By tracing the evolution of prohibition through its U.S. history I seek to show the roots of our current drug laws and the role of scapegoating, dichotomization, and racism in their passage. I begin the chapter with a brief review of relevant sociological literature and a short sketch of the historical development of prohibition, as drugs became the target of state and federal laws one by one. Next, I analyze the discourse of prohibition using conceptual tools from the sociology of affect. My goal in this chapter is to show the entrenched rhetoric and emotion of drug prohibition to give the reader an idea of the task confronting the drug policy reform movement. In chapter two I use in depth interviews, archival materials, and Internet research to trace the development of the drug policy reform movement. I theorize the movement as made up of three branches; marijuana law reform, harm reduction, and anti-prohibitionism. My analysis of the movement is guided by concepts from the social movement literature including insights and categories from Resource Mobilization theory. After a discussion of the historical context of the 1960s, I give an in-depth analysis of the development and decline of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws in the 1970s. I use the categories of Resource Mobilization to emphasize the role of social movement organizations in the movement and to conceptualize the ways the various organizations in the movement relate to one another and funding sources as a social movement industry beginning in the 1980s. After a brief detour through the harm reduction movement in the late 1980s and 1990s, I trace the rise of the anti-prohibitionist branch and how it relates to the two earlier branches of drug policy reform.
I close the chapter with a brief description of the current state of the movement and the chief areas of concern for its participants. In chapter three I seek to highlight the sites of activity for the drug policy reform movement. My goal is to address a lack of focus on physical space and location in the social movement literature. This chapter sprang from my fieldwork and represents a foray into “grounded theory.” Using an ethnographic approach, I attended numerous conferences, hemp rallies, protests, how to cure cannabis and meetings to discover the importance of such sites to the movement. To theorize the role of such events I sought to build on the existing concept of repertoires of contention. I discuss some of he insights I gleaned from attending movement events, including points of contention, issue framing and the role of emotions. In chapter four, I use political process theory to analyze the birth of medical marijuana in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s. I theorize the unique political opportunity structures that gave rise to the early medical marijuana movement. Next, I highlight the role of resources, social movement organizations, and elite benefactors in the campaign to legalize medical marijuana at the state level through the Proposition 215 ballot initiative. Finally, I analyze the rise of dispensaries and trace their evolution from cannabis buyers’ clubs to medical cannabis dispensary collectives. I also examine the importance of dispensaries as sites of continued movement activity. Chapter five, “A Tale of Three Cities” looks at medical marijuana dispensaries and how the regulatory climate and political opportunity structures of three different metro areas in the state affect the number and type of dispensaries that take root. By looking at the varying experiences of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego with the regulation of medical marijuana, I analyze both the structure of political opportunities and the ways that activists alter those structures.
Using interview data, observations from attending City meetings, and official City documents, I focus on the ways that medical cannabis providers participate in the political process that affects them. Theoretically, this chapter builds a dynamic view of the concept of political opportunity structures. By looking at the variety of tools that activists use to change the opportunity structures they confront, this chapter also serves as a model for future drug policy reform activists. Chapter six looks at the transition of medical marijuana from a social movement to an industry and the way that the hybrid movement straddles the fields of activism and commerce. I argue that the hybrid status of medical marijuana is unique among social movements and an interesting site for empirical exploration and theory building. Hybrid status also brings significant tensions for participants, and these tensions have developed into pronounced fault lines and factions. As articulated by movement leaders in a series of panel discussions, the hybrid character of the medical marijuana movement and how it should relate to the wider movement for drug policy reform are hotly contested issues. Chapter six concludes by looking at how the state has recently responded to the drug policy reform and medical marijuana movements, and the prospects for drug policy reform in the future.To contextualize the goals of the drug policy reform movement, the opposition it faces, and the discourse that it is seeks to counter, I present a brief history of drug prohibition and an analysis of the “drug control industrial complex’” employs to generate support and insulate drug prohibition from change. After presenting relevant sociological literature and tracing the history of drug prohibition, I analyze the arguments, rhetoric, and imagery that proponents of prohibition have employed over its relatively brief history.
Central to my analysis is a discussion of the emotions that anchor prohibitionist discourse to its cherished subjects, and how Gordon’s concept of “haunting” can illuminate the workings of drug prohibition. The drug policy reform movement is essentially engaging in an argument with the proponents of prohibition about the merits of the approach. With the advent of the Internet, the proliferation of drug policy reform groups, and their increasing ability to represent reformist discourse in the mass media, participants in the movement are increasingly able to counter the powerful discourse of punitive prohibition. Additionally, as the number of medical marijuana dispensaries has grown, popular culture and news media have made their depiction a favorite subject. The drug policies pursued in the United States present a complex enigma. Penalties for use are among the most stringent in the world, yet Americans are more likely to use illicit drugs than people in comparable nations. The U.S. is also the most vocal and active exponent of global drug prohibition. The federal government remains adamantly opposed to drug policy liberalization, but states including California and Colorado allow and facilitate truly revolutionary approaches to the provision of medical cannabis. Why have policy makers and drug control agencies pursued an approach that favors supply reduction, over demand reduction or harm reduction? Supply reduction depends on police and prisons, whereas supply reduction rests on treatment and prevention. Why have drug policy actors used the criminal law and the punitive capacity of the state as the chief instruments of drug control? And why have drug policy actors depended on stigmatizing drug users to marshal support for the policies of punitive prohibition? Although these questions are addressed in this chapter, my overarching focus is how the sponsors of drug prohibition marshal support for its reproduction. Using theoretical insights from the sociology of affect, and my concept of “the means of representation” I analyze the longevity and seductiveness of prohibitionist ideology. The story of drug prohibition in the United States is complex and multifaceted. Several noted sociologists have analyzed aspects of this history. Gusfield examined the symbolic uses of alcohol prohibition, Becker looked at the role of “moral entrepreneurs” in garnering support for cannabis prohibition, while Duster looked at the shifting demography and consequent status of opiate addicts and the how morality becomes the province of legislation. In a 1978 article, Himmelstein dubbed these studies “drug politics theory.” Other historical analyses have emphasized these changes but focused on the role of individuals in the passage of prohibitionist legislation or argued for alternative historical processes than those posited by their predecessors . Although Spector and Kitsuse did not formally delineate the constructionist approach until the early 1970s, the work of Gusfield and Duster presaged the turn toward constructionism. Within sociology, constructionist approaches to drug prohibition are prominent among narratives about the origin and reproduction of drug prohibition. Reinarman and Levine explored the demonization of crack cocaine for political purposes, indoor grow methods while Beckett showed how politicians constructed drug problems to build consensus around the “hegemonic project” of curtailing the welfare state while increasing the carceral organs of the U.S. government. Reinarman argues that “drug scares” recur frequently in U.S. history and have several consistent components. Reinarman seeks to understand the “appeal” of anti-drug claims in a nation characterized by “recurring anti-drug crusades and a history of repressive anti-drug laws.” According to Reinarman, drug scares and repressive drug policies are distinct social phenomena that often share seven common components.
They are usually based on a “kernel of truth” subject to “media magnification [through] the routinization of caricature,” where worst-case scenario anecdotes are amplified and circulated. Drug scares are the work of mostly self-interested “politicomoral entrepreneurs,” expanding Becker’s concept to the peculiar political capital afforded to American politicians by appearing “tough on drugs,” with no risk of alienating donors or the electorate . By linking use of drugs such as peyote, opium, cocaine, and marijuana with widely unpopular and feared ethnic minority populations, drug control actors began the project of dichotomization and out-grouping that under-girds U.S. drug prohibition. With alcohol, opium and the local phase of cannabis prohibition, American drug control actors were essentially using the drug law to control ethnic minorities. Gusfield theorized that proponents of alcohol prohibition were engaging in “status politics” with wets. With opium and cannabis, others have argued that the regime of drug control was an alternative means of enforcing cultural discipline . According to Reinarman , during successive drug scares, professional groups played prominent roles by generating and controlling the “public definition of a problem.” Although “the media, moral entrepreneurs, and professional interests…[often inflate] extant kernels of truth about drug use” without a “historical context of conflict” the actions of such groups are not sufficient to generate drug scares replete with repressive legislation . The concept of “drug scares,” supports my analysis of drug prohibition and its discourse. I seek to deepen the analysis of these earlier theorists by using newer theoretical inroads provided by affect studies. Although historians trace the impulse to prohibit the ingestion of some psychoactive drugs to early European colonialism , policy makers did not install a formal system to eradicate the use of certain drugs until the dawn of the Twentieth century. The system of drug prohibition sprang from a confluence of interests between elements of the Progressive movement and the U.S. foreign policy elite . When combined with racism, xenophobia, and potent “drug scares” early prohibitionist ideology would be formalized to first prohibit the smoking of opium in Western states in the late 19th Century, alcohol in 1920, and cannabis in 1937 . Other drugs, including LSD and MDMA , would not be prohibited until the 1960s and 1980s. In the U.S. the strategy of drug prohibition has created a “regime of truth” that drug prohibition is necessary for the protection of the citizenry. As constructed through discourse, drug policy is an example of the nexus between knowledge and power par excellence. According to Foucault , “…it is in discourse that power and knowledge are joined together.” Discourses of drug use form the arguments upon which drug policies are built. Through policy, actors are able to naturalize and systemize “regimes of truth” that create subjects who are forbidden to use certain psychoactive drugs. Through the discourse of “punitive prohibition” and the representations it deploys, drug policies are legitimized and sustained. Proponents of drug prohibition, garner support for such policies by representing the discursive formation of punitive prohibition in popular media, professional literature and government reports. I term the various forms of mass media, professional literature and government reports the means of representation. The forms of media available to both proponents and opponents of prohibition have increased throughout the twentieth century. In addition to newspapers, pamphlets and books in the late 19th century, radio, television and the Internet have diversified the means of representation throughout the twentieth century.