Cannabis is the world's most cultivated, trafficked and used illicit drug, and the move towards its legalisation has given rise to a nascent industry that is attracting increasing attention from investors, manufacturers, and researchers. Due to the plant maintaining its illegal and stigmatised status in many countries, cannabis research is limited, which has resulted in a significant gap in imperative knowledge about this burgeoning industry. Although the cannabis industry is clearly making a move from stigmatised to mainstream, little research has been conducted to investigate this transition, more particularly in a South African context. This dissertation investigates destigmatisation processes and strategies employable by cannabis organisations by way of three individual but interconnected studies. They aimed, respectively, to conduct a systematic literature review of organisational destigmatisation and establish a practitioner-driven research agenda; to depict the destigmatisation landscape of South African recreational cannabis organisations through a mixed methods content analysis and finally, to explore the influence of these organisations' destigmatisation strategies on attitudes towards cannabis. Study 1 presents a destigmatisation model as its main contribution, finding that stigma management strategies are classified into six main categories: Conforming, Hiding and Structural Responses were identified as stigma avoidance or perpetuation strategies, and Affirming, Challenging, and Infusing as destigmatisation strategies. Affirming strategies were found to be at the heart of destigmatisation, and an industry-collective approach to destigmatisation was ranked as the most prioritised research need by South African cannabis industry professionals. Study 2 found that Infusing strategies were significantly the most popular of the destigmatisation methods used by South African recreational cannabis organisations, accounting for nearly 80% of the themes, with branding tactics predominant in this category. Key insights revealed that there is a mismatch between the strategies most employed by cannabis businesses and the strategies that exert the strongest influence on attitudes, which Study 3 found to be recontextualisation of the cannabis industry, evidenced by education using scientific facts and figures. These findings highlight that a lack of knowledge is the main barrier to cannabis industry destigmatisation and should be counteracted by the rhetoric activity of educating the public. In summary, this study served to inform destigmatisation processes for core stigmatised organisations - with a focus on the cannabis industry; to catalyse cannabis destigmatisation research in a manner relevant to the South African cannabis industry; to provide a detailed description of the destigmatisation landscape of the South African cannabis industry from an organisational perspective; and, lastly, to determine the most influential destigmatisation strategies from a consumer perspective.

This dissertation explores cannabis industry workers’ experiences of stigmatization. I conducted 23 interviews over a period of seven months with people who had been or were currently employed in the state-legal cannabis industry. I thematically analyzed and organized participant responses around significant moments of concept formation and understanding about cannabis. Participants shared first-time stories which served as initial encounters with either cannabis itself or the stigmatizing attitudes that sometimes surrounded it. There were discussions of how friends, family, and adults in general talked about cannabis and the impact that talk had on participants’ own attitudes toward cannabis. Perhaps most importantly, participants shared and described strategies for managing cannabis industry stigma. The interviews are presented within the context of an account of the contemporary social environment surrounding cannabis. The result of a long and political history rife with larger-than-life real world and fictional characters alike, much of our understanding of cannabis is influenced by the way it has been treated over the past century. As our collective discussion about the legitimacy of drug prohibition gains momentum, there is a growing need to consider the unintended social and material consequences that may beset those who would consider deriving their livelihood from these developing industries. Industry regulators, state representatives, company owners, and the industry as a whole must make efforts to support the needs of the growing workforce and reduce barriers to entry.

Background: Marketing communication is the process of communicating with the customer, this is all communicative materials that are produced by the firm in order to influence the consumer. Regulations are all the rules, instructions, memos issued by a market authority that dictate the ways a firm may present their brand. Important to gain the firm's understanding of regulations and the ways to work within them. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how external regulations impact marketing communications from the firm's perspective. Research Question: How do companies understand the impact of regulations on marketing communications and work within them? Theoretical framework: The theoretical framework was established using the marketing communications mix in combination with institutional theory, investigating the research question through the lens of institutional pressures. Methodology: This study used a qualitative and inductive approach, using a case study on the Canadian cannabis industry. Using purposive sampling and semi-structured interviews with three respondents to collect data. Analysing the collected data with a systematic coding process to objectively interpret meaning from the respondents perspectives. Conclusion: The conclusions of this paper were threefold. First, coercive pressure is the most observed form of isomorphic pressure as there has not been enough industry maturity to establish normative pressures which leads to a hesitancy of mimetic behaviour. Secondly, there are multiple layers of institutional pressures from various dominant actors within the shared organisational environment, which leaves firms feeling incapable of marketing. Lastly, personal selling is the most effective tool from the marketing communication mix due to the impacts of the regulations and the infancy of the market.  Contribution: Study confirms the findings of Asquith’s (2021) research. Multiple layers of institutional pressure in the industry. Infant markets are more susceptible to coercive pressure.