Marijuana and How it Invaded Our Public Consciousness
88000, 420000 and 0. These are the average number of yearly deaths that happen because of substance abuse. Three different substances, three wildly different policy approaches adopted in response to this problem. It is absolutely baffling that governments around the world choose to legalize alcohol and tobacco which have a combined average yearly death count of 5 million with minimal to no regulation , while cannabis has been criminalized to a point where 1 out of 6 incarcerations in the American prison system is because of minor Cannabis possession offences. Referred to as ‘ganja’ colloquially, Cannabis has faced an extremely contradictory relationship with law enforcement and popular culture, simultaneously glorified by its users who swear by its recreational and medical benefits , and vilified by everyone else. This contradictory relationship is particularly interesting because the drug was endorsed by many pioneers of the Rock and Folk musical movements, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Seeger to name a few, people who had enormous cultural capital and hold over how it was portrayed to the public.
Perversion of the Portrayal
The widespread fear and hysteria about Marijuana in America, was partly due to a disinformation campaign, pseudo- scientific ideologically motivated studies which led to a concoction of half truths and outright lies about the physical and psychological effects of the drug dominating public consciousness. This started with Harry Anslinger, the Head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (precursor to the DEA). Anslinger who was largely out of a job after the Prohibition, had to come up with something to justify his role in the American Government. Cannabis was the scapegoat. He came up with a new “threat to American life” and used his political power to conflate drug use, violence and race to achieve his racially motivated ends. His time in the Bureau has largely shaped America’s drug policy in the years to come and gave rise to the initial stages of the Drug War. The cinematic manifestation of this exaggerated, racially motivated authoritarian campaign was most popularly depicted in “Reefer Madness”, an alarmist and frankly laughable depiction of the effects of Marijuana use which shows a couple of high school kids who try Marijuana and go on to be involved in a hit and run accident, manslaughter, attempted rape and suicide finally descending into madness.
The ‘War on Drugs’ led by Richard Nixon firmly re-established societal perception of the drug as something extremely dangerous and capable of destroying lives and families, This was brought about at a time when there was a vilification campaign sponsored by the US government, and partly due to the cultural association that Cannabis had, primarily used by the Hippie and Black communities which were vocally anti-war and critiqued a lot of government’s policy measures. The ‘War on Drugs’ since then has been hugely decried as a failure by Drug policymakers, social and political activists and other public intellectuals for A) not solving the problem of widespread drug and B) disproportionately criminalizing the black, hippie and other minority communities. In fact, a former member domestic policy advisor of Nixon’s cabinet, John Ehrlichman made a shocking allegation against the former President himself back in 1994, which was recently revealed.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”
The Revised Effects
The more outlandish effects have been significantly disproved by medical research since then. However there have been two arguments which have enjoyed popular public and scientific support. The arguments about Cannabis being a ‘gateway’ to other harder and more harmful drugs like Cocaine and Heroin is premised on two things primarily : First, empirical evidence that suggests a majority of cocaine users have previously used Marijuana (O’Donnell and Clayton, 1982) and second, that marijuana intoxication may spawn curiosity or diminish apprehension about trying more dangerous drugs. (Stigler and Becker [1977]). Both premises have been sufficiently debunked. Firstly, because marijuana is one of the most widely used illegal drug, it is predictably the first illicit drug that most youths encounter. Which is why most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. There has been no causal link established between consumption of marijuana and consumption of harder drugs, (say cocaine) and it simply does not follow that the consumption of marijuana leads to a greater probability for consumption of other hard drugs, as a logical sequence. “The people who are predisposed to use drugs and have the opportunity to use drugs are more likely than others to use both marijuana and harder drugs. Marijuana typically comes first because it is more available.” (Andrew Morral, 2002).
But more importantly, while researching a drug and it’s usage and effects, one must take into account the psychological-political-socioeconomic context of the drug usage instead of focusing on the pharmacological effects of the drug in isolation, says Ansley Hamid, in his book “Ganja Complex”. In his own words,
“The study of the diffusion of a cultural pattern, and of its evolutionary forms in the diverse contexts in which it was cultivated, provides comparative insight of the social, economic, cultural, and political conditions in which psychological and pharmacological agents interact and combine to produce drug-related effects in humans. It thus supplies an anthropological corrective to the prevailing psycho pharmacological paradigm in drug studies. The revision of this psychopharmacological paradigm, which has provided the scientific justification for the “war on drugs,” has been long overdue.”
In the “Ganja Complex”, Hamid based on extensive research among Marijuana users in Trinidadian Africa concluded that the drug has had significant positive effects. Disenfranchised by an exclusion from the educational system and frustrated by unemployment in an increasingly consumerist society, the youths had responded by getting involved in crimes like rioting and an eventual overthrow of the government. after discovering Marijuana and smoking it in comfortable and communal settings, they transformed into ambitious and pragmatic individuals. Most of them metamorphosed into businessmen, self employed artisans and delighted in reading scholarly books and newspapers, translating their revolutionary sentiments into a program of community in which they “reinvested marijuana revenues to foster self-sufficiency or independence from mainstream institutions.”.
Marijuana as a symbol of Resistance
Throughout the 70’s counterculture movements, which saw a rise in the consumption and usage of psychoactive drugs, marijuana has forever been associated with liberal and progressive values. Your stance on the legalization of marijuana is considered a proxy for your stance on the Civil Rights , the Vietnam war, Sexual Liberty, and other issues which became the focal point of Anti- Establishment movements. From 1960 to 1975, Cannabis consumption increased exponentially. Usage among youths in America spiked from 5% to over 50%. What were the changes in socioeconomic circumstances which led to such a huge increase? According to Gitlin (1987), the Post World War economic boom which was led by enormous economic growth, a drastic upsurge in the spirit of consumerism along with the privileged Baby Boomer generation entering college campuses at a time when there was increased polarization by the Civil Rights Movement and the anti- Vietnam protest. This led to a spontaneous synthesis of many counter cultural lifestyles. On one hand the American youth faced increasing exposure to advertisers attempting to draw them into the world of American Consumerism and on the other, these same young Americans were confronted by the knowledge that the world the lifestyle they were part of had tremendous geopolitical and social costs elsewhere. The 1960 counter cultural movement borrowed from the Bohemian lifestyle of the 50s, characterized by consumption of substances such as alcohol, amphetamine and marijuana which was an aid in “heightening the senses, gaining self-transcendence, and creating artistic work.” (Polsky 1967). This was modified to incorporate political stances and activism, and Marijuana emerged as the overarching symbol of protest.
Marijuana and the Informal Economy
The mode of production involved in the circulation, distribution and consumption of Marijuana in Trinidad Rastafari systems followed a pre-capitalist system. The primary difference between this particular form of economic system used in the Marijuana ‘trade’ and other traditional economic systems has to do with the unique social relations of production. This uniqueness stemmed from three things: 1) The Unsyndicated nature of the growers, 2)Unguilded Urban Producers and 3)The Police.
But before that one must note the similarities between this economic framework and a traditional Capitalist means of production. Firstly labor was not free. Labor was controlled not by wage relations by but the eventual possibility of material self sufficiency and (what is unique to the Rastafari mode of production) spiritual growth and enlightenment, essentially an exploitation of religio-political sentiments. Associates typically received cash gifts, food and religio-cultural instructions in compensation for labor. Capital was ‘unfree’ as a consequence as it essentially reinforced the very nature of social relations that created it.
Coming to the structural differences, Marijuana growers/cultivators were engaged in cultivation for certain purposes “to acquire a house and land and to begin some legitimate enterprise which ensured self-employment, social status, moderate income, and self-sufficiency”. Growers didn’t compete with each other and weren’t responsive to increasing demand, nor did they bring innovations in technology to improve quality of their product. These motivations acted as a counter force against syndicalism and in fact prevented them from taking charge of all the economic relations with respect to labour and capital, thus ensuring that excess capital does not accrue to them.
There has been huge debate about decriminalization and legalization of cannabis in the past decades, with more and more people supporting its usage for its recreational and medicinal qualities. Cannabis culture is one of the most zealously defended subcultures, and has spawned a multi-billion dollar industry with huge potential for growth. Attitudes towards the drug have been increasingly softened with many Western liberal Democracies completely legalizing it. It has been a part of the religious and cultural consciousness of many cultures since pre-historic times and it’s use has been integrated into broader tapestries of cultural practices and traditions which provided a consistent system of beliefs, attitudes, justifications, rituals, and behaviors to regulate it. It is time we stop bowing down to racially and politically motivated hegemonic imposed ideas and use that to dictate our drug policy.
