Briefly, issues in the moral domains are defined as obligatory, non-alterable, and generalizable. This stands in contrast to evaluations in the conventional domain; the criterion characteristic of acts in the conventional domain include judgments of wrongfulness that are 1) contingent on rules, authority, and existing social practice, and 2) tied to aspects of the social context . In contrast to moral and conventional domains, the personal domain encompasses non-moral issues that are “not part of the conventionally regulated system” , but are instead considered to primarily apply to the individual and therefore to be within the realm of an individual’s personal prerogative. Although some social issues clearly fall under one domain or another, other more intricate social issues are not always as clear-cut and therefore not consistently judged to be within one domain. In fact, there seem to be developmental trends in the ways in which children and adolescents reason about complex social issues. Nucci and Turiel explain the complexity of the reasoning process during moral development: Development moves from early childhood set of judgments about unprovoked harm to notions of fairness as regulated by just reciprocity. Along with this understanding of fairness, however, comes an expanded capacity for incorporating facets of moral situations that render the application of morality more ambiguous and divergent. Thus, rather than presenting a straightforward picture of moral development as linear moral ‘progress’ toward shared answers to moral situations, moral development includes periods of transition in which the expanded capacity to consider aspects of moral situations leads to variations in the application of moral criteria . Because adolescence is a time in which individuals are beginning to broaden their repertoire of social knowledge and gain exposure to the various elements involved in social issues,curing cannabis the ability to effectively reason about and understand social matters is still expanding and transforming.
With development, adolescents’ capacity for recognizing and incorporating multiple aspects of an issue increases the potential for complexity and variation in judgments . The capacity to incorporate the various features of a single issue is a part of reasoning about multi-faceted or more ambiguous social issues, or issues involving numerous components. Ambiguous issues can be differentiated from “prototypical” moral and personal issues through the application of the criteria commonly used to define and study social domain issues . A large body of research has provided ample evidence that certain criterion judgments are applied to issues that are unambiguously moral, conventional, or personal . With regard to marijuana use, specifically, each of the social domains can be seen to be pertinent to the issue. For example, issues within the moral domain are those that include evaluations that an act is wrong regardless of the convention/context and therefore not based on the existence of rules or command of an authority figure . Marijuana use may have facets related to the moral domain, as individuals may reason that using marijuana is physically harmful or harms others because it hurts society at large when people engage in illegal acts. On the other hand, other judgments about an individual’s personal rights and freedoms to do as he/she wishes with his/her own body may become salient but stand in contrast to the ‘other-focused’ moral considerations just described. In the sections that follow, I consider why marijuana use is an “ambiguous” social issue involving several, at times contradictory, considerations that make judgments less consistent among individuals. Several factors have contributed to the complexity of the marijuana use issue, and relatedly, the evolution and continued ambivalence of public thinking about marijuana. A brief overview of the trajectory of public information, opinions, and behaviors regarding marijuana over the past few decades may assist in further elucidating the basis for the increasingly controversial and ambiguous nature of marijuana use.
The public’s understanding, perspectives, and attitudes toward marijuana use have undergone substantial changes in the past few decades. These changes are in large part due to the advances in scientific research on marijuana, as well as shifts in the commonality and illegality of marijuana use. Earlier in the 20th century, the effects of marijuana use were in many ways unknown and merely speculated about. Public opinions and fears about marijuana are partly illustrated by the 1930’s movie, Reefer Madness, which through a dramatization of the devastating effects of marijuana use , fostered public fear and alarm about its use. However, by the 1960’s and 70’s, previous anxieties and frightful speculations about the detrimental consequences of marijuana use soon transformed into more lax attitudes about what had become a commonplace drug. Furthermore, as extensive research made marijuana and its effects far less elusive than it had been in previous generations, public opinion about the drug seemed to move in the direction of greater acceptance and less restrictiveness. Interestingly, however, as further research has provided clearer data on the positive and negative effects of marijuana use, and as use of the drug has become more unremarkable, the issue has become more contentious. This is partly due to mixed findings about the benefits and harm associated with marijuana use. For example, besides clarifying that the impact of the drug on the brain and body is less consequential than previously assumed, research has suggested that marijuana may be beneficial for use by patients with certain diagnoses, such as cancer, glaucoma, and various chronic pain conditions. Accordingly, debates about the true harmfulness of the drug have led to questions and concerns about the legitimacy of its illegality and the reaches of individuals’ personal freedom to choose to engage in use or not. On the other hand, because the use of marijuana remains illegal in most states, trafficking of marijuana continues to be a lucrative business, one related to gangs and cartel crime as well as many drug-dealing related deaths each year.
So, whereas much of the American public has come to understand the immediate harm of marijuana use to be more marginal, concerns over the indirect harm caused by the purchase and sales of illegal substances, in addition to considerations of the general harm caused by any form of drug use, are some of the factors making marijuana a moral issue for many individuals. Given that various considerations make marijuana use a complex issue even for many adults in American society, it is not surprising that research on adolescents’ evaluations of marijuana use have likewise suggested the ambiguity of the matter through inconsistent and/or multilayered findings . Besides the ambivalence over the morality of marijuana use, conventional considerations are also indeterminate. Marijuana has become so easily accessed and commonly used in the general populace, public perception and reaction to the use of marijuana has become more relaxed and tolerated in many cities across the United States. In fact, in the recent 2012 and 2016 elections, the states of Colorado, Washington, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, and Alaska voted to make the recreational use of marijuana legal. Moreover, a total of 26 states have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes since the 1970’s. Indeed, debates regarding the effectiveness and purpose of the illegality of marijuana use have been taking place for several years, making marijuana illegality a controversial issue. Practical considerations such as the benefits of legalizing, controlling, and taxing the sales of marijuana have also become compelling arguments for legalization. The politically-charged controversy,how to dry cannabis in conjunction with the dramatic legislative changes in the acceptability of marijuana use, elucidate some of the ambiguity around the legitimacy of the illegality of marijuana use. This in turn lends support to the proposition that marijuana use may be an ambiguous social issue for many individuals in society. This ambiguity is in turn reflected in research indicating that adolescents perceive each of the social domains to be relevant to the marijuana issue . Furthermore, with regard to adolescents specifically, risk-taking behaviors have come to be considered a quintessential part of the adolescent period and, arguably, an important part of the process of adolescent identity formation and social development . However, certain adolescent risk-taking behaviors, such as drug and alcohol use, have become particularly common and have generated a great deal of concern in the past few decades. In fact, adolescent engagement in marijuana use has gained greater public attention for the past several years. This is likely due to the fact that, with over 21% of youth reporting use, marijuana is the most highly used drug among adolescents, even surpassing the proportion of youth who use cigarettes . More specifically, findings from the 2016 Monitoring the Future Survey, suggest that 6% of high school seniors report daily marijuana use and about 35% report using marijuana in the past year .
Increases in the availability and commonality of marijuana, in conjunction with the controversy around the issue, have made marijuana a public ‘hot topic’ that continues to warrant debate and dubiousness among many individuals. In addition to the timeliness and relevance of this issues, the commonality of marijuana use among adolescents and the negative potential consequences early engagement in use can have on adolescents’ life trajectory make research about decisions to engage in marijuana use a valuable and relevant area of study. Moreover, common public belief and anecdotal cases have come to suggest that marijuana may be ‘gateway drug’ leading to experimentation with and use of even more dangerous and addictive drugs and lifestyle choices . Such concerns not only highlight the pragmatic relevance of the issue, but also further suggest the value of studying the cognitive processes that precede and predict adolescents’ decisions to engage in use. Ongoing research indicating both positive and negative consequences of marijuana use has contributed to the continuous confusion and controversy about it. For example, research has suggested that not only does marijuana use have temporary negative impact on cognitive functions such as memory, attention, learning, and decision-making, but it has also been linked to negative long-term consequences such as decreased academic performance and increased risk of poverty, unemployment, and anxious mood . On the other hand, research has also demonstrated several uniquely effective benefits of marijuana use, including relief from pain, nausea, insomnia, anxiety, or addiction to other substances . Advancing research and the resultant shifts in the public’s understandings and perceptions of risks involved in marijuana use have led to changes in behaviors. According to research by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the percentage of adolescents who report perceiving ‘great risk’ in smoking marijuana once a month decreased from 34.4% to 24.2% from 2007 to 2013. Likewise, the rate of adolescents who perceived ‘great risk’ in smoking marijuana once or twice a week decreased from 54.6% to 39.5% within this same time frame. Along with this decrease in adolescents’ perceived risk of marijuana use came a respective increase in the prevalence of adolescents reporting engagement of marijuana use during this 2007 to 2013 time frame. Shifts in teens’ perceptions of the safety of marijuana use, and the associated behavioral changes that seem to have accompanied these shifts, further highlight the evolving nature of public understanding of this issue. These changes coupled with the dearth of conclusive scientific information about the short- and long- term consequences of engaging in use make research on reasoning about marijuana use particularly worthwhile. The examples discussed above regarding the ambiguity of marijuana use indicate that many factors and considerations could become salient and hold more or less weight when an individual is reasoning about the legitimacy of marijuana use. It is the multiplicity of facets involved in an issue that in fact make it ‘ambiguous,’ or otherwise known as ‘non-prototypical.’ Non-prototypical issues differ from those that are clearly within a single social domain because they involve considerations that cross different domains of reasoning, and thereby, require one to coordinate these the various consideration during the reasoning process. In contrast, prototypical issues do not typically summon multiple domain considerations. For example, judging the morality of murder does not conjure concerns about personal freedom or the right of the murder to kill his victim. Instead, issues of welfare, justice, and rights become salient, making the issue of murder clearly understood to be within the moral realm. Non-prototypical issues are thus by definition ‘not prototypes,’ or not typical of domain because they involve variable considerations that may fall within more than one domain .