Respondents generally describe the feelings in favorable or pleasurable terms. Others, such as the National Institute on Drug Abuse suggest that marijuana effects are frightening and alarming, and in large enough doses can produce paranoia and anxiety, and can even trigger the onset or relapse of schizophrenia in people predisposed to the condition . These same opponents suggest that to a lesser extent marijuana is correlated with depression . These contradictory effects likely depend on the dosage, route of administration and subjective cultural context . Light use tends to produce a relatively relaxed mood, while heavier usage tends to bring on strong hallucinations that occasionally frighten the user, a phenomenon frequently termed “tripping.” Recent advances in the understanding of medical marijuana also points to how the strain used and Tetrahydrocannabinol to cannabidiol content heavily influences the type of mental reactions a user may experience, with the former bringing on a stimulating mental high, while the latter causes a sedative body high. Sativas are frequently used during the day while Sativas are used at night. Understanding the contradictory effects of the substance helps us to understand why so many people from such diverse backgrounds use the substance for so many different reasons. It helps to understand why teenagers may smoke a small amount after school and watch funny movies, or why some smoke large amounts to induce spiritual visions.
Far too often, indoor growing trays anthropologic and criminologic understandings of the use of hallucinogenic or consciousness-altering substances are biased as a result of the general negative view of these substances within the broader society. However, Dobkin De Rios and Winkelman argue that in order to understand the true nature of hallucinogens, “these substances must be viewed as ancient tools that have been employed for their psychedelic or visionary properties.” . In this project, I do not seek to understand the use of marijuana in simplistic or reductionist terms. That is, I do not seek to explain marijuana use simply within the context of altered subjective feelings, but to illustrate what the feelings and the substance means to the actual users. Thus I try to understand the multifaceted, nuanced and complex meanings users and sellers attach to their use. My dissertation research is unique because it addresses an under-researched area in the field of symbolic interactionism, the sociology of culture and criminology. The results of this study will provide much needed insights into why people use marijuana and why they situate themselves in marijuana culture. But more importantly, this study will give insight into the lives of marijuana users and sellers by seeking to understand the social world they live in, and marijuana use, marijuana culture and marijuana selling from their own perspective. This is one area the sociological and criminological literature has failed to adequately address. Criminological theories, as the literature review below will demonstrate, tends to view substance users and the practice of substance use in pejorative ways and conscribe overly moralistic judgments on the practice.
Marijuana is by far the most overly used illicit substance in America and the world ; thus, inquiries into why people use it and how those that use it view the practice is of utmost importance. Far too often the socio/criminological literature focuses on hard drug usage and the problematic use of drugs. However, a very small percentage of the drug using population are hard drug users , the majority of the drug using population use marijuana. And an even smaller percentage of those hard drug users develop serious problems . Most drug use is recreational and non-problematic. Although many social scientist view substance use and selling as resulting from a corrupt social structure, or as a symbolic learning process2 , they all nevertheless view the behavior as deviant and a practice that needs to be remedied. By allowing the individuals that participate in the actions to have a voice and explain their actions from their point of view, I hope this can bring a new understanding of the practice of marijuana smoking and a new understanding of the individuals who use it. Beyond the purely theoretical and academic significance of this dissertation, the topic is relevant when one considers the social and economic impact of our current perceptions and policy towards drugs and cannabis. Since the early 1980’s and 1990’s the U.S. has seen a marked increase in the number of people arrested and imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. In 1990 there were approximately 327,000 marijuana arrest in the U.S. By 2006, that number more than doubled to 829,625 . Moreover, since the mid-1990s the proportion of marijuana only arrest grew dramatically. Prior to the mid-90s, drug arrested predominantly focused on harder more drugs such cocaine and heroin. By 2006, approximately 44% of all U.S. drug arrest concerned only marijuana .
Moreover, marijuana arrest, reflecting the general war on drugs, has had a disproportionate impact on racial minorities. In 2002, 26% of all people arrested for marijuana possession were black. This, despite the fact that self-report measures indicate that blacks comprised only about 14% of the marijuana using population . Likewise, survey data indicates that blacks comprised only 17.6% of the marijuana selling population, yet comprised approximately 36.1% of those arrested for selling in 2002 . While there has not been a substantial increase in the prison population from marijuana only offenses , when marijuana only offenders are convicted, they are much more likely to spend time in jail than times past. On average, persons convicted of marijuana felonies in state courts are sentenced to 31 month in jail or prison . Moreover, of those serving time in prison for marijuana offenses, 40% were first-time offenders and 88% had no history of violence . What is even more shocking is that a small number of people are actually serving life sentences for the distribution of marijuana . Beyond the direct cost to the individual user, society suffers as a result of our punitive anti-drug crusade. For one, the enforcement of anti-marijuana laws devours significant fiscal resources. The law federal drug control budget alone over a 10 years period 1991-2002 rose from 4.6 billion to 9.5 billion dollars. Since the majority of the increase in drug arrest was targeted towards marijuana, the majority of the 4.9 billion dollar increase was spent to stop individuals from using a relatively harmless plant. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that increases in drug arrest leads to an increase in other more violent offenses . Possible explanations of this phenomenon are that an increase focus on drug offenses redirect resources from more serious crimes . Again, it must be reiterated that these consequences all stem from the illegalization of a substance that through its thousands of years of use, has produced no deaths, that is inversely correlated with crime, and that may have the ability to cure or at least treat many debilitating diseases. Again, sociologists have essentially been implicit in this racial and classist war by not challenging the commonly held, racist, classist and overly moralistic assumptions of drugs and drug users. My dissertation seeks to at least attempt to remedy these perceptions. The dominant theoretical paradigm to be applied in this study is the interactionist approach. The interactionist approach, mobile vertical grow racks which includes interpretive, symbolic interactionism and constructivism, believe that reality, and what people know and believe to be true about the world is created and reinforced as people interact with one another over time in specific social settings . Any focus on marijuana culture and any attempt to understand the lives and actions of marijuana sellers must acknowledge the fact that culture is an abstract construct put together as individuals interact with each other and develop shared meanings and understandings.
Although this dissertation will rely heaviest on the interactionist perspective, I do not intend to discount other paradigms or disregard how the macro-level structure of society weighs upon individuals understandings of their realities. In fact, the macro-level structure of society is an integral part of this study as I intend to synthesize the macro and micro levels in order to understand the use of marijuana. This, however, is not a radical departure from the symbolic interactionist perspective as a key component of the perspective is that it always defines cultures and cultural practices as situated, that is, located in and affected by the political, social, economic, age, race and gender of those that embrace them. Consider marijuana use and selling from the functionalist perspective. Marijuana may serve as a type of homosocial bonding amongst disaffected youth that may feel themselves rejected by society and cut out of the formal economy. Thus, in addition to a type of common bonding and tension relief, it also serves as a way to solidify a strong, yet largely symbolic, anti-systemic rebellious identity against society. Likewise, individuals cut out of the market place, or who may wish to not participate in the formal economy can find work as a pot seller, grower or transporter. Thus, marijuana use can serve various social functions in broader society. On the opposite side of the theoretical spectrum, I could intend to look at marijuana use from a conflict perspective. Resulting from the inequities of the capitalist economy, certain segments of society are officially cut out of the formal economy resulting from prejudice and discrimination. Thus, resulting from this anomie, marijuana selling may be the only route certain segments may be able to take to subsist . Rather than marijuana use filling an inherent rebellious spirit, marijuana use and selling may be a type of escape from the deprivation, poverty and hopelessness that characterizes the contradictions of capitalism. Many sociological theorists believe that critical theory, or conflict theory is the best paradigm to be used for ethnographic research because it helps to discover community problems and hopefully solve those problems and bring about positive change. This type of ethnography is frequently referred to as “applied ethnography.” I do not here take this stance as I do not considerthe practice of marijuana use or marijuana selling as a problem or in need of correcting. Nor do I believe marijuana users are necessarily degraded helpless individuals that seek escape from the drudgery and bleakness of life, as Kaplan’s self-derogation theory would suggest. While this dissertation can and will incorporate various sociological and criminological theories to aid in the understanding of marijuana use and selling, ultimately, the study will be descriptive and interpretive of the cultural practices of marijuana use and selling. But most importantly, this study seeks to create a paradigm shift in our common American cultural understanding of drug use. A paradigm shift is an intellectually violent revolution in which older worldviews no longer explain current realities . It is defined as a “dramatic change in which one scientific/conceptual worldview is replaced by another.” . This dissertation is a qualitative study employing a multi-method ethnography that utilizes direct-observation combined with in-depth interviewing with the community of participants that allowed me to participate in their culture. This dissertation seeks to examine the marijuana culture from an interpretive symbolic interactionist lens to understand how these participants understand their participation and roles within this subculture. The reason I chose to base my study off ethnographic methods is because, as LeCompte and Schensul point out, “[ethnography] builds or generates theories of culture-or explanations of how people think, believe, and behave that are situated in local time and space.” . As stated above, one of the biggest problems with criminological theories of substance use is its overemphasis on users as victims of abuse, socially marginalized and disaffected individuals, or people of a deviant subculture that is mired in pathology. Ethnography takes the position that human behavior and the ways in which people construct and make meaning of their worlds and their lives are highly variable and locally specific . Thus, ethnographic methods allow me to answer the questions of my study without consigning or categorizing the population I am studying as deviants before coming to understand the way they view, interpret or understand their actions. Furthermore, performing this ethnography will help in the construction of a new theory of substance abuse, as I claim throughout this prospectus that previous theories are outdated and in need of remedy. Consequently, this study will also employ a type of grounded theory approach to studying this marijuana counter-culture.