I priced out medical cannabis coaching across the US, Canada, Europe and Israel — dozens of providers, what they charge, what they take home, and what certification costs them first. One number stopped me cold.
The going rate for a cannabis coach works out at roughly $19.70 an hour — about $35,000 a year if you are lucky and fully booked. The physician who signs the prescription earns somewhere around $273,000. That gap is not a rounding error. It is a statement about what the market currently believes patient guidance is worth.
Before anyone reaches for a pitchfork: writing the prescription is real work. The diagnosis, the liability, the legal authority to say yes. That visit should be paid, and paid well.
But here is the thing nobody seems to want to say out loud. The prescription is permission. It is not care.
Think about what actually happens. The patient walks out of that appointment holding a legal right and almost no idea what to do with it. What do I buy? How much? What happens when the first thing I try does nothing, or knocks me flat? Will this clash with my other medications? Answering all of that — not in fifteen minutes, but over weeks — is the real job. And it is being done by the person earning nineteen dollars an hour.
Mostly clinics handing out “consults” so they can sell you product. It sounds generous and it is honestly the most damaging thing in the whole market, because nobody actually believes in free. Free reads as bait. And every time it happens it teaches one more patient that guidance is worth nothing.
One conversation, a product recommendation, a receipt, goodbye. No follow-up, no relationship, nobody on the hook for whether you ever get better.
The version that actually works, which almost nobody talks about because it is the hardest to pull off and the easiest to undercharge for. Programmes that run for months. A proper intake, ongoing one-to-ones, group sessions, someone checking in between calls. A person genuinely in it with you until the medicine starts doing its job.
That is where I have planted myself. WIZDOM runs six months per patient: a long intake, monthly one-to-ones, group sessions, check-ins a couple of times a week. By the end it is fifteen-plus hours of live time and dozens of smaller touchpoints spread across half a year.
The certificate — whether you paid $99 or $3,000 for it — gets you in the room. It is not the product. You are. Your hours, your judgement, your willingness to still be there in month five.
Price six months of that like a $49 call and you do not come across as affordable. You come across as not credible. Nobody trusts a $5 lawyer.
What gets me is that the hourly maths barely changes between the cheap end and the serious end. What changes is the framing. Sold as a relationship, the price makes complete sense. Sold as a single call, those same hours look insane.
I do not think there is a single number, and I am suspicious of anyone who quotes one without asking about the length of the engagement first. The question that actually matters is not “what does an hour cost” but “who is accountable for whether this works in month three”. Price follows from the answer.
The doctor opens the door. The coach walks the patient through it. Both should be paid like the work matters. Right now only one of them is.
Method: figures compiled from public provider pages and published salary data across the US, Canada, Europe and Israel. This is a market observation, not a survey with a defined sampling frame — treat the $19.70 figure as an indicative midpoint rather than a precise average. Get in touch if you want the source table, or if your own numbers differ.
A version of this piece first appeared on LinkedIn. This version has been rewritten and expanded.
The free WIZDOM Self-Check is nine questions, takes about ninety seconds, and sends you a personalised four-document toolkit.
Take the free Self-Check