reasons. / Image Credit: Alexandr Aleabiev / 123RF.com
Environmentalism
As we explain in an article on how cannabis can help save the planet, adopting a vegan diet reduces your individual environmental impact in numerous ways, and quite substantially. For instance, it shrinks your carbon footprint by not contributing to the need for the machines and fertilizers used on farms, the trucks and ships that transport food, the forests and wetlands cleared for farming, and so on. Also, as food and land scarcity increase worldwide, adopting a vegan lifestyle intercedes by requiring fewer of those resources.
So, when your cannabis is vegan, it’s no longer part of the massive environmental problem resulting from animal-derived goods; instead, it’s part of the solution to that problem.
A veganic diet can help mitigate the world’s top 15 environmental issues, as we explain here.
Conclusion
For the above reasons, any time is a good time to give a veganic lifestyle a try, no matter the date on the calendar. If this article has made you vegani-curious, ask your physician how to switch to a plant-based diet (with or without cannabis). Also, be sure to check the labels for the vegan stamp of approval when buying cannabis-derived products if you don’t grow your own veganic cannabis. Sampling this lifestyle change before committing to it fully, which is what Veganuary is all about, could be the first step toward the next great thing in your life.
The information in this article and any included images are for educational purposes only. This information is neither a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional legal advice or medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about laws, regulations or your health, you should always consult an attorney, physician or other licensed professional.
Kathleen Hearons is a writer, editor, linguist and voice over actor from Los Angeles. She specializes in creative writing and research-intensive analysis and reporting.
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