Negotiating Culture
Giving Value to the Devalued
Every recounting of the story produces a new rendition, so it is an exercise within a discipline. Here again, and for the first time, thoughts on the dialectic of prohibition and resistance vis-à-vis cannabis and culture.
Pleasure is a Problem
The only acceptable cannabis-reform advocacy in the late 1980’s came from environmentalists who talked up the eco-friendliness of hemp.1
And they always prefaced their advocacies with, “Hemp doesn’t have the psychoactive THC, so no one can get high from it.”
You see, the problem with marijuana is people like to use it to get high. The medicinal marijuana advocates at the turn of the century emphasized that patients were not using their medicine to get high (not mentioning they certainly *could*). A look at medicinal cannabis laws across the U.S. in the 21st century shows states were far more comfortable approving CBD–which is not psychoactive–than THC, and they are more comfortable still, if the medicine does not resemble the cannabis plant (salves, pills, and tinctures). In states that permit the sale of “medicinal”2 flowers, patient and caregiver cultivation is not guaranteed
The concern over pleasurable psychoactivity runs through our drug policies, to the point we have created thought-crimes when it comes to users’ intentions and expectations. In a state with medicinal marijuana but no retail market it is illegal for patients to intend to get enjoyably high when they consume marijuana.
It was this affective alliance of the enjoyment of a prohibited pleasure that brought us the marijuana policy reform movement. As much as it troubled the prohibitionists that people enjoyed altering their consciousness, criminal prohibition motivated users to find a common interest in changing marijuana laws.
This has been our contested field for over sixty years: Personal pleasure.
Volunteers & Culture
I was careful to negotiate confidentiality in the earlier years of doing research; both for my subjects’ and my own sake. Changes over time have allowed me to reveal more of the qualities I discovered among marijuana reform activists at the turn of the century: Almost all of them smoked weed, often a lot more of it than most users. A few cultivated–though growers were inclined not to expose themselves to the inevitably-correct assumption that people who wanted to legalize marijuana were already breaking the law. More than a few engaged in sales to supplement their income and cover their personal consumption–others would engage in casual exchanges the law would have interpreted as distribution though they were not conducted for profit.
It was a bunch of mostly-white, mostly-male, often-stoned people who made up the central cadre of volunteers whose work ended up changing the larger culture and changing the laws.
NORML’s two greatest contributions to the movement to end marijuana prohibition were empowering consumers to advocate for their own interests and the advancement and celebration of a consumer culture that normalized marijuana use for pleasure. Neither of these happened through political campaigns or voter initiatives, but not one of the reforms that did happen, from Prop 215 onward, would have been possible without the culture work that had been done in the 30 years prior. Volunteer labor is discounted because it is not exploited, it does not generate value for capital. That is not to say it does not generate value, however.
It is not coincidental that the founders of the Marijuana Policy Project, who witnessed the decline and fall of NORML in the early 1990’s, would seek to professionalize legalization advocacies and sponsor state and local campaigns, and thus eschew volunteer advocates and distance the organization from the identifiable cannabis culture of the era. Their goal was to appeal to sympathetic capital, and capital is more comfortable with salaried arrangements, even in the nonprofit sphere.
NORML was founded with the vision of being the “marijuana smokers’ lobby” with national offices in DC and a nationwide collection of volunteer chapters whose members focused on their state’s policies. This model combined the localized volunteer network LeMar once had with the aspiration to create policy, as Amorphia was engaged with. Stroup’s involvement in public interest law under Ralph Nader led him to see consumer advocacy as a legitimate pathway to building public support for legalization. NORML aspired from its origin to influence federal and state marijuana policies. Despite rising in popularity through the 1970’s, none of the state-level decriminalization measures were the result of organized political campaigns. The zeitgeist was to question marijuana prohibition, as its use became increasingly popular.
Final note for today, and through the remainder of 2024: Please consider buying a full 2025 subscription to my page for yourself or as a gift for someone you know will enjoy critical approaches to social power. It’s 50% off for the full year (just $50) if you purchase before December 31. That’s less than a dollar a week, and your support keeps the public sociology alive, literally. Thanks!
Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes! shares a level of historical significance with the pamphlets of Patrick Henry, in terms of presenting arguments to mobilize people against a governing body. It aided cannabis reformers in getting through the Reagan Drug War’s anti-marijuana propaganda. The government once supported hemp farmers!
“Medicinal” drug use is a social construction and does not stem from the chemical substances themselves.