Drug Abuse

2 A NEGLECTED DIMENSION OF SOCIAL CONTROL?

As noted in the last chapter, the enduring controversy over the legal and moral status of marijuana use has important roots in the social changes that occurred in the 1960s. In many of the advanced capitalist societies of the Western world — not only Britain, but other nations on both sides of the Atlantic — the 1960s witnessed the growing expression, particularly among young people, of social attitudes and behaviour that posed a significant (however ultimately limited) challenge to the absolutist and implicitly conservative world-view that had prevailed throughout the previous decade.' Whether or not it was actually seen as a root cause of the growing generation gap, the slide into permissiveness, the apparent loss of respect for authority — all cliches wheeled out in the defence of values that had been fundamental to the growth of capitalism during an earlier epoch' — marijuana use was at all events closely associated with the emergence of a new social ethic stressing the merits of hedonism and self-fulfilment, and widely seen as such by its opponents and advocates alike. For many of its more zealous advocates, indeed, marijuana provided a basic ingredient of a process of personal liberation that — undertaken on a wide enough scale — would usher in a new Golden Age in which men would be able to live together in a state of mutual harmony and understanding, unfettered by the false and selfish desires fostered by a corrupt and repressive capitalist system. Viewed in this way, marijuana was thus "the new social drug"in much more than a purely descriptive sense. Not only was it seen as being intrinsically pleasurable once any residual "hang-ups" besetting its users had — with its aid — been recognised and overcome; it was also considered destined eventually to replace alcohol, a pernicious drug by comparison which, apart from being harmful physically, was seen as dulling people's awareness of their "true" needs and thus merely strengthening the hold exercised over their unfortunate lives by The System. Central to such a scenario, of course, was the assumption that the use of marijuana would continue increasing: ultimately the point would be reached when "straight society", confronted by the combined threat of widespread lawbreaking and a slump in the revenue derived from sales of alcohol, would have no alternative but to legalise — and tax — it. Indeed, writers on both sides of the Atlantic were prepared to predict that legal reform of this kind was both inevitable and imminent' — conveniently neglecting the possibility that the widespread violation of a law may be just as likely to provoke rule enforcers to enforce it selectively as rule creators to change or abolish it.4

The Appearance of Anomalies

Now it is not my intention in this study to address the complex issues underlying the question of whether or not and on what grounds it might be possible to identify such differing control possibilities with the control policies on marijuana use that have actually been pursued in different Western societies in recent years.' Rather, what I wish to present for examination is some evidence carrying the clear suggestion that at least some of the assumptions underpinning many of the predictions concerning the inevitability of legal reform were not in fact fully borne out by subsequent events. Not only in Britain but in a number of other highly industrialized countries too, the early 1970s witnessed the development of what — in the kind of context I have outlined — appear to be a number of curious anomalies in observable patterns of marijuana use. As I shall attempt to demonstrate, the similarities in these patterns are quite striking: sufficiently striking, I think, to warrant the belief that an understanding of the social processes which they reflect can be facilitated by considering them together.

This is all the more necessary, perhaps, in the British context, where — partly for reasons outlined above — research into patterns of marijuana use is even more meagre and patchy than research attempting to ascertain the numbers of people who have ever tried the drug. It is sad to record that a look at one of the very few observational studies of drugtakers that has been carried out in this country — Martin Plant's study of drugtaking in Cheltenham6 — will reveal that Mott's above-cited remarks about anecdotal impressions are not wholly without foundation. On the one hand, for example, Plant tells us that "My general impression was that cannabis was the mainstay of the groups I observed and was used, with varying degrees of regularity, by all those interviewed.' Then, whilst equivocating over whether this was true of cannabis ("most agreed", apparently that it was in a different category), he also tells us that "Many intimated that they had derived a finite, limited, amount of pleasure from different drugs and that, beyond a certain stage, they thought they had exhausted the possibilities of most drugs".8 Yet he provides no data which would enable one either to clarify these potentially conflicting observations or to specify to what proportion of his subjects they corresponded. Nor do we know anything about the conditions under which these observations were made and, consequently, the degree to which they may have been influenced by factors pertaining to these conditions.9

The data upon which Plant's study is based were gathered during the period 1970-1972. During this period a parallel study was carried out by Charles Reeves in South Hampshire,' 0 relying upon follow-up interviews with a sample of 122 drug users contacted by a "snowballing" technique similar to that used by Plant. Reeves' intention was to acquire information about changes in patterns of drugtaking among his respondents over a period of eighteen months. Unfortunately, however, the changes that he did document fail to make clear reference to specific drugs. Respondents were merely asked to provide information about whether during this period they had increased or decreased the range of drugs used, and whether they had changed their methods of using them. Broadly speaking, Reeves' findings are in line with those of Plant — both reject the traditional escalation theory — but are no more revealing where patterns of marijuana use in particular are concerned.

At present, therefore, evidence that might enable one to evaluate the belief in a sustained high incidence of marijuana use in those populations that it has penetrated is largely confined to self-report studies of drugtaking among university students. There now exist three such studies whose data bear upon the question of the relationship between "ever" use and continued or "regular" use: Somekh's survey of London University students,' the survey carried out by the magazine Isis of drugtaking among Oxford University students,' 2 and Kosviner and Hawks' survey of students from two university colleges in Southern England." All three studies were carried out during the period 1971-2 — approximately the same period as Plant's and Reeves' studies — and their central findings with regard to patterns of cannabis use are strikingly similar. In each case a considerable proportion of those who admitted having ever used the drug considered that they had now stopped using it: in Somekh's study the figure was 30%, in the Isis study apparently "more than one-third", whilst Kosviner and Hawks report a figure of 40%. There is little support for any notion that anxiety about the possibility of apprehension may have been responsible for this. The Isis survey was reported as having found that ". . . the fear of being caught is not a major reason why people have stopped or never started",“ whilst Kosviner and Hawks' findings indicate that worries of this kind were not even sufficiently prevalent as to warrant a place among the six most popular reasons endorsed for discontinuing use by those of their sample who did so — a finding which clearly lends a measure of support to my remarks at the end of the last chapter concerning Becker's problem of secrecy

Kosviner and Hawks' study remains, in fact, the most detailed that we currently have concerning patterns of cannabis use in this country in the early 1970s. Its attempt to explore the reasons why the people in question had stopped using the drug — it is alone among British studies in having done this systematically — is of still further interest in the present context, inasmuch as it found that the reasons given varied according to the level of experience with the drug. Of those people who had used the drug ten times or less before stopping — and this accounted for 63% of people having this amount of experience with it — by far the greatest number (72% in the case of those having used it only once) endorsed the reason that they had "never really started in the first place". In itself, of course, this is not particularly helpful, and might even appear a little tautologous. However, amongst people who had used the drug more than ten times before stopping, by contrast, the reasons most frequently endorsed (by 28% and 24% of this group respectively) were "lost interest in pot or the scene" and "no need for artificial stimulus". It should be noted, too, that the actual frequency of marijuana use reported by those who were continuing to use it was fairly low — surprisingly low, perhaps, in a context where fear of being caught was apparently so slight — and certainly quite contrary to the stereotyped view of the "dope fiend" whose whole life centres around drugs.16 Of those (42% of the sample) who had used the drug more than ten times and were continuing to do so, 40% fell into the category of "casual users", using it only three times or less per month. Significantly, this latter finding is broadly consistent with those that emerged from surveys carried out among teenagers by Evans et al." and Dorn and Thompson' 8 during the same period. The general picture conveyed by these surveys was that on average about 10% of young people in their mid to late teens had ever used marijuana, and that of these less than half admitted to using the drug currently. Of more immediate relevance, however, is the fact that Evans et al., in their study, recorded 65% of the male users as claiming that they had not used the drug at all in the thirty days prior to the survey, whilst Dorn and Thompson noted only one-eighth of the "ever users" as saying that they were using it more than twice a week.

The least one can say about these various findings is that they should certainly give pause for thought to those who believe that, following the permissive 1960s, potsmoking had become rife amongst young people in this country. What is of considerable interest, however, is the clear fact that the patterns of marijuana use to which they refer were not in any way confined to this country. Elsewhere, too, there were emerging some fairly unmistakable signs that the "new social drug" rhetoric of the 1960s was not faring too well against the developing social realities of the 1970s. To begin with, one might refer to the findings contained in the 1972 report of the United States National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abusel — still one of the most exhaustive single examinations of the drug and its patterns of use available in the literature. Although hailed by many, like the British Wootton Report, as a "potsmokers' Charter" at the time of its publication, the survey upon which much of its content was based in fact revealed that "41% of the adults and 45% of the youth who have ever tried marijuana reported that they no longer use the drug." Moreover, when asked why, ". . . the overwhelming majority of adults (61%) specified, among other reasons, that they had simply lost interest in the drug."21) This finding, in particular, led the Commission to suggest that the widespread use of marijuana might be a fad and that use would decline of its own accord if the drug was "demythologised".

As one might expect, such a suggestion did not go uncontested.21 It did, however, receive support from the findings of two surveys carried out among medical students at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and 1972.22 Initially, these appeared to conform to the pattern documented with increasing regularity elsewhere, inasmuch as the proportion of students who had had at least one experience with marijuana was found to have grown substantially over the two year period — from 53% to 73% of the sample (which accounted, in turn, for 82% and 79% of the total student population respectively). Furthermore, most of these students had used the drug several times: in 1972, in fact, a majority of 56% had taken it twenty times or more — a figure which clearly testifies to their success in passing through the stages of becoming a marijuana user described by Becker.' However, despite this increase in the overall amount of experience with marijuana, there was also found to be a growing tendency for students to claim that they had either reduced their use of it or had stopped altogether. In 1970 37% of those who had ever smoked claimed to have stopped or decreased their use at the time of the survey, whereas by 1972 this figure had increased to 57%. This decline in the drug's popularity apparently occurred right across the board, from light to heavy users and from first to final year students (which, as the authors indicate, immediately undermines any suggestion that it might have been due to age and the greater "maturity" commonly thought to accompany it). Interestingly, the number of students favouring the legalisation of marijuana also diminished slightly over the two-year period, from 83% in 1970 to 69% in 1972.

Those of the 1972 sample who had stopped or decreased their use of the drug were asked to state reasons why this should be the case. Again, only 12% indicated that they were worried about the medical or legal consequences of continued use, while about 3% said that smoking has begun to interfere with their ability to study and remain "goal oriented". One must assume that the authors had not anticipated such low rates of response in these areas, for the questionnaire design was such that most of the students who had stopped or cut down had to check "other reasons" for doing so. On the basis of the comments made in this section of the questionnaire, they concluded that in at least 72% of cases "other" here meant loss of interest. Typical remarks were the following: "no appeal", "no desire", "had no effect", "no enjoyment", "didn't like it", "didn't need it", "didn't get anything out of it", "I only did it with friends", "no big deal", "I was smoking it more and enjoying it less", "got into martinis", "fewer friends using it". Other findings included in this study all pointed to a similar conclusion: that despite an absolute increase in experience of marijuana, there was an actual decrease of interest in it .2 4

Whilst not so clearly stated as such, such a conclusion is also implicit in findings such as those recorded in a longitudinal survey of the changing drug preferences of Toronto high school students, published in early 1973.25 Although in this case the subjects concerned were not asked about the amount of, and their attitudes toward, their current as compared with their past usage of the drug, it was discovered that the absolute rate of increase of marijuana use among students questioned had slowed down considerably in the latter stages of the research. For whereas in the period 1968-1970 the proportion of students having used the drug in the six months prior to the survey jumped from 6.7% to 18.3%, in the period 1970-1972 it increased by only a further 21/2% to 20.9%. Consumption of alcohol, on the other hand, continued to rise steadily throughout: from 46.3% in 1968 to 60.2% in 1970, and again to 70.6% in 1972; whilst the use of barbiturates (whose depressant effects, as is well known, are similar to those of alcohol) accelerated quite markedly over the latter period, rising from only 3.3% in 1968 and 4.3% in 1970 to a figure of 18.2% in 1972.

The apparent similarity between the increase in the rate of barbiturates use between 1970 and 1972 and the increase in the rate of marijuana use between 1968 and 1970 is too obvious to be ignored, and I shall be concerned to explore aspects of the relationship between marijuana and alcohol (and, by implication, those drugs whose effects more closely resemble those of alcohol) as we proceed. Once again, however, the message conveyed by such findings seems fairly clear: we should be on our guard against the uncritical acceptance of flat pronouncements such as those that were frequently made in the '60s about the "inevitability" of a continued escalation and sustained prevalence of marijuana use. Trends in social behaviour are notoriously unstable, as anybody whose business it is to be concerned with the marketing and sale of more conventional commodities will readily testify. Indeed, some of marijuana's devotees will doubtless have been rather surprised by the outcome of a study of the situation in Oregon carried out a year after the passing of a law which changed the possession of up to one ounce of marijuana from a criminal to a civil offence.26 According to the Drug Abuse Council, no significant increase in marijuana use occurred after the law changed. Only 6% of those surveyed stated having tried the drug for the first time, whilst 40% reported that they had actually used the drug less.

Finally, one should perhaps mention the apparent fate of marijuana use in the Netherlands, and more especially Amsterdam, still regarded by many as the European mecca of "soft" drugtaking. A study carried out by Hasleton in 1974 found that even in the virtually unrestricted situation that has for long prevailed in Amsterdam, use of marijuana amongst young people was stabilising at a level of around 20%2 7 . Moreover, 37% of one-time users were reported as having stopped using the drug. Hasleton's conclusions are in line with the other findings I have mentioned:

In the tolerant ambience of the Netherlands, cannabis use is quite widely regarded as dull, tedious, boring, vervelend by those who might be expected to use the substance. A common response to questioning in the area is "I think I have some at home ... haven't tried it for months ... " In short, the cannabis fashion, like so many of the fashions of the sixties, is past its heyday. The Dutch experience suggests that punitive sanctions have not been responsible for this. . .2 8

Now all these findings are arguably of considerable significance for the long-standing debate over the effects of marijuana, but they require explanation. Unfortunately the kinds of questions they raise are ones which the research methodologies from which they are derived have seldom provided much scope for answering. Why, for example, should the numbers of regular of "chronic" marijuana users consistently have remained so comparatively low? Why should such a large proportion of one-time users in both this country and the United States have apparently lost interest in the drug at this time? What are the particular qualities of the experience associated with the drug which justify the suggestion that its use might merely be a fad? What indeed is the nature of the myth that it may result in being demythologised? A tacit implication is that at some point in their drugtaking careers the people in question experienced a discrepancy between their expectations concerning the drug's effects and the practical possibilities of fulfilling these. But once again, why? Among the vast numbers of people in Western societies who have learned to enjoy the effects of alcohol there can be few, after all, who would cite as a major reason for becoming teetotal the fact that they had simply "lost interest" in the drug.

Turning again to consider the situation in this country, one might perhaps expect there to have been a greater commitment to marijuana use within that section of the community with which the activity had been most often and most strongly associated since the mid-60s: the so-called Underground or "counter-culture". But an examination of successive editions of OZ magazine — probably the leading exponent of the Underground philosophy of social change through the three key agencies of "dope, rock music and fucking"29 — will if anything reveal an even more cynical attitude toward the drug than apparently existed elsewhere. In part, of course, this was a product of political considerations, and a more detailed discussion of the drug's changing symbolic significance in this sense must be reserved for a later chapter. The following extract from an outspoken (but, according to the editors, "outstanding") article by John Hoyland in the January 1973 issue of the magazine merely represents the culmination of sentiments which had first become apparent long before and had been gathering strength for some time:

Hippy ideology has become the escape valve for thousands of young people who want some kind of justification for sitting on their arses doing nothing, while convincing themselves that their very inactivity makes them the purest revolutionaries of all. To fuck, smoke dope and listen to music nowadays is no more radical than having a cup of tea, and the fact that a dash of buddhism or home-made bread may be thrown in doesn't alter the basic social irrelevance of the whole business.30

In itself, however, social or political irrelevance seems inadequate to account for the apparent switch in drug preference indicated by a statement in the "Spike" (News) column of the April edition of the magazine, the final one to appear before it ceased publication :

Let's be frank, booze is back. The bottle's in vogue again and the fab fashionable everywhere are saying out of the window with that dowdy old LSD, that dreary pot or even those merely ephemerally amusing white powders. Instead, it's a return to liquor, alcohol, drink, hooch, grog, whatever you want to call your own personal tipple.3 I

At one level, such an endorsement of alcohol provided an ironic comment upon the validity of the well-known escalation thesis traditionally cited by opponents of the so-called "pro-pot lobby". (Indeed the very notion of escalation was a little absurd if the "hard" drug in question was alcohol). Its major and more important significance, however, derives from the fact of its having appeared in a magazine which at one time, as one of the leading disseminators of early hippy ideology, had regarded the drug with an attitude bordering upon contempt.

I shall return to this theme in a moment, but it seems clear that this and the other anomalies referred to require explanation. Where can we turn for such an explanation? Unfortunately, none immediately suggests itself. As is now well-known, most of the more recent sociological theorizing on the subject of motivation for marijuana use has been based either directly or indirectly upon the work of Howard Becker." According to Becker's formulation, the subject who had actually become a marijuana user was only likely to cease use of the drug if either (a) he could no longer enjoy its effects, or (b) he became unable to avoid falling victim to one or more of the problems engendered by social control. Now these two sets of factors are of course inter-related, as Becker himself took pains to point out in his important article on the social determination of drug experiences published in 1967" (interestingly, twelve years after his initial essay on the social control of marijuana use). Nevertheless, the central distinction remains essentially unaltered: people cease marijuana use either because they fail to define the subjective effects of the drug as enjoyable, or because of the impact of social control upon their self-evaluation, social identity, and ability to obtain the drug.

But how, if this is the case, does one interpret statistics which indicate such a significant proportion (40% or more) of users having given up or lost interest in marijuana during the period in question? According to Becker's formulation, the substantial and rapid growth of a supportive marijuana-using subculture during (at least) the 1960s should have had the effect of neutralizing the last vestiges of negative societal rhetoric and, by considerably reducing the likelihood of users interpreting any unaccustomed changes in their subjective experience in the light of such rhetoric, thereby making the drug experience itself more enjoyable, not less. Nor, equally, can they easily be explained in terms of Becker's initial conception of the consequences of social control: for as was pointed out in the last chapter, the growth of the activity can in turn only be accomplished in accordance with the extent to which the key factors of supply, secrecy and morality lose their efficacy as modes of constraint. As the deterrent power exercised by these diminishes, so equally does the validity of the so-called "forbidden fruit" argument. Unless the frisson or sense of excitement arising from the imminent threat of detection is to be regarded as an indispensable ingredient of the enjoyment of marijuana use (and indeed, a disagreeable feeling of "paranoia" is the more commonly-cited sensation), the existence of public statements like the following might justifiably be interpreted to mean that the potential for such enjoyment was and had been steadily increasing:

It can . . . be said truthfully that anyone who smokes cannabis today can probably do so with complete impunity — unless he is careless or comes to police attention in some other way. The middle-class, middle-aged smoker in particular is hardly at risk at all.3 4

Confronted with these difficulties, one might be tempted to revert once again to the argument of increasing political irrelevance. However, it should be noted that only a small proportion of the totality of marijuana users who ceased or diminished use of the drug at this time would be likely to have viewed the activity in exclusively or even primarily political terms in the first place. Furthermore, and as I have already mentioned, the political mystique of marijuana within Underground culture had long been eroded without its actual use necessarily being rejected — let alone being rejected in favour of alcohol.

This connects in turn with a further problem. For in addition to their other shortcomings, none of these arguments can easily explain the fact that the patterns of and meanings assigned to marijuana use appeared to change over time even if the activity was maintained. As mentioned earlier, when marijuana use first became widespread both in this country and North America, its use was advocated not just as a form of symbolic opposition to what were seen to be the pernicious, "mind-numbing" qualities of alcohol and the hypocritical anti-drug attitude of those who used it, but as an entirely viable substitute for alcohol.' Indeed, the effects of the two drugs were seen as almost diametrically opposed. In 1969, for example, Freewheelin' Franklin, one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, (cartoon figures beloved of the readers of Underground papers both in this country and the United States), had graphically described what at the time was a widely-accepted sentiment with the memorable statement that "Smokin' grass an' drinkin' beer together is like pissin' into the wind!" Similarly, in August 1970, the London Underground newspaper I.T. announced that "All the dope smoking kids in the U.S. are killing the beer industry it would seem",36 whilst Fleet Street simultaneously recorded that the seemingly widespread rejection of alcohol on the part of those who attended the Isle of Wight Pop Festival resulted in substantial losses to the various brewing companies which had hoped to crash in on what appeared to be a ready-made, captive market.3 7 However, the situation appears subsequently to have undergone quite a marked change. In an article extolling the apparently forgotten pleasures of drinking, for example, the journal Rolling Stone recorded the strange turn of events with the statement that "the Drug of the Year for 1972 . . . was definitely alcohol. No doubt about it, booze only seemed for a little while to be going extinct."' Similarly, by way of an answer to the question "Can marijuana replace alcohol?" and the optimism of those whose studies led them to believe that it could (and indeed had), the 1972 report of the United States Consumers Union had this to say:

While those reports may have quite accurately described the situation in 1968, 1969, and perhaps even in 1970, there is also growing evidence that points in the opposite direction. Just as youthful drug users during the 1960s periodically discovered marijuana, LSD, the amphetamines, the barbiturates, and other new drugs, so, it seems, they are now discovering yet another strange intoxicant: alcohol — liquour, beer and wine ... Moreover, marijuana users were said to be drinking the alcoholic beverages along with smoking the marijuana joints. One survey even suggested that the heaviest marijuana smokers were also the heaviest alcohol drinkers.3 9

Other American sources documented the same theme: having formerly been regarded as incompatible, marijuana and alcohol had now apparently become increasingly reconciled with one another.' 40

Predictably, perhaps, evidence of the development of a similar trend on this side of the Atlantic is more scarce. However, the declaration in OZ magazine already noted is not alone in having made reference to it.' I By 1974 there was mounting concern being expressed about the fact that the major drug problem amongst young people now seemed to be much more one involving drink than other, illicit, drugs.'" However, since no attempt was made to explain how and why this had come about, other than in terms of somewhat glib references to the determining influence of " . . . a host of legal, social, psychological and economic factors", the policy implications were far from clear. Thus the Consumers Union report offered the following conclusion:

A knowledgeable society, noting a few years ago that some of its members were switching from alcohol to a less harmful intoxicant, marijuana, might have encouraged that trend. At the very least, society could have stressed the advantages of cutting down alcohol consumption if you smoke mattuana. But no such effort was made here. It may yet not be too late to present that simple public-health message.4 3

The validity of such apparent optimism clearly relied upon the idea that smoking marijuana somehow "causes" a diminution of alcohol consumption. If alcohol consumption had recently been seen to increase again, then it was because "society" had not taken the appropriate action of sufficiently publicizing these hitherto unknown "advantages" of marijuana — as if these were somehow to be found in the pharmacological properties of the drug. But because the precise components involved in this causal process remained unspecified, the chances of any such action having its desired effect were inevitably fairly slender.

There is little doubt that such shortcomings are due in part to the traditional emphasis of research into the subject. Rather than devoting attention to the various factors which alternately contribute to or circumscribe the individual's enjoyment of a given drug, much of this research — if it does not deny that any such enjoyment is even possible — has concentrated instead upon elucidating the reasons for his having been motivated to take the drug in the first place. Because the precise nature of the drug experience itself is largely ignored, no satisfactory explanation is possible for any observed changes in — or even eventual cessation of — the individual's use of the drug. Nor, from a public health point of view, can adequate predictions be made about the likelihood of his becoming involved in more unambiguously self-destructive activity later on.

A partial solution to this latter problem has, admittedly, been sought in the growing amount of attention given to the issue of so-called "alternatives" to the drug experience. In the United States, for example, a number of studies have recorded that a large proportion of those drug users who take up transcendental meditation cease their use of drugs altogether." In one sample of 1,862 practitioners of meditation, marijuana smoking apparently declined from an initial level of 78.3 per cent to only 12.2 per cent after twenty-two or more months of meditation.45 Similarly, those who have been "turned on" by religion, be they the so-called "Jesus freaks" or devotees of the latter-day Eastern prophets such as Meher Baba or the Guru Mahara 3i, have been noticeably keen to emphasize the extent to which their new way of life has rescued them from the perils of drugs — a tendency which the wider society has appeared somewhat ambivalent about, alternatively welcoming yet expressing mistrust of the means necessary to achieve this. Nor is this all: further evidence of an alleged search for alternatives to drugs has been sought in the recent growth in popularity of sensitivity training, encounter therapy, and a variety of other means whereby people may become sensitized to hitherto unexplored facets of interpersonal experience." However, apart from some of the more obvious methodological difficulties raised by such claims — for example, the fact that the individuals concerned are usually self-selected, and are neither systematically compared with controls nor screened on the basis of alleged period of time "drug-free" — one of the principal dangers of over-emphasizing the importance of such alternatives lies in the implicit assumption that all drug users are in some way the victims of deep-rooted alienation or a crisis of personal identity and, as such, are seeking after some form of extramundane or "anti-rationalistic" experience in the first place.47 Certainly, it is difficult to reconcile these findings with the observation, already noted, that in the early 1970s large numbers of people either gave up marijuana in favour of alcohol or simply began using the two drugs together. Even if they have little else in common, the serious practitioners of meditation and of evangelical religion share a tendency to observe and even enforce a strict rule of abstinence where alcohol is concerned. And even if we choose to ignore such considerations, we are still left with the problem of explaining how and why the individuals concerned decided to resort to such alternatives in the first instance. We still do not know, in short, why the activity of marijuana use appeared to yield only limited rewards in so significant a proportion of cases.

In the chapters that follow, therefore, I shall endeavour to explain some of these curious developments, focusing upon the British and the American drug scenes during the period roughly from 1970 to 1973. I hope in so doing to demonstrate the importance of a dimension of social control which hitherto has been largely neglected. It should be emphasized at the outset, however, that the empirical scope and validity of any such explanation is limited by the extreme difficulty in characterizing any particular mode of drug use as representative of the phenomenon as a whole. This problem of partiality is referred to, for example, by the members of the United States National Commission when they note, that, although it is possible to sketch profiles of various marijuana-using populations, no valid stereotype of a marijuana user or non-user can be drawn. The spectrum of individuals who use or have used marijuana varies according to frequency, intensity and duration of use.' 8 The situation is further complicated by the fact that marijuana may appear to have totally different effects upon the same individual at differing points in time. As Goode has pointed out, a description of the high as a standardized, uniform phenomenon is misleading: "the individual personality, the company in which the drug is used, prior experience with it, expectations about, and exposure to, certain definitions of the high, the prior events of the day — can all result in a new marijuana experience."' 9 Finally, it should be noted that the social meanings assigned to marijuana use are subject to considerable intergroup and intra-group variations — not just across social space but across historical time as well. If, for example, the words "marijuana" and "joint" did not feature in the two following descriptions of the "typical" effects of the drug, it might be difficult to believe that they were even referring to the same substance:

As the drug relaxes the subject, the restraints which he normally imposes on himself are loosened and he talks more freely than he does in his undrugged state. Things which under ordinary circumstances he would not speak about are now given expression. Mataphysical problems which in the undrugged state he would be unwilling to discuss, sexual ideas he would ordinarily hesitate to mention, jokes without point, are all part of the oral stream released by the marijuana.50

A joint is usually rolled and shared' by a small group. Such sessions are peaceful affairs with people sitting around casually listening to music without much conversation: one may even fall asleep without comment. 51

The available literature on marijuana use is indeed replete with apparent contradictions of this kind. Yet individual writers on the subject all too often seem either to wilfully ignore such diversity or to be simply unaware of it, so intent are they to provide the reader with a clear pronouncement of the "facts" about what the drug "does" to people. This second pair of statements may provide further evidence of this:

One of the first changes pot initiates is in the quantity of conversation. The sheer number of words being exchanged increases enormously. There is also a change in the quality of communication. Smokers, especially experienced smokers, say that they can express themselves more lucidly. Their conversation is freer and easier. Their word flow is "relaxed", "immediate", "spontaneous" and "uninhibited".5 2

Now we turn to the changes in behaviour an individual demonstrates under the influence of marijuana. Speech is affected; the user's desire to talk decreases, and he is conscious that speech requires a certain physical effort, felt in the muscles around the mouth and throat. Indeed, psychologically he simply prefers not to speak. So, a person who has taken marijuana can seem silent . . . He feels a desire to sense and appreciate things rather than talk about them.5 3

What are we to make of all this? At one level, to be sure, the very existence of such diverging characterizations helps one to understand the long-standing difficulty of arriving at a satisfactory pharmacological classification of marijuana. After all, the former statement in each of the two pairs above might seem at face value to lend credence to the view of the drug as a stimulant, the latter in each case to its categorization as a sedative. One of my aims in this study is to provide an account for such differing characterizations. In the present context, however, the more important point is that an awareness of such variability and the many factors responsible for it makes the methodological problems appear almost endless and any attempts at generalisation quite futile. Small wonder, then, that analysis of the drug experience should so often cease with a specification of the different factors which, "in complex relationships of mutual interdependence", impinge upon and affect it. However, acknowledgement of the multiplicity of factors involved and the difficulty of relating them to one another in no way advances the task of explaining concrete events, and leads only to solipsism and immobility. Besides, as I shall argue very shortly, some factors are more important than others, and should be treated accordingly.

The Issue of Sociability

Excepting those who still believe that the potsmoker (or indeed any user of illegal drugs) is a fundamentally asocial, retreatist character, it is now quite widely accepted that not only is marijuana use predominantly a group activity, but that its social definition as an enjoyable activity actually relies in part upon its taking place within a group context. An important study by Reese Jones, for example, has presented findings which firmly indicate that the subjective "feelings of euphoria" often associated with use of the drug are contingent upon the kinds of social definitions provided by other group members.' This constitutes an important criticism of the validity of clinical studies of the behaviour exhibited by isolated drug users under "controlled" (i.e. laboratory) conditions, as the psychopharmacologist Gordon Claridge has pointed out:

If several people in a group take the same drug, then each person's response to it will act as a stimulus to other members of the group. This interaction may bring out features of the drug's action that are not apparent in people taking the drug alone. It is well-known that the solitary drinker rarely experiences the party spirit. He just gets more and more morose .5 5

The same observation is even more true of marijuana. Since its physiological effects are considerably more subtle and difficult to distinguish than those of alcohol, it is quite possible for naive users of the drug to experience nothing at all in the absense of relevant social stimuli. Andrew Weil, who has carried out extensive research into the clinical and pharmacological aspects of this phenomenon,5 6 more recently recorded that he and his Boston associates "were repeatedly struck by this reaction" in their marijuana-naive subjects:

They would sit in the laboratory with red eyes and heart rates of 130 beats per minute (normal resting pulse is 70 or 80) after smoking two large joints and would have no subjective responses at all. After the sessions, some of them would ask, "Did I have a drug tonight?"57

An acceptance of Becker's seminal ideas referred to earlier would naturally lead one to explain such apparent anomalies in terms of a failure on the part of the individuals concerned to identify the subjective effects of the drug. According to Becker, social definitions of drug effects, whether explicit or merely inferred, are necessary not only to sensitize the neophyte user to changes in his subjective experience, and thus make him aware that he is "high", but also to protect him from any tendency to interpret these changes in terms of the kinds of negative, unfavourable images available in the wider society. Such definitions are integral to the marijuana-using subculture and, as we shall see, typically receive their most articulate expression within the particular subcultural group of which the neophyte user is a member.

There thus appear to be good reasons why marijuana use should be characterised first and foremost as a social activity. Its enjoyable character seems to depend at least to some extent upon its actually being social. However, this does not mean that it is also necessarily a sociable activity, if by this we mean something which facilitates and enhances (or at least does not actually impede) interaction among its participants. The fact that such interaction may be necessary for the drug's effects to be initially defined as enjoyable throws little light upon the issue of enjoyment once this defining process has been accomplished. Thus one can readily agree, for example, with the conclusions arrived at by someone like Erich Goode, who on the basis of extensive survey material asserts that almost all marijuana use takes place within groups of intimates,' 8 and still know very little about the character of the social relations between the individual members of such groups, particularly the way in which these develop over time. This suggests the necessity of drawing a distinction between the structure of the activity (whether or not is it social) and its content (whether or not it is sociable). Unfortunately this is a distinction which has seldom been observed - partly, no doubt, because it is empirically more simple and theoretically less hazardous to characterise marijuana use merely as a social activity. Moreover, even though such a characterisation may ultimately appear trite, it has the added advantage of conferring upon whoever subscribes to it a social and professional identity as a free-thinking liberal who is somehow "on the side of" dissident youth and oppressed minorities, amongst whom the activity is still thought to be widespread. The attempt to discuss whether marijuana use has also consistently been a sociable activity, on the other hand, necessarily involves an element of value judgment about the quality of social relations. It involves a recourse to a certain, perhaps ill-specified, set of assumptions about the kinds of social interaction in which sociability might legitimately be claimed to reside, and there may well exist a substantial measure of disagreement between people as to exactly what these might be.

Acknowledging such difficulties, I nevertheless propose to argue that marijuana use - although widely regarded as a social activity - had little in the early 1970s to commend itself as an intrinsically sociable activity, and even less to commend itself as a continuously sociable activity when looked at in terms of the moral careers' 9 of its practitioners. Furthermore, I will suggest that one of the principal reasons for this lay, paradoxically, in the innocuous nature of the drug itself. Because its pharmacological effects are so subtle and so ambiguous, and consequently so susceptible to different social interpretations of them, there tended to be considerable difficulty in imbuing the activity with a stable and widely-shared set of meanings of a kind which would have clearly and unproblematically defined it as sociable.

A Digression on Alcohol

A brief comparison with the case of alcohol-consumption is instructive at this point, if only because as a social activity it is relatively free from such problems. Earlier predictions notwithstanding, the growth of illicit drug use over recent years appears to have posed no significant threat to alcohol's position of dominance as the primary recreational intoxicant in Western societies. We do not need the brewers' reminder that the absolute quantity of alcohol consumed has been steadily increasing at a rate of at least 7% per annum to be aware that it remains far and away the most widely-accepted social drug in this country. How can this be explained?

Perhaps most important is the fact that many people refuse to consider alcohol as a drug at all. Such a refusal, indeed, may be psychologically necessary if its use is to remain free of the moral stigma assigned to the use of other drugs. This position has been expressed by Andrew Weil:

There is no evidence that a greater percentage of Americans are taking drugs, only that younger Americans are coming to prefer illegal drugs like marijuana and hallucinogens to alcohol. Therefore, people who insist that everyone is suddenly taking drugs must not see alcohol in the category of drugs . . . Drug taking is bad. We drink alcohol. Therefore alcohol is not a drug. It is, instead, a "pick-me-up", a "thirst quencher", "social lubricant", an "indispensable accompaniment to fine food", and a variety of other euphemisms. Or, if it is a drug, at least it is not one of those bad drugs that the hippies use .60

In itself, however, an interpretation of alcohol's non-drug status in terms so redolent of cognitive dissonance theory" is implausibly mechanistic. There can be little doubt that the kinds of "euphemisms" which Well refers to existed well before the emergence of any preference for illegal drugs and that, on the contrary, this development merely brought them more clearly into focus. Whilst for their part some of the hippies remained sceptical on this point, it is undeniably true that many people do have a drink because they like the taste, or because alcohol is commonly thought to aid and stimulate the digestion. It is equally true, as advocates of a continued ban on marijuana have often pointed out, that people by no means always drink with the deliberate intention of becoming intoxicated. Indeed, the prevalent moral injunction to "hold one's drink" may itself circumscribe the drinker's ability to claim the role of drunk.

It seems clear, then, that the widespread popularity of alcohol has much to do with the multiplicity of motives surrounding its use. In a culture where the deliberate use of mood-changing drugs is still viewed by many as lacking respectability, such ambiguity facilitates the creation and acceptance of accounts which, when used in connection with any other drug in common use, would immediately be considered suspect. However, it is possible to distinguish two further sets of factors which are of even more fundamental importance: those have to do, respectively, with the pharmacological action of alcohol, and with the fact of its legality. In terms of their consequences for social interaction, they are closely interrelated.
The most widely-recognised feature of alcohol's pharmacological action, firstly, is almost certainly its ability to impair judgment and undermine the individual's delicate powers of self-control. The word "ability" should perhaps be emphasised here, since as MacAndrew and Edgerton have convincingly demonstrated by an exhaustive survey of anthropological evidence, the extent to which the kinds of physiological changes induced by alcohol are also reflected in behavioural changes is subject to considerable cultural variations." Nevertheless, the conventional wisdom on this issue is summarized as well as anyone by De Ropp when he states that "alcohol acts by lowering the activity of the brain, first at its highest levels (controlling thought), next at its motor levels (controlling speech and movement), finally at its basic levels (controlling sensibility, reflexes, and respiration)."6 3

The social significance of this characteristic of alcohol will hopefully become fully clear in a moment. A second important feature of its pharmacological action, however, is that it is cumulative rather than immediate. Unlike the sudden qualitative transition from "straight" consciousness to the state of being "high" characteristic of marijuana, the subjective effects of alcohol are typically gradual and may vary considerably in accordance with such factors as the weight and metabolism of the individual, the potency of the drink in question, and the degree of tolerance which he has acquired for it. Together with the ambiguity of motives for use already mentioned, this characteristic of alcohol serves to limit the necessity of seeking the meaning of its consumption in the state of intoxication itself. Since people generally accept that they are unlikely to become intoxicated simultaneously and that such intoxication, when it does occur, will be gradual and easily controllable, the activity of drinking can safely be assigned the status of what Goffman has termed a subordinate involvement.' 4 In this capacity it is unlikely to impede the ongoing flow of interaction. Indeed, when combined with an awareness of the disinhibiting potential of alcohol, what have been termed the emergent properties of social life 5 — far from being disrupted — are likely to be strengthened. Here, as we shall see presently, lies an important point of contrast with marijuana.

That the disinhibiting potential of alcohol is as widely understood and appreciated as it appears to be is of course directly related in turn to the fact of its legality. The rough parallelism between pharmacological knowledge and common-sense beliefs about the effects of alcohol would clearly not exist were it not for the fact that alcohol is the only psychotropic drug in our society which is legally available in whatever quantities the purchaser can afford. If reification is to be avoided, however, the relationship between law and public knowledge in this area must be seen as a dialectical one; for given the abundant evidence of alcohol's harmful effects (whether social, in the sense of their acknowledged relationship with violence and aggression, or merely physiological), it is equally necessary to suggest that continued legal availability is itself connected with an awareness of the important social functions which use of the drug performs.

The most fundamental consequence of alcohol's virtually unrestricted availability is that there are few people who do not at some stage acquire personal experience of its effects. Despite the existence of licensing laws and the protestations of moral entrepreneurs, it appears that socialization into drinking practices among adults and the norms governing them begins at a very early age. People typically accumulate a more or less coherent body of knowledge about the disinhibiting properties of alcohol through an ongoing series of comparisons between, on the one hand, their own experience and observations and, on the other, the host of stereotyped portrayals of both the convivial drinker and the comic or aggressive drunkard available in the wider culture. Wherever they turn, they are likely to find the basis of such knowledge reaffirmed — partly, of course, because all those who wish on occasion to claim diminished responsibility for their actions have an interest in maintaining it. Although (as I have already mentioned) the tolerance for drunken behaviour varies considerably both within and between cultures, explanations for deviance in terms of the effects of alcohol can usually expect — unlike those involving marijuana — to be accorded as much legitimacy by fellow-users as by agents of social control. As such, and particularly in situations where — due for example to ignorance of the moral standards of others — deviance of some kind is actually anticipated, such accounts may in turn generate motives for drinking." The phenomenon which the leading character in Mart Crowley's homosexual play "The Boys in the Band" refers to as the "Christ-was-I-drunk-last-night syndrome" probably constitutes just one example of what may thus be a widespread tendency in social life:

You know, when you made it with some guy in school and the next day when you had to face each other there was always a lot of shit-kicking crap about, "Man, was I drunk last night! Christ, I don't remember a thing!6 7

Confronted, therefore, by an apparently seamless web of consensus about alcohol's likely effects, the individual can safely restrict the social meanings attached to his own use of the drug to the realm of the routine and the taken-for-granted. This makes a further contribution to the accepted status of drinking as a subordinate involvement. As Orcutt suggests, "when the effects of a drug are clearly defined by normative expectations, the user can more or less take his inner experiences "for granted" and focus his attention elsewhere."6 8 Furthermore, it helps to explain Zinberg's observation that "nowhere in our culture's long history of jokes about drinkers is there any suggestion that the alcohol user might, when high, contemplate his own mind, or become preoccupied with motivation or ways of perceiving reality.' 9

However, the scale of demand for and popularity of alcohol necessitates consideration not just of the pharmacological properties and social meanings of the drug itself, but also of the character of the social structure in which it is so widely used. As is well-known, one of the distinctive features of modern industrial societies is their high rates of social and geographical mobility. In practice, such mobility involves a high (and probably increasing) incidence of social encounters between people whose backgrounds, lifestyles and attitudes may be highly discrepant, but who must nevertheless be eased into situations in which they can form satisfactory relationships with one another. The anomie potential of such situations is clearly high. Given the other factors mentioned it can, however, be mitigated through the use of alcohol, as Kessel and Walton have suggested:

Strangers relax and mingle if alcohol is provided. A man provides drinks when for reasons of hospitality or business he wants to create an atmosphere of warmth in a gathering of people who do not know each other well. Nor does he have to hide his intention, for his guests welcome his social engineering. Though they may have few interests in common, these they will discover. Drinks will make them socialize. Less apprehensive of their own failings, they will become less inclined to judge others critically. Oiling the social wheels is at the centre of society's approbation of regulated drinking.70

One might suggest, therefore, that there is an "elective affinity" between the taken-for-granted depressant properties of alcohol and the structural characteristics of those societies in which its use is most widespread. It is tempting, in fact, to postulate a correlation between the rates of social mobility in a given society and the quantities of alcohol consumed by its members — a possibility which will be given further consideration when we turn to examine the social context of marijuana use. However, lest one should fall into the positivist trap of thinking that people "become less inclined to judge others critically" because alcohol has suddenly made them "less apprehensive of their own failings" — or indeed that somehow "drinks will make them socialize" — the central importance of the relative absence of ambiguity about the effects of the drug should again be emphasized. For popular conceptions about such effects derive their potency and pervasiveness not just from isolated personal experiences or through exposure to the accounts of those who draw upon them to explain or justify their behaviour; they are also buttressed by clearly-defined sets of norms at the cultural level. Billboard posters carrying the exhortation to "drop in at your local"; advice in the women's glossies that a fundamental requirement for a successful dinner party is plenty of wine; the recent series of advertisements showing two apparently ill-matched individuals sharing a joke accompanied by the caption "Beefeater Gin mixes people perfectly", all combine to provide the clear suggestion that people expect one another to become talkative and gregarious under the influence of alcohol. Social drinking is seen as an aid to "loosening one's tongue" or — as at cocktail parties — "breaking the ice" between those who might otherwise remain strangers.'

The knowledge derived from a myriad individual experiences with alcohol thus combines with the prevailing set of social and cultural expectations to form a highly consensual body of opinion about the anticipated and legitimate effects of the drug. In the context of the interpersonal encounter such common-sense knowledge ensures that the diminution of social constraints of the kind referred to by writers such as Kessel and Walton is accomplished just as much by the anticipated effects of alcohol upon individual B's perception as by its actual effects upon individual A's. Any tendency, in other words, on A's part to relax the customary restraints upon his behaviour is not an irresistible or unmediated "effect" of the drug alone. Rather, it is likely to be a reflection of the extent to which he believes that B will either (a) be less critical of him due to the dulling effects of alcohol upon his (i.e.B's) perception, or (b) make allowances for behaviour which he believes to be the product of similar effects upon A's.7 2

Whether in practice people lower their inhibitions either in response to or in anticipation of a similar lowering of inhibitions in others, however, the net result is to tilt what Goffman has described as the delicate balance between individual privacy and social accessibility" 3 more or less markedly in the direction of the latter. Thus:

The solitary become gregarious, shy men loquacious and the fearful foolhardy. Self-critical men can treat themselves kindly, sexually-inhibited men dare to be amorous. As our individual characteristics drop away from us attributes common to us all prevail.74

Alcohol, then, is a pre-eminently sociable drug. In a society as complex and highly differentiated as our own, its widespread use may be regarded as performing important social functions. Certainly, it may be argued that its peculiar combination of characteristics enable it to stitch the fraying edges of social life together in a way which no other drug is capable of doing. As a final point, however, one might also mention the fact that the deliberate use of a reputedly mind-dulling drug for recreational purposes is entirely compatible with any tacit claim on the part of the user to a possession of a high level of cognitive competence at other times. Indeed, the drinker might argue, with a degree of justification, that his activity represents a deliberate attempt to gain temporary remission from a level of awareness which sometimes, and in some situations, proves a hindrance to enjoyment. The relevance of such an argument will become more clear in the later discussion of subcultural perspectives on marijuana use, a subject to which I shall now once again turn.

Marijuana: The Challenge to Pharmacology

Partly because the physiological effects of alcohol are fairly pronounced and partly, also, because social norms governing its use as an agent of disinhibition are so well-established, there is little need for the novice user to receive explicit or even implicit instruction from others about how to identify its effects. Evidence of the drug's pharmacological tendency to depress the activity of the central nervous system usually manifests itself soon enough in the form of slurred speech and physical incoordination. Such instruction as does take place is likely, therefore, to be concerned more with the control of these effects than with their actual identification.

In the case of marijuana, on the other hand, the physiological cues provided by the direct pharmacological action of the drug seem to be considerably more ambiguous. As elsewhere in sociology, the study of the effects of drug use has for long been guided by the positivistic belief that social behaviour is entirely determined by certain mental states or patterns of body chemistry, changes in the former being directly attributable to changes in the latter. The kinds of anomalies already mentioned (such as, in particular, the apparent variability of marijuana's effects), in themselves cast considerable doubt upon the validity of such a perspective. In addition, however, there is a growing body of opinion which believes that marijuana is pharmacologically not dissimilar to a placebo, whose principal function is to increase the user's suggestibility. David Matza, for example, has cogently argued that the sole direct pharmacological action of the drug is to make him drowsy or "half-asleep"; whatever he experiences subsequently, upon "re-awakening", will depend upon where his consciousness, now dimmed, is told to go." The state of "being high", according to Matza, is verbal shorthand for what is in fact a shift of mood — an "altered configuration of consciousness" — brought about by the combination of drug-induced drowsiness and the logic of a situation which tells the subject to remain on the alert for something to happen.

Now one might expect those whose professional training lies more in the area of pharmacology than sociology to be highly sceptical of such a view; but they must be prepared to confront a degree of dissension within their own ranks. Andrew Weil, himself a pharmacologist by training with (as we have seen) much research upon the clinical use of the drug to his credit, has for example stated that if one arranges different drugs on a continuum along which the influence of set and setting becomes steadily greater relative to the influence of direct pharmacological action, then marijuana clearly lies at its polar extreme — "where the influence of set and setting dwarfs the influence of the drug itself".7 6I have already made reference to work by Jones which would seem to support such a view.

The existence of such significant departures from traditional orthodoxies in itself demands and justifies a closer analysis of the categories of set and setting than the token acknowledgement of their importance has typically permitted hitherto. If the typical effects of marijuana are so highly dependent upon users' definitions of them and the social opportunities for giving these expression, then it is essential to investigate both the nature of such definitions and situations and — particularly given the developments within the drug scene discussed earlier — the ways in which they may change over time. However, there are, in addition, two further sources of justification for embarking upon such an enterprise. These have to do, firstly, with the low pharmacological toxicity of much of the marijuana commonly smoked by users, and secondly, with the surprising response of many marijuana users to genuine placebos. I shall briefly consider each of them in turn.

Any implication, first of all, that there are marked variations in the pharmacological potency of marijuana would almost certainly be regarded as unexceptional by most of its users. Indeed, it is precisely the widespread appreciation of this fact that has facilitated the emergence of a clear-cut hierarchy of roles and statuses within the pot-smoking culture and, to some extent, earned it the reputation of being elitist. There is a certain parallel here between the ambivalent attitude commonly felt toward those who, for example, claim to be able to tell the precise geographical origin of a given sample of marijuana simply be sniffing its aroma and the somewhat cynical admiration so often directed at self-professed connoisseurs of expensive wines. Despite (or possibly because of) an appreciation of such diversity, however, it appears that many marijuana users are accustomed to smoking the drug in qualities and amounts where the intake of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC (the active pharmacological ingredient of marijuana) is so low as to be almost totally ineffective. Of course the task of acquiring a representative "sample of samples" is perhaps even more difficult to achieve than that of building up a representative sample of users; one would expect the ratio between "weak" and "potent" varieties of the drug to be constantly shifting in response to changes in the factors of supply and demand. The evidence, therefore, is necessarily somewhat scattered and fragmented. Nevertheless, taken en masse it is remarkably consistent. Once again, the principal findings come from North America. In an analysis of 14 samples of Mexican marijuana, for example, Lerner and Zeffert found a range of 0.8 to 1.4% THC with an average of 1.2%" Specimens gathered in the midwestern United States by Phillips et al. were found to contain only 0.1 to 0.5% THC," whilst Jones reports, similarly, that a laboratory analysis of samples confiscated by the State California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement revealed them to contain as little as 0.1% THC and a a maximum of 0.9%." Most significant of all, perhaps, is a survey carried out in Ontario by Marshman and Gibbins, which discovered that of 36 samples alleged to be marijuana with high cannabinoid content, 34% contained no marijuana at all and much of the rest was cut with other plant substances.80

Predictably, perhaps, evidence of a similar pattern on this side of the Atlantic is rather more scarce. At present research in this area still seems to be confined largely to the work of Professor Fairbairn and his colleagues at the University of London. However, their initial findings appear similar to the American ones. Writing about the issue of legalization in February 1973, for example, Fairbairn asked:

Do these young people, especially the casual users, really take effective doses of cannabis? Recently, we have been analysing typical reefers from London and the North. Already our results show an enormous variation in the strength (some a hundred times weaker than others).

He concludes thus:

Whatever effects some had must have been due to the psychological setting (sic) rather than to the active principles of pot.8 1

To this must be added the important observation that in many such cases the actual intake of THC is likely to be still lower. In the light of the kind of evidence already mentioned, Jones concludes that "a generous assumption is that marijuana generally available in the United States averages about 1.0% THC."" However, the quantity actually inhaled is likely to be considerably less than this. Jones found that although most of the subjects in his experiments smoked one or two cigarettes in an evening of smoking, they frequently shared a single cigarette with up to five or six other people. He therefore concludes as follows:

If a 1 gram cigarette containing 1% THC can deliver a maximum of 5 mgms. of THC to an individual smoker and this amount can often be divided between as many as five smokers, all of whom reach an acceptable "social high", it suggests many users are not seeking large doses of THC.8

It also suggests, as Jones points out at the beginning of his paper, that

. . . the subjective effects experienced by many marijuana smokers in this country are more determined by psychological factors than by the THC content of their cigarettes.8 4

Even more damaging to traditional pharmacological orthodoxies are the documented responses of self-confessed marijuana users to substances known to be totally inert. This so-called "placebo reaction" has been examined in detail elsewhere,85 and will not be a primary object of concern in this context. It should, however, come as no particular surprise: if human powers of autosuggestion are such that an otherwise normal individual can both experience and display all the symptoms of acute intoxication by the drug LSD, when in fact he had merely swallowed a placebo which he thought was LSD," then one would expect them to be equally if not more significant in determining subjective responses to a drug whose pharmacological action is acknowledged to be rather more mild. And this, indeed, appears to be the case. On the basis of experiments conducted with six heavy and six casual marijuana smokers, for example, Meyer and his colleagues concluded that " . . . casual smokers experienced perceptual and affective responses to a placebo condition that mimicked their experience under marijuana", whilst "some heavy smokers showed evidence of a mild hallucinogenic effect".8 7 This finding is corroborated by Jones' attempt to test the ability of his subjects to discriminate between marijuana and a placebo. He found that although the placebo lacked any of the ingredients necessary to make it psychoactive, only eleven of the eighty subjects who smoked it judged it to be inactive. In addition, ten chronic marijuana users who claimed to have used marijuana every day for over a year were asked to rate the material on a scale of 0 to 100, zero being "inactive material" and 100 being the "best marijuana I ever had". Their mean rating for the active material was 66, but their mean rating for the inactive material — 57 — was not significantly different.'"

For some, the explanation for such findings may be sought in commonsense conceptions about the nature and extent of human suggestibility. This position is exemplified in the remarks of Dr. Joel Fort:

If people believe that marijuana is going to do a certain thing, if they have read or heard that it might have this effect, then a certain percentage ... will react that way even when given a totally inert substance. It's the belief that will do it and not the substance itself.8°

Now there is nothing particularly novel in this. Those working in the area of medical sociology have long been aware of the important part played by subjective factors in affecting the perception of abnormal physiological states and their identification as pain or symptoms of illness.90 Moreover, there is growing recognition of the extent to which subjective factors may actually change physiological states, whether for better or for worse.' 91 However, if this is also the case where marijuana is concerned, it is necessary to ask, firstly, what the typical sources of people's expectations or beliefs about the effects of marijuana actually were during the period in question; and secondly, how these could be given behavioural expression within the kinds of situations in which the drug was used. We must return, in other words, to consider and analyse the categories of set and setting referred to earlier. Only when this has been done will it be feasible to attempt to explain the documented changes which occurred in the patterns of marijuana use under consideration here.

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