Year: 2002
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The policy of marijuana prohibition among the jurisdictions of the United States since Louisiana in 1911, and federally from 193 7-1969 and 1970-present, has produced unintended social and cultural consequences. This ethnographic study of marijuana policy reform groups (MPRG's) and marijuana culture is an investigation of what has happened on "the other side" of prohibition. A history of bourgeois pleasure buffered by professional and state control over the body in the case of cannabis drugs and the narcotics is offered to explain why marijuana use became of concern in the late 19th century. It is argued that marijuana prohibition created the social and cultural conditions that made possible the formation of the marijuana-user identity. During the 1960's, when marijuana-users rapidly grew in number and began to come from nearly all demographic groups, the old discourse of prohibition that had demonized marijuana-users in accordance with racial and social class stereotypes, was cast aside and replaced with the pseudo-medical criteria of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which prohibits marijuana due to its high "abuse" potential.
DOI: 10.17760/d20213415
Author: Keith C. Saunders
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W2622425231