Company news · December 2024

Detroit’s Office of Cannabis Affairs brings Clear30 to city residents

Detroit’s Office of Cannabis Affairs sits inside the Civil Rights, Inclusion and Opportunity Department. Its usual work is licensing, equity in the legal market, and making sure the industry benefits the residents it operates among. Cannabis reduction is not an obvious item on that list.

The Office of Cannabis Affairs took the view that it should be. In December 2024 the office opened free access to Clear30 Plus to everyone in the city and built a campaign around it, putting the offer in front of residents through its listserv and its own channels, framed around harm reduction and around people who might be struggling with cannabis and want to take a break. Clear30 worked with Dr. Kimberly James, who directs the office, on getting it in front of residents, and built video creative targeted across Detroit that walked people through signing up and starting a break from weed.

The city that licenses cannabis sales also told residents where to find help cutting back. That is what a functioning legal market looks like.

Detroit wanted it live through the holidays and into exam season, the stretch when the office expected the need to be highest.

Julian Singleton leads partnerships at Clear30 and grew up in the city. For him it was not an abstract market.

“I know this community. I know a lot of people back home who smoke and quietly want to stop, and never had anything to point them toward. Getting to help people in my own city was a really cool experience.”

Julian Singleton, Clear30 Head of Partnerships and Detroit native

The work matters because the ground has shifted. THC in cannabis flower has climbed from roughly 4 percent in the early 1990s to about 20 percent today, and concentrates run far higher than that.¹ Daily cannabis use now surpasses daily alcohol use in the United States.²

The research has moved with it. Heavy use is increasingly linked to higher rates of anxiety, depression, psychosis and suicidality, and the association is strongest among people under 25, whose brains are still developing.^3,4 High-potency products keep arriving on shelves faster than anyone has built support around them.

Clear30 exists to help people navigate that. The app gives users a way to get back in control of their relationship with weed, starting with a 30-day break.

“The best part was watching new people come into the app and immediately open up. What they had been dealing with, why they were starting a break, what they wanted their year to look like. That is a very different thing from a download count.”

Asher Herbstman, Co-Founder

The office has since offered to run the free access again, with the aim of reaching more residents at no cost to them.