From the Frontlines to the Bottom Line: Medical Marijuana, the War on Drugs, and the Drug Policy Reform Movement (original) (raw)
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A Tale of Three Cities: Medical Marijuana, Activism, and Local Regulation in California
Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 2022
This article examines important differences taken by California's three largest metropolitan areas to regulating medical cannabis dispensaries and the role activists and organizations play in shaping regulatory practices. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, and San Diego, medical marijuana activists and providers have faced vastly different "political opportunity structures." I operationalize political opportunity structures as composed of district attorney policies, police department policies, city initiatives and resolutions, the presence or absence of dispensary regulations, and the presence or absence of city level task forces or commissions. Activists use ballot initiatives, lobbying, civil disobedience, protests, and referenda to further open the political opportunities they faced. Cities in the San Francisco Bay Area are "proregulation," while Los Angeles has taken a "laissez faire" approach, and San Diego a "prohibitionist" approach. Successful local ballot initiatives, pro-medical marijuana city council resolutions, sympathetic local law enforcement personnel, and the presence of local regulatory bodies contribute to favorable political opportunities and viable local regulations. Local officials have responded differently to a federal campaign to eliminate dispensaries and dissuade local regulation that began in late 2011. This article seeks to answer a twofold research question: why did the medical marijuana movement succeed in changing marijuana policy in California in the 1990s, and why have different cities in California taken vastly different approaches to governing the radical new policy? To explore these questions, I use the concept of "political opportunity structures"
Medical Marijuana: Redefining the Social Politics of Reality
2008
Medical marijuana is a pertinent and controversial topic in contemporary American society. Those against medical marijuana cite the "dangers" the drug presents to society and claim that there is no, and has never been, any medical utility of marijuana. Advocates of medical marijuana refute preconceived ideas of marijuana being dangerous and cite thousands of years of historical evidence that lends credence to the proposed therapeutic effects. Since the prohibition of marijuana in 1937, the federal government has portrayed a negative image of marijuana that remained dominant in public opinion until it began to be challenged forty years ago. Contrary to the statements of the federal government that marijuana has no medical use, world history and modern science has indicated its therapeutic potential. As a result of several medical marijuana laws being enacted since 1996, Congress held a hearing in 2001 to discuss the issues of medical marijuana, federal law enforcement, and the supremacy clause. Many images of marijuana and the user were presented that represented old, traditional beliefs, as well as new images that represent the emerging medical marijuana culture. The disparate views of marijuana can be explained by each person's own special perception of the drug, which is shaped by one's own preconceived notions, environment, personal experiences, and special view of "reality.
2020
Chairperson: Jeff Wiltse This dissertation focuses on historic changes in public perception of narcotic use and abuse from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. From the 1840s to the outbreak of Civil War, politicians, physicians, the general public, and state and federal government remained largely ambivalent on the topic of drug use. Opium, morphine, and cannabis were legal, widely available in American pharmacies, and touted as essential medicines. Within the Bohemian community, artists and writers experimented with the recreational use of cannabis and their accounts of that style of consumption filled the pages of Harper's, The New Yorker, and a host of other literaryminded publications. By the 1880s, that seemingly permissive environment seemed to suddenly give way to a government increasingly focused on the regulation and prohibition of drugs. I would like to thank my wife, Sasha Lawson, who has offered patience, support, and a sympathetic ear through the entire process. My two daughters Adria and Mariella Lawson continually inspire me to do the best work I can. Finally, I would like to thank my grandfather, D. Richard Laws, who passed just three weeks before the defense of the pages that follow. He read chapters, offered feedback, and generally pushed me to "get that thing done."
No Rational Basis: The Pragmatic Case for Marijuana Law Reform
This article presents a critique of marijuana prohibition and suggests some alternative regulatory approaches that would be more productive and consonant with justice. Part I relies on a forty-year empirical record to demonstrate that (1) reliance on a law enforcement approach has aggravated rather than mitigated the risks involved with marijuana use, and (2) criminalization, which results in the arrest of more than 700,000 Americans annually for possession of any amount of marijuana, is an inhumane and destructive response to an act that almost 100 million Americans have committed. Part II assesses the relative merits of several alternative reform policies, including both decriminalization and legalization under a regulatory scheme.
Framing the User: Social Constructions of Marijuana Users and the Medical Marijuana Movement
Social movements are continuously engaged in the act of framing. Whether it is to present their message in a positive light or to cast their opponent's arguments in a negative light, SMs find it necessary to engage in a public contest over how they are perceived. Although the SM literature has been focusing on questions related to framing it has not given much attention to a particular class of framing "objects": that is, users. This is not surprising considering that the social constructions of users are only pertinent to a narrow range of movements having to deal with drug use. Only a few significant movements pertain among them the Prohibition, Tobacco Control, Marijuana Reform, and Medical Marijuana movements. This paper explores social constructions of marijuana users over the years and how the medical marijuana issue has altered these constructions as a means to understand the framing processes involved and the changing public conceptions of marijuana reform with an eye toward explaining movement outcomes.
I. InTRodUCTIon Over the past 40 years, the United States has fought a losing domestic drug war that has cost one trillion dollars, resulted in over 40 million arrests, consumed law enforcement resources, been a key contributor to jaw-dropping rates of incarceration, damaged countless lives, and had a disproportionately devastating impact on communities of color. The ferocity with which the United States has waged this war, which has included dramatic increases in the length of prison sentences, and has resulted in a 53% increase in drug arrests, a 188% increase in the number of people arrested for marijuana offenses, and a 52% increase in the number of people in state prisons for drug offenses, between 1990 and 2010. 1 Indeed, the United States now has an unprecedented and unparalleled incarceration rate: while it accounts for 5% of the world's population, it has 25% of the world's prison population. 2 Despite costing billions of dollars, 3 the War on Drugs has polluted the nation's social and public health while failing to have any marked effect on the use or availability of drugs. 4 Indeed, the United States is the 1