A growing number of mothers on social media are branding themselves "garden moms", coded language for smoking marijuana as a parenting coping tool, and a cardiovascular surgeon warns the trend carries serious, measurable health consequences.
Taylor Mitchem, a 36-year-old Colorado mother with a 6-year-old daughter, posts day-in-the-life content on TikTok and Instagram under the handle @thatgardenmomma. The "gardening" in her brand name has nothing to do with soil or seedlings. It is a workaround, a hashtag designed to slip past platform content algorithms so she can share videos of herself smoking marijuana as part of her daily routine as a mom.
Fox News Digital reported on the trend, interviewing both Mitchem and Dr. Jeremy London, a cardiovascular surgeon with a functional medicine background who has built a following of millions on social media sharing health guidance. The two offered sharply different pictures of what it means when a parent reaches for a joint instead of dealing with stress head-on.
Mitchem frames her marijuana use as a medical choice. She says she grew up feeling different, spent years on ADHD medication, and eventually decided the pills were not working.
"I feel like we were the test dummies of the ADHD meds, my generation. When I decided I didn't want to take them anymore, and kind of phased out of that. I grew into loving the natural ways of the plant and how it just rewired my brain in such a way that let me find peace and balance again without having to take a pill."
That is a sympathetic story on its surface. But it sidesteps a basic question: does swapping one substance for another actually solve the problem, or does it just change the packaging?
Dr. London, a father of three grown sons who has appeared on programs including "The Mel Robbins Podcast" and "The School of Greatness," did not hold back about what cannabis does to the body, particularly when smoked.
"Smoking cannabis in particular increases your risk of cardiovascular disease significantly. Really, in the short term, there was a recent study that came out that even if you don't have a history of cardiovascular diseases, particularly blockages in the heart, it still increases your risks significantly of having a heart attack. In the short term, even after smoking cannabis, I'm talking hours."
Hours. Not years of heavy use. Not a lifetime of chain-smoking. A single session can spike heart rate, constrict blood vessels, and flood the body with stress hormones, Dr. London explained. He cited a study published on PubMed Central linking cannabis use to elevated heart attack risk even in people with no prior cardiovascular disease.
And the danger is not limited to smoking. Dr. London warned that cannabis in any form, edibles, oils, whatever the delivery method, increases the risk of abnormal and potentially dangerous heart rhythms.
"Heart rate goes up, heart starts beating very fast, starts racing. You also have constriction of the blood vessels. And you get release of a lot of stress hormones as well. In addition to causing blockages in a heart attack, it can also increase the risk of abnormal heart rhythms."
Mitchem insists she is responsible about her use. She says she never drives after smoking. She says her daughter does not know she smokes and is told not to enter the room where it happens. And she says her husband, who does not use cannabis and does not particularly like the smell, is always available if something goes wrong.
"And I feel like it's so easy for people to see a one-minute clip of your day and puzzle it all together in their head, thinking that after I did this one thing, I'm immediately driving my kiddo and, you know, going somewhere, which is the absolute not truth. And should there be an emergency, my husband is here. He's coherent completely. He doesn't smoke marijuana. And we also have a hospital directly across the street, which makes it really nice for us as well."
Read that again. Her emergency plan for being an impaired parent is that her sober husband is nearby and a hospital is across the street. That is not a safety plan. That is a concession that she knows she cannot fully function as a caregiver while high.
Mitchem also acknowledged that her cannabis use has been "a battle" with her husband, though she says he has seen a positive transformation in her behavior. What the husband himself thinks, in his own words, is absent from the picture. Mitchem speaks for him. He does not speak for himself.
That is Mitchem's own question, posed during her interview. It is the kind of line that plays well in a sixty-second TikTok clip. It is also the kind of reasoning that collapses the moment you apply it to any other impairing substance. Swap "take a hit" for "pour a double vodka" and see how the audience reacts.
Dr. London, to his credit, addressed the alcohol comparison directly. He acknowledged that alcohol is, in a strict biological sense, more broadly toxic.
"If we look at alcohol and how it affects the body and compare it to THC, the short answer would be that alcohol is toxic to every cell in the body."
But he immediately followed with a critical qualifier: cannabis is not harmless just because it is less poisonous than liquor.
"Cannabis does not have that level of toxicity, but that being said, you are still altering your neurologic function."
That distinction matters. The "garden mom" pitch rests on a false binary, either marijuana is as dangerous as alcohol, or it is fine. Dr. London rejected both poles. Less toxic than alcohol is not the same as safe, and altering your brain function while responsible for a child is not a neutral act regardless of the substance.
Dr. London identified a broader pattern driving the trend. Social media platforms reward content that repackages indulgence as wellness. A mother smoking a joint becomes "self-care." A coping mechanism becomes a lifestyle brand. And the algorithm, which Mitchem openly games with coded hashtags, amplifies the message to other stressed parents looking for permission.
"I think that there's a lot of trendy self-care that's presented on social media these days as the new holy grail, the new shiny button, the way to deal with the stressors that all moms and all of us deal with in various forms in our lives. And it becomes very tempting to jump on that bandwagon."
He also made a point that should land hard with any parent who has ever told a child "do as I say, not as I do."
"Always remember that kids are watching what you're doing, and they learn your behavior, your coping skills as the best way to do things. And I think that if you feel like you have to hide something from your child that you feel is a positive in your life, you might, I want to think about that before you utilize that as your primary coping skill because you think that your kids don't know what's going on. They do, they really do."
Mitchem says her 6-year-old does not know she smokes. She tells the girl not to enter the room where it happens. Dr. London's response to that kind of arrangement is blunt: if you have to hide it from your child, that itself is a signal worth examining.
The federal regulatory picture offers no cover for the trend. The FDA does not evaluate or approve raw cannabis or recreational marijuana for safety and efficacy. Only a narrow set of prescription-derived cannabinoid drugs have received federal approval. State laws on cannabis vary widely, and while Colorado permits recreational use, that legal permission says nothing about whether the substance is medically advisable, especially for a parent using it as a daily coping tool.
Dr. London acknowledged that ADHD medication has been overprescribed over the past twenty years, a point that lends some sympathy to Mitchem's frustration with pharmaceutical treatment. But sympathy for her experience does not validate her solution. Trading a prescribed medication managed by a doctor for a self-dosed, unregulated substance promoted through TikTok hashtags is not an upgrade in medical rigor. It is a step backward.
The most revealing detail in the entire story may be the hashtag itself. Mitchem and other "garden moms" use #gardenmom and talk about "gardening" specifically because social media platforms flag cannabis content. The coded language is a deliberate end-run around content moderation.
If the behavior were as wholesome as Mitchem presents it, there would be no need for code words. The evasion is the tell. These women know the platforms consider the content problematic. They know enough parents would object that the algorithm would suppress it. So they disguise it, and then ask why anyone has a problem.
Dr. London put the core issue plainly:
"Life is really stressful, and it's hard. But like everything in life, particularly when we're looking at things that we're doing to our bodies, there's consequences."
And:
"You always have to be cognizant of what you're substituting."
When a parent's best argument for getting high is that her husband can handle the emergencies, the question answers itself. Parenthood is not a job you clock out of, and no hashtag can change that.
