Cannabis for the Deaf – Marijuana Sign Language

Cannabis for the Deaf – Marijuana Sign Language

It’s already somewhat daunting for newcomer medical marijuana patients to decide on what to order for their conditions, however the problem becomes infinitely more difficult when you’re deaf. How do you sign Endocannabinoid?

With a very limited, to almost non-existing vocabulary a nonprofit in Boulder Colorado is attempting to bridge the gap for people with hearing disabilities. ESC Therapy Center is working in conjunction with deaf professionals and interpreters to create a video with new signs that will help deaf patients order cannabis at dispensaries.

Their hopes are to petition the Sign Language Academy to add it to the official lexicon, paving the way for the hearing disabled to be able to engage within the legal marijuana market. The problem is that cannabis in general have many “funky” words that need to be signed.

Currently, if a deaf person wants to ask for anything within the dispensary, they literally have to spell it out with their hands. As you can imagine, spelling a word like “Endocannabinoid” takes time and effort to pull off.

With this new initiative, ESC Therapy Center is attempting to create a more inclusive marketplace for people who are hearing disabled.

Some general terms to consider

I can only imagine how difficult this task must be for those trying to come up with new signs for cannabis lingo.

Currently, the only sign reference for marijuana is holding your hands together as if you’re taking a toke. Of course this isn’t helping you with the following terms;

Cannabis Oil
Cannabis Edible
Topicals
Tinctures
THC to CBD Ratios
Vaporizer Cartridges
Trichomes
Terpenes
Concentrates
Wax, budder and the likes
ALL STRAIN NAMES

The list can go on forever if I really try. The point I’m trying to make is that cannabis has its own language. Taking the effort to turn all of this into sign will be a monumental task however, absolutely necessary.

In fact, it’s very easy for us to forget about deaf people if we’re not engaging with a deaf person on a daily basis. Roughly 1 in 20 people in the US are deaf. That’s about 10,000,000 people who are ‘hard of hearing’ and close to 1,000,000 who are functionally deaf.

This is not a small margin of folks. Of course, compared to the general population it’s merely a drop in the ocean, however we’re talking about millions of people who could benefit from a cannabis sign language.

How does Marijuana help Deaf people?

There are a number of ways that cannabis can help the hearing impaired. One of the things that most people don’t understand about deaf people is that they have a lot of frustration that they have to deal with on a day to day basis. They are unable to communicate with 95% of the people.

A lot of deaf people can become stressed, angry, agitated. For this reason alone, cannabis can be a great help for them to deal with their anxieties and stresses they encounter on the daily.

Other people, get migraines from being deaf. This is because many people are deaf due to an incident [accident or disease]. Cannabis can help alleviate pain from migraines.

Additionally, depression is a common symptom of being hearing impaired. Imagine if you were able to hear perfectly fine for 20 years, and suddenly everything goes silent.

Now, you have to learn how to sign or how to read lips and this can all be very overwhelming and depressing. Once more, having cannabis on hand can help with these symptoms.

It’s hard for folks who can’t hear the world to go about their daily lives. Cannabis, can put a spring back in their step and that is why I decided to write about the ECL Therapy Center’s efforts to create Cannabis lingo for the deaf.

How Long before it’s official

While there isn’t an official timeline on when the nonprofit will petition the Sign Language Academy to add this to the lexicon, but they are currently working on all the kinks. Accompanied with their petition will be a video series that can be sent all over the world to help people who are hard of hearing or functionally deaf engage with dispensaries.

Additionally, I think that dispensaries all over the world should embrace this and train their staff to assist people who are hard of hearing. They already have enough to deal with on a daily basis and it would set an example for other service based industries to follow suit.

Let’s, at least in the world of cannabis, try to make an environment that welcomes everybody, regardless of their disabilities or afflictions.

I do hope that sometime next year we’ll have cannabis sign language available…if so, I’ll learn.