7 MARIJUANA USE AND SOCIAL CONTROL RECONSIDERED

In the last two chapters I have endeavoured to provide a coherent sociological explanation for some of the documented changes that occurred in patterns of marijuana use in the early 1970s. Whilst my primary focus has been upon the British experience, I would like to think that such an explanation might also usefully be applied to the analysis of similar changes that apparently took place in certain other highly industrialized Western societies (and particularly, it seems, the United States) during approximately the same period. In this short concluding chapter I shall try to summarize some of the themes that the book as a whole comprises and spell out some of their implications.

In the most basic sense, perhaps, this has been a study of the nature and impact of social reaction to a particular form of behaviour which, besides being illegal, appeared at the time to pose a considerable challenge to some of society's core values and interests. In the first chapter I attempted to examine some of the measures that were taken to combat this challenge and the kinds of ideas in terms of which they were justified. In one sense my aim here could be said to have been a purely descriptive one, and indeed, in an area where description of the different manifestations of social reaction is minimal compared with the treatment accorded to particular drugs and groups of drugtakers, a purely descriptive account can itself, I think, claim a degree of justification. Nevertheless, even though it may help to redress a certain imbalance in the available literature on the subject, the task of merely documenting the different forms and processes of social reaction to marijuana use in the early 1970s was by no means the sole or even the major purpose of this initial part of the study. Considered in relation to the themes addressed by the book as a whole, its more important purposes were, firstly, to convey a clear impression of the general public ethos surrounding marijuana at this time, in the context of which use of the drug was actually taking place; secondly, to illustrate some of the ways in which "evidence" apparently supporting (and thus perpetuating) such an ethos was produced and reproduced via the activities of social control agencies; and finally, to raise certain questions concerning the likely effectiveness of some of the control strategies in which the social reaction in question was manifested. All of these issues are of considerable importance, for if one considers the study as a whole it should I hope be clear that its dominant preoccupation is not so much with the social reaction to marijuana use per se, but rather with the social control of the activity. Viewing social control in the broadest possible sense, as I have tried to do, means acknowledging that the various manifestations and processes of social reaction examined in the first chapter of the book may have constituted only a limited and very partial source of constraint upon the marijuana user (as distinct, that is, from the potential marijuana user); and that if they significantly affected him at all, they may have done so only indirectly and in ways probably quite unanticipated by those actually charged with or otherwise involved in their execution. As I have already indicated, it is impossible now (if indeed it ever was) to determine the precise extent to which they may even have deterred people from using marijuana just once. In any case, even if such knowledge could be acquired, it should be recognized that the demonstrated effectiveness of deterrent measures at one point in time provides no guarantee of their continued effectiveness at another, particularly if the numbers of people who have not been so deterred are steadily increasing. If such numbers are actually known to be increasing, this seems still more likely to be the case. Recall the "contagion effect" referred to in the final pages of chapter 1.

What does seem clear, however, is that the peculiar scale and intensity of social reaction to marijuana use had a profound effect upon the kinds of social meanings with which the activity became imbued. One of my principal arguments in these pages has been that the documented changes in patterns of marijuana use that occurred in the early 1970s can only be fully understood through an appreciation of this. Only, in short, by examining the sometimes quite subtle ways in which ban and the structure of sentiments supporting it affected the kinds of settings in which the activity characteristically took place and the kinds of behaviour with which it was commonly associated is it possible, I believe, to account for those developments within the drug scene which seem to run counter to notions — then very prevalent — about marijuana being the new social drug which was destined to replace alcohol and whose use (besides being innocuous) generated hedonism, sociability and a pervasive sense of euphoria.

In seeking to explain the changes in question, I have found it necessary to develop a fairly extensive critique of this and other conventional wisdoms. In particular, I have tried to demonstrate the shortcomings of positivistic approaches to the task of explaining the effects of marijuana, substituting for them an approach which I hope clearly emphasizes the extent to which such effects are socially and situationally constructed. I have proceeded in accordance with the principle that, insofar as the effects of marijuana are socially and situationally constructed, so equally is the success of any attempt to account for changes in the prevailing patterns of marijuana use likely to be enhanced by investigating changes in the social and situational contexts in which such patterns are located. In the case under consideration here, two of the most important changes were, on the one hand, the gradual dissolution of a relatively distinct and ideologically cohesive subculture in which marijuana use had been a focal activity, and, on the other, the development — partly (but not exclusively) as a response to the problems generated by ban and the attempts to combat them — of a number of subtle but nevertheless significant constraints upon the display of the drug's "effects". I have argued that, in a situation where both user and non-user conceptions about such effects were still highly polarized and positivistic, these twin developments succeeded in depriving the activity of much of the sociability, symbolic meaning and even potential for the cultivation of self-awareness with which it had earlier been associated. In a context involving the juxtaposition of an emphasis upon coolness with the survival of an ethic in which marijuana use was only fully sanctioned if it was a collective (i.e. "sociable") experience rather than a purely personal one,' considerable pressures for the development of alternative styles of use emerged. The "adaptations" to which I referred at the end of the last chapter should be seen as representing responses to what was, I would argue, a significant crisis or state of anomie within a large part of the subculture of marijuana use. They should also be seen as indicators of significant — in some cases terminal — stages in the marijuana-using careers of people whom the broad contours of this subculture embraced.

In an important sense, therefore, the study represents an attempt to explore some of the linkages between objective and subjective social realities: to examine some of the ways in which a highly contentious "public issue" could simultaneously be reflected in significant numbers of "personal troubles".2 Inevitably, given the data available, it is impossible to do more than sketch the characteristics of some of the possible adaptations and suggest reasons why some were more likely to be favoured than others. To that extent the discussion of them that I have presented must be viewed as being of a mainly exploratory nature. However, there are a number of implications of the foregoing that need not, I feel, be hedged in by such a warranted note of caution. The first is that no adequate understanding of the effects of marijuana is likely to be achieved until researchers pay at least as much attention to the meanings which its users assign to it as to its pharmacological properties. However unwelcome such a conclusion may be to those who seek to know — or disseminate — the "facts" about marijuana, it needs stressing that very little can be said with any accuracy about the drug's effects in isolation from a clear understanding of the particular features of the social and situational context in which the drug is used. When such features change, then one may expect the social meanings of the activity and, correspondingly, the perceived effects of the drug to change also. Whilst not denying the significance of marijuana's unique pharmacology, a more general implication of this is that research in the field of illicit drugtaking might do well to focus rather less upon such issues as why and how people start using drugs in the first place, and rather more upon those of why and how they cease or alter their patterns of drugtaking. Again, in the context of the view of marijuana use being the first step on a road that necessarily ends with the horrors of heroin-addiction — expressed so often and with such great conviction during the long history of attempts to justify the drug's illegality — it is to say the least ironic that as many marijuana users as apparently did should have started using a legal drug, alcohol, in preference to (or at least in combination with) marijuana. It is unlikely, I think, that those who at the time still considered marijuana to be a dangerous drug would have felt able to regard this as being a form of escalation, even though, ironically, many of the more ideologically-committed (or health-conscious) users of marijuana themselves would have undoubtedly done so.

Examining the relationship between marijuana use and its social context in the way that I have done, my analytical focus has necessarily been limited. I have, to repeat, been primarily concerned with illuminating features of the particular social context that existed in the early 1970s and the particular experiences of a section of young people whose marijuana-using careers took shape within that context. In this latter area I have thus been primarily addressing the problem of biographical change. Now much has undoubtedly happened in the interim, and it is quite likely that the drugtaking (or drug-abstaining) careers even of people who would be able to recognize something of their former selves in the analysis that I have presented will have evolved to the point where they can only do so with a considerable effort. It is a truism, however, that biographical events leave traces upon the social world in which they occur; and whilst I would not wish to dispute the evidence (however impressionistic it may be) which indicates a sustained growth in the total incidence of marijuana use in the population, nor would I wish to exclude the possibility that the biographical events documented in this study had a significant and perhaps enduring impact upon the social meanings of marijuana use for a subsequent generation (or age group) of young people. Unfortunately the subject of generational changes in patterns of drugtaking — changes, that is to say, between members of different age groups — falls outside the parameters of the present study. As briefly noted in the last chapter, however, the social meanings and predominant styles of behaviour with which marijuana use became associated would not have eased the ability of the subculture to successfully "reproduce" itself, especially among those young people for whom the psychedelic ethic was not so salient, who tended to experience the artistic forms in which this ethic had been expressed as alien facticities not of their own making, and who were seeking — perhaps above all — effective psychotropic vehicles for the expression of hedonism.

Evidence of there being some empirical substance to this latter proposition can be found in the results which emerged from one attempt that has been made in this country to ascertain the possible extent of such "generational" change. This is a study carried out over a ten-year interval at Middlesex Polytechnic in North London, based upon the responses of students from different faculties to a questionnaire administered first in the years 1968-70 and again in 1978.3 Analysis of the responses obtained in the earlier period revealed a steadily increasing incidence of marijuana use among students over the period in question, reaching an average of over one-third of students (and in the case of Social Science students, no less than half) admitting to past or current use, and a clear majority in favour of legalising the drug. As the authors of the study themselves acknowledge, if this trend had been sustained marijuana use would fairly rapidly have become "normalized". In addition to an increase in the total incidence of use, that is to say, one could have expected a greater proportion of non-users both to have acquaintances who used the drug, to disbelieve traditional stereotypes about its effects (most notably ideas about its being addictive and causing users to escalate to heroin), and generally to see themselves as being little different from those who did use. One might also have expected them to be at least as much in favour of legalising marijuana as previously. Users, for their part, could have been expected (if one accepts the principles of Young's well-known deviancy-amplification thesis4) to have fewer acquaintances using heroin and also to be at least as much in favour of legalizing the drug as previously. In the event, however, none of these possibilities were confirmed by the data which, on the contrary, demonstrated the existence of a trend in the opposite direction, towards what the authors term the increasing "ghettoization" of the activity. Of course, in order to be granted the status of a general trend within student culture — let alone the community at large — such findings would need to be corroborated by data derived from similar studies carried out elsewhere. Nevertheless, they do suggest the necessity of proceeding with caution to those who, in their disposition to regard marijuana use as a taken-forgranted and now almost entirely acceptable activity among young people, have presupposed that it can unproblematically be "handed down" from one generation or age group to the next. Again, quite apart from the possible difficulties involved in socializing neophytes into the activity in ways likely to ensure that they enjoy the experience associated with it once a proselytizing culture no longer exists,5 one ought to bear in mind the kinds of symbols and images with which by about the mid-'70s marijuana use had come to be associated in the eyes of many young people then in their 'teens and early '20s: not, in all probability, very appealing ones.

By the same token, there is a case for arguing that if the recently-reported increase in the use of alcohol and other "hard" drugs by teenagers is in fact genuine (rather than being merely one of the more visible symptoms of an emerging "moral panic" about teenage drug use, whatever the sources of this might be'), then it provides a still further comment upon the validity of both conventional ideas about escalation and conventional justifications for the illiberal policies which have consistently been adopted toward marijuana use. Insofar as the foregoing analysis is correct, for example, it might reasonably be suggested that any movement away from marijuana use among those in their 'teens and early '20s may have had less to do with the efficacy of the official control measures currently in operation than with their preference for "harder" drugs whose effects are somewhat less dependent upon ambiguous social and cultural factors and whose enjoyment correspondingly remains less encumbered by the symbolic properties that were attributed to marijuana by the counter-culture of the late 1960s.

At all events, before they congratulate themselves for having restricted the availability of marijuana and thereby put it beyond the financial reach of the young, causing them (or so it has been alleged by some of their critics) to turn to drink instead, those involved in the enterprise of law-enforcement might do well to remember two things: firstly, the combination of Carey's "contagion effect" and the growth of domestic cultivation, both discussed earlier, which, together with the increasing involvement of organized crime in the trafficking of the drug, have done much to maintain its availability; and secondly, what one might term the built-in economy of marijuana use: the fact (also noted earlier) that it is possible for several people to obtain an "acceptable social high" from a single joint, whereas the consumption of rather more than one drink each would usually be required for the same number of people to achieve anything resembling a similar state of intoxication with alcohol — with the considerable (and undoubtedly far greater) per capita cost that this would inevitably involve. The argument that marijuana is necessarily either more difficult to obtain or more costly than alcohol, or can at least fairly easily be made to become so, is, in short, far from convincing. That there are many who have a vested interest in persuading policy-makers and the general public as to its validity should not be allowed to obscure the important principle that people's motives for taking (and preferring) different drugs will usually owe at least as much if not more to the anticipated or actual effects obtained from them as to factors extraneous to the drug experience.

Such a principle may form the core of a contrasting and quite different argument: that it is the experience itself — the form in which it is perceived and, if actually undertaken, the degree of pleasure derived from it — that is nowadays most likely to generate motives for either pursuing or avoiding it. But however obvious it may appear to some, this source of motivation is still all too often neglected. Reflecting, perhaps, a naive faith in the ease with which the state can successfully shape and control individual behaviour merely by tinkering with the penal system, much attention is typically directed, instead, to the ways in which effective control over marijuana use might be maintained by either rationalizing the existing framework of legal regulations and enforcement practices or replacing them with others. The recently-published report of the study group on cannabis controls that was set up under the auspices of the British Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence in 1973, for example, devotes itself almost exclusively to such concerns. The following passage from the report is, I think, significant in this respect:

The Group agreed with an opinion expressed in the course of its enquiry that the greatest deterrent to cannabis use for many young people is the social disgrace and likely adverse effects on career prospects resulting from being caught and convicted .7

Admittedly, an interesting note of equivocation immediately follows:

While this proposition is incapable of proof by the nature of things, it is supported by common sense, experience, and some evidence in other fields besides drugs.8

But what exactly is the nature of this common sense, experience and evidence, and whence do these derive? Certainly, if a "cost-benefit" approach is employed as the basis for policy formulation — and the prevailing model here does seem to be a Benthamite one involving the notion of the autonomous individual who rationalistically weighs up the likely costs and benefits of pursuing a particular course of action, deviant or otherwise — then the prospect of criminal conviction and its probable consequences clearly constitutes a very sizeable cost to be reckoned with. However, a number of points ought to be made here. Firstly, as we have already seen, (and as, indeed, the ISDD's report itself acknowledges), the majority of marijuana users are nowadays likely to view such a prospect as being a rather distant one. Insofar as this is the case, its empirical effectiveness as a deterrent necessarily becomes correspondingly slight. Secondly, one must remember that by no means all of those involved in the dubious enterprise of protecting people from themselves would agree that the prospect of conviction, even if a real one, is actually the most effective deterrent to use anyway. Advocates of the so-called "forbidden fruit" argument, on the contrary, would argue (however unconvincingly) that it is precisely the prospect of such conviction and the consequent risk involved that actually motivates many people to indulge in the practice. And besides, if any such agreement did exist, then presumably Harry Anslinger and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Narcotics would not have spent so much time and energy issuing their dire warnings of the dreadful fate awaiting those foolish enough to take up the "reefer" habit; nor would governments in more recent times be commended by the advocates of a drug-free society both for attempting to place marijuana beyond the financial reach of young people and for consistently using the tax instrument as a means of discouraging the consumption of alcohol and cigarettes. Particularly in a situation where the prospect of conviction is a fairly small one, in short, the cost that the user incurs with respect to his health, sanity and disposable income may credibly be deemed to outweigh the potential cost to his liberty or reputation as a respectable and law-abiding member of the community.

Finally, and perhaps most important, it is exceedingly doubtful whether people really do act in the rationalistic and autonomous manner presupposed by this utilitarian "cost-benefit" approach. Indeed, there are those — also concerned with devising effective methods of control — who would argue that one of the principal reasons why the "drug problem" in general is such an intractable one is because, on the contrary, those who "resort" to drugs (the word "resort" is itself significant) are typically the victims of some character defect — most commonly, a dependency syndrome — which functions both to limit the wisdom (or rationality) of their judgement and to render them vulnerable to entrapment by the "pusher" and/or the company of fellow users. Thus we may observe an important contradiction: on the one hand, this quite widespread belief that drugtaking is both "caused" and sustained by a deficit of rationality; on the other, a widely-held, if implicit, conception of the potential drugtaker as an entirely rational creature — someone very little different from ourselves — who can be kept from sinning and steered along the paths of righteousness by whatever "conditioning techniques" are currently deemed most effective: by, for example, the promise of rewards such as freedom and self-respect, good health and money in the bank; or by the threat of deprivations such as — at the extreme — loss of liberty, destitution and degradation, illness and possibly death. The former view encourages a "treatment" orientation in policymaking; the latter, inevitably, a more punitive approach. The fact that the two continue to co-exist, without any apparent prospect of agreement between their advocates, may itself help to account for the confused way in which control agencies attempt — and generally fail — to deal with the drug problem. But this theme cannot be pursued here. In the current context, the more important point is to recognize the possible objections to and probable empirical limitations of any control system based unambiguously upon a utilitarian or, what I have termed "cost-benefit", conception of human motivation.

Nevertheless, it would be mistaken to identify my own position with the one held by those — most commonly members of the medical profession' — who have traditionally been the most prominent critics of this conception. It is, after all, one thing to acknowledge the existence of certain constraints upon the exercise of "rational" decision-making; it is quite another to credit those who become drugtakers with a psychological inability to act rationally. On the other hand, the fact that drugtaking is commonly a social activity, with drugtakers acting as members of groups or collectivities rather than as the atomized, asocial units typically assumed by the utilitarian model, does not mean that they are insufficiently autonomous to release themselves from what Fritz Redl terms "the handcuffs of the peer group code" if they so choose. I have myself, in the preceding chapters, laid stress upon the part played by social constraints in influencing drugtaking behaviour and structuring the drug experience itself. If these constraints were insurmountable, however, it would have been necessary to invoke a quite different form of explanation from the one I have offered for the changes and anomalies that have been at issue in this book. And I have already suggested reasons for doubting the plausibility of the alternative explanations that most readily come to mind.

A principal implication of the foregoing, then, may perhaps best be expressed in the form of the proposition that if in the first instance it is the perceived nature of marijuana use — not just the experience itself but the kind of person one will be if one has it — that is most likely to encourage the uninitiated to either undertake or avoid the activity, once use has actually taken place, it is the sensed pleasurability (or otherwise) of the activity that provides the central determining motive for continued use. Such a proposition, I recognize, bears notable similarities to the perspective first developed by Howard Becker nearly a quarter of a century ago ( and too often neglected since). Thus, in the concluding words of his original article on the subject: "The act (i.e. marijuana use) becomes impossible only when the ability to enjoy the experience of being high is lost, through a change in the user's conception of the drug occasioned by certain kinds of experience with it".-11

In no way do I disagree with this; it is only in the explanation for such an eventuality that our perspectives diverge. For Becker, the hallmark of these experiences is their unpleasant or frightening quality, and his explanation for them is an unambiguously pharmacological one. They occur, he writes, " . . . either because (the people in question) have used a larger amount of marihuana than usual or because the marihuana they have used turns out to be of a higher quality than they expected".1 2 The approach offered here, in contrast, would suggest that in a great many cases the decision to discontinue marijuana use actually has very little to do with pharmacology; rather, it has to do with the sociological fact that the pleasurability of the activity is a social construction and more times than not highly precarious, being very much contingent upon the kinds of social situations in which it takes place and the kinds of social meanings which these situations contain. Ultimately it is these situations which exercise social control over the activity of marijuana use, in the sense that it is only at this situational level that practical answers will be found to the three crucial questions of (a) whether the activity is to be deemed appropriate to them in the first place; (b) what kinds of constraints will come to be placed upon the behaviour associated with it if it is; and (c) what kinds of behavioural outcomes will follow from the way in which such constraints are identified, negotiated and subjectively experienced by the individuals in question. As I have tried to make clear already, the particular structure of ideas, beliefs and preconceptions about the activity that is currently dominant within the wider society will inevitably play a significant part in shaping the answers to these questions that are actually chosen.

The notion thus implied of drugtakers exercising their own forms of social control, acting to varying degrees in response to the forms of control that law-makers, law-enforcers and spokesmen for the law-abiding public attempt to impose from without, inevitably has a bearing, finally, upon the continuing debate about the likely consequences and, specifically, practical control problems arising from an easing of the prohibition on marijuana use. Of course, the issues arising from the possible (or, in the case of certain other countries, actual) introduction of more liberal control policies have already inspired a considerable literature, and cannot be examined in any detail here. But a major implication of the themes addressed in this study is that knowledge about the likely consequences of any changes in formal, legal control structures will inevitably tend to remain fragile and incomplete unless full consideration is given to the effects of possible changes in the informal — and much less immediately visible — control structures impinging upon marijuana use. As I have tried to indicate, these informal control structures and the kinds of tacit rules that they comprise may have a crucial bearing upon the meanings and typical effects of marijuana and — insofar as these generate motives for marijuana use — the likely demand for the substance in different social groups. It cannot safely be assumed that particular changes in them will automatically or swiftly follow changes in the formal structures: the two need not be causally related to one another in any simple, one-to-one fashion. Much like any other commodity, the mere availability of marijuana in itself provides no effective guarantee of an adequate or stable level of demand for it. Doubtless this is something about which any intending commercial supplier of the drug, optimistically formulating contingency plans for its eventual legalization, would not need to be reminded. However, in the case of existing agencies of control, where "demand management" is also a central preoccupation (though obviously for quite different reasons), such considerations, as I have tried to illustrate, are frequently obscured by a continuing faith in more traditional ideas about what it is that encourages people to engage in — or avoid — deviant or illicit activities. Thus a prevalent assumption (or perhaps one should say anxiety: it is articulated more than once in the recent report of the ISDD study group) is that use of the drug would be likely to increase substantially if formal controls were relaxed. But evidence contained in studies of what happened in the American states of Oregon and California following the decriminalization of the activity' 3 offers little support for this assumption. And I have already referred to other studies which recorded people as saying that any decision on their part to discontinue marijuana use was unaffected or only peripherally affected by its illegality.

Now in saying this, let me hasten to point out, I am in no way attempting to suggest that in the event of the repeal of prohibition marijuana use will not be institutionalized as a semi-permanent feature of life in a significant section of society. On the contrary, I believe that this is likely to occur — indeed, has to some degree already occurred — irrespective of any marked changes in the formal control structures. It is likely, for one thing, that the passing of time and the gradual emergence of more favourable public attitudes toward marijuana use will have already weakened the potency of the key sources of informal control identified in the last chapter. To the extent, for example, that negative and alarmist pronouncements concerning the disinhibiting (or even psychotogenic) effects of the drug have declined in frequency or become increasingly lacking in credibility, so an important contributing component of the emphasis upon coolness will have been removed. There may, indeed, have developed the slightly ironic situation in which a growing number of marijuana users — by virtue of a greater mastery over the direction of the drug experience and/or a lesser felt need to act otherwise — are discovering, or rediscovering, the pleasures to be derived from the kind of role-playing or unserious behaviour that might, to some, appear consistent with the traditional "dope fiend" stereotype at the very time when the plausibility of this stereotype within conventional society itself has considerably diminished. Linked with this, secondly, is the fact that the easier availability and use of the drug, together with the steady loss of its symbolic properties as an index of social differentiation, will have increasingly undermined many of the romantic — but ultimately, as I tried earlier to suggest, socially pernicious — ideas about its capacity to generate personal growth. And in any case, many of those who are seriously involved in the pursuit of such growth have become disillusioned with drugs as a means for bringing it about, and moved on to what are now seen as less frivolous pastimes. Both developments will also have helped to restore the status of marijuana use as genuinely recreational activity, as something which is essentially fun. Finally, to the extent that it is reflected in an increase in the numbers of people who purchase or cultivate (as well as merely consume) marijuana, the easier availability of the drug is also likely to have had the consequence of further reducing the size of the typical drug-using group and/or facilitating the development of something resembling a "round system" within it. Where either or both of these possibilities occur, mutual misconceptions and interpretative dilemmas of the kind referred to in the last chapter will be correspondingly diminished.' 4

For those who practise it, then, a number of important constraints upon the pleasurability of marijuana use may well have been eroded over the past few years, irrespective of any action undertaken by the state and formal, official control agencies with regard to the activity. If this is indeed the case, it might at first glance suggest that unless the state now takes drastic action in an attempt to reverse the trend, the way is now clear for marijuana use to begin increasing again to the point where, as was predicted in the late 1960s, it vies with or even eventually displaces alcohol as the primary recreational intoxicant in our society. However, I am inclined to believe that the chances of this happening are actually very slender, and not merely because of the Oregon and California data referred to above (which perhaps no longer provide a very reliable basis upon which to predict future trends anyway). For in the last analysis, the most important question is probably that of whether, even in spite of such changes, marijuana continues and will continue to be regarded as essentially a drug which heightens awareness. For as long as it is so regarded, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely to present a serious challenge to the position held for so long and with such cornspicuous success by alcohol.

Now such a view, of course, may appear unduly pessimistic to some of marijuana's advocates, especially those who in support of their arguments for legal reform have cited, precisely, alcohol's comparatively greater potential for causing its users harm. It may also appear to neglect the likely consequences upon interpersonal relationships and, by implication, upon patterns of drugtaking, of the increasing toleration (if not overt encouragement) of forms of behaviour premised upon an ethic of hedonism, sensory gratification and the pursuit of self-awareness. However, it should be recognized that the same social processes that have encouraged the pursuit of hedonism and subjectivity have also generated (some would say necessitated) great increases in social differentiation and socio-geographical mobility.' s This has important implications, for the more mobile people are and the more highly differentiated society as a whole becomes, the greater the need — as Emile Durkheim so clearly realized — for adequate sources of social integration. Too often, of course, these have been lacking. (Indeed, the image of the isolated two-generation family has been invoked so often in discussions about the quality of life under contemporary capitalism as to appear little more than a tired cliche). But this is not to say that the very system which has effectively destroyed so many traditional sources of integration has not relentlessly pursued the attempt to institute new ones — provided, that is, that they can be counted upon to produce a profit for their instigators. Advertising, for example, is replete with messages which state or imply that mere ownership of a particular commodity provides the purchaser with the necessary passport for entry into a new and more fully social lifestyle, and has over the years been often criticized on such grounds.

Perhaps nowhere, however, is the theme of community and the possibility of regaining it more evident than in advertising for alcohol. As the slogan "Beefeater Gin mixes people perfectly" referred to in Chapter 2 so clearly illustrates, alcohol is widely portrayed as a pre-eminently sociable drug. Now if my earlier argument on the subject is correct, this cannot be regarded solely as the product of some sort of conspiracy on the part of the brewing companies and their advertising agencies. On the contrary, it is precisely a function of the pharmacological properties traditionally attributed to alcohol in most Western societies to have to some degree enabled it to serve as a source of social integration in its own right. To repeat Kessel and Walton's remarks on the matter: "Strangers relax and mingle if alcohol is provided . . . Oiling the social wheels is at the centre of society's approbation of regulated drinking."1 6To the extent that both of these statements are correct, one should, I think, seek to understand them at least as much in terms of the effects of alcohol's widespread reputation as a depressant, as a drug which is likely to render people less aware of one another's differences and the problematics of social interaction, as in terms of the effects of the manner in which alcohol's advertisers commonly attempt to sell it.

Viewing marijuana in the light of such considerations as these, I am tempted to offer some tentative predictions by way of conclusion. So long as it is predominantly regarded as a drug which heightens awareness, its potential as a social lubricant, a taken-forgranted aid to sociability suited to a variety of different social settings, is likely to be somewhat limited. Far from relaxing and mingling when they use it, strangers (or even people who are better known to one another than the word "strangers" suggests) may, in the absence of shared values, simply become uncomfortably aware of one another's differences; uncomfortably aware, too, of the kinds of tacit rules or interactional rituals which tend to structure their relationships with one another. In using marijuana, in short, they may become even more socially inhibited than they might have remained otherwise. Insofar as it thus fails to "oil the social wheels" effectively, marijuana will — at least in Kessel and 'Walton's terms — fail equally to receive "society's" general approbation. An important practical consequence of this will be the institutionalization of fairly tight limits upon the range of situations in which marijuana use is deemed appropriate; important principally because unless it is considered appropriate, any erosion of constraints upon the pleasurability of the activity in the way outlined above clearly counts for very little. In such circumstances, it seems likely that marijuana use will retain the somewhat cliquish quality that it still possesses now, being predominantly confined to those intimate settings in which the people involved know and trust one another sufficiently well as to expect and be likely to find the experience of heightened awareness more productive of euphoria than of dysphoria. This does not mean, however, that it will not earn the approbation of that (apparently increasing) section of society whose members are involved in the production and sale of leisure goods and services; for whether it remains largely confined to such intimate settings or not, it is more than likely that whatever potential it has for enhancing sensory appreciation of the world of non-social objects will continue to be fully exploited — possibly even more vigorously than it has been already. Social integration between individuals, in short, should not be conflated with "system integration" between institutions.' Marijuana use may be unconducive to the former, yet at the same time be highly conducive to the latter. One might suggest, somewhat cynically, that the social "acceptability" of marljuana use in times to come may ultimately hinge upon this distinction.

However, all such predictions are necessarily hazardous. My own is offered more as a stimulus to discussion than as an attempt at providing a definitive scenario for the future, which only a fool would embark upon. Nevertheless, it does seem clear that a central problem is one involving such questions as the extent to which marijuana is currently regarded as a drug which heightens awareness and sensitivity and, if it is, by whom, with what consequences, and for how long can one expect it to continue being so regarded. Such questions are far from being merely academic. Only if researchers and policy-makers take them seriously and develop research programmes which are capable of securing answers to them will it be possible, I believe, to devise policies for the regulation of marijuana use that are based upon something more than an unhelpful combination of ignorance, guesswork and wishful thinking and that, in their application, are reasonably successful in accomplishing what they set out to accomplish. For too long there has been a dearth of informed debate on this important aspect of the subject. When one is dealing with a phenomenon that has affected the lives of so very many people in contemporary society, and will without doubt continue to do so, such a state of affairs should surely not be tolerated.