INTRODUCTION

Since the use of marijuana' first started becoming widespread among white middle class youth in the mid-1960s, vast amounts of time, money and emotional energy have been devoted to eliminating it or at least containing its growth. Even if public and official attitudes towards the activity are now changing, the business of justifying, enforcing and sustaining the legal ban upon it has over the course of the intervening period filled thousands of columns of newsprint, occupied countless man-hours of police time, and clogged up courts, remand centres and prisons with suspected or proven users of the drug to a degree that has elicited certain misgivings even amongst some of its previously firm opponents. Few would find it easy to deny that the taxpaying public has paid a heavy price for all these activities. In a situation where an increasing proportion of the public has allegedly been composed of people who actually use marijuana, it is somewhat ironic that they should so often have been justified in terms of an appeal to notions of popular consent.

However, a central and clearly very important question is just what effect this intensity of control effort has really had upon the phenomenon of marijuana use. Has it had any significant effect at all? And if so, what has been its precise nature? Unfortunately there are very few reliable data in this area. In this country no attempt has been made to carry out a nationwide prevalence survey since mid-1973, and it is difficult to extrapolate from the differing findings contained in other more limited prevalence surveys in a way which would entitle one to make even an informed guess at the total numbers of people who, in defiance of ban, have on one or more occasions decided to use the drug. Nevertheless, few would doubt that the number of such people has increased quite substantially over the course of the last two decades. The national Midweek survey, whose findings were made public by BBC television in August 1973, announced for example that close on four million people in the United Kingdom had admitted to having used the drug. Whatever reservations one might have about the national representativeness of the sample used for this survey,' it cannot be denied that such a figure represented a very considerable increase upon the upper limit of 300,000 estimated by the 1968 Wootton report,' the document whose findings and recommendations had largely defined the parameters of public debate on the issue prior to this. If anything resembling such a substantial increase could indeed have occurred in the five year period from 1968 to 1973, it seems unreasonable to suppose that a further increase of some (at present undefined) magnitude will not have occurred in the period of well over five more years that has elapsed since. This becomes all the more likely if one considers, even if only momentarily, the cumulative effect of a progressive breakdown in the controls whose normal function is precisely to prevent such increases from occurring. As Howard Becker has pointed out in a now classic article on the subject to which I am indebted for the title of this book,' the effectiveness of the legal ban upon marijuana in deterring people from using the substance considerably depends upon the maintenance of both difficulties in their actually getting hold of it, difficulties in their using it without undue fear of detection and consequent sanctions, and difficulties in their justifying such use to themselves and to others in a context where it is commonly regarded as physically dangerous and morally reprehensible. However, as we shall see in more detail presently, it seems clear that the more users there are, the less likely is it that any of these three factors will constitute a powerful source of constraint; and the more, in turn, will use be likely to increase. In such circumstances, the chances of arresting the whole process without massively increasing police resources and/or legal penalties (each of which is likely to prove contentious or impracticable or both) inevitably come to depend increasingly upon the state's ability to effect a successful clamp-down on supply. But as we shall see later, this does not appear to have happened.

At first sight, then, there might seem to be good grounds for suggesting that the ban upon marijuana use and the diligent attempts of control agents to enforce it have not been highly successful in persuading people to refrain from the activity. However, even were this not actually the case, the relationship between marijuana use and social control may well be considerably more complex than most conventional ideas about the inhibiting effects of ban — Becker's included — would seem to allow. Part of my intention in this study is, precisely, to reveal something of the nature and extent of this complexity, focusing in particular upon the events of a fairly specific historical period — the early 1970s. In so doing, I hope to uncover a dimension of social control that has too often been neglected in public and academic discussion about marijuana use. In what remains of this introduction, I shall try to clarify these remarks. At the same time I shall, I hope, manage to persuade the reader of the justification for providing yet a further addition to the already voluminous literature on marijuana.

My starting point is an unoriginal one. However much uncertainty and difference of opinion there may be about the exact numbers of people who historically have either observed or failed to observe the prohibition upon marijuana use, it seems to be generally agreed that the nature and extent of social reaction to the activity in the 1960s had a profound effect upon the kinds of social meanings with which it became imbued. The conventional interpretation assigned to such a now almost platitudinous statement is that by virtue of its illegality and the features of the social situations in which its users consequently found themselves, marijuana acquired the exotic status of a forbidden fruit. Correspondingly, its use was celebrated and its effects romanticized. It is this interpretation which one finds endorsed by the sociologist Jock Young in his statement that the growth of police concern with drug-taking, particularly among hippies, historically transformed what might otherwise have remained a peripheral activity into a central one of great symbolic importance:

". . . marihuana (came) to be consumed not only for its euphoric effects but as a symbol of bohemianism and rebellion against an unjust system."5

Perhaps more significantly, it is this interpretation that one can also distinguish in the statements periodically issued by official bodies or their individual members expressing concern lest the mystique that had thus become attached to marijuana should impair their control efforts still further by enhancing its appeal to those who might otherwise have remained unattracted by the substance. In the United States, for example, the authors of the much-publicized Schafer report could be found suggesting that use of the drug might conceivably decline of its own accord if and when it became divested of its symbolic importance.' The implied (and, in Young's case, explicit) recommendation to control agencies was thus to "play it cool". However, a curious aspect of the whole business is that the exact nature of marijuana's imputed mystique, the dimensions of its impact upon the actual behaviour of those marijuana users whom it encompassed, and the possible consequences of its being sustained, no matter how tacitly — these issues were never fully analysed. At least where the actual supporters of ban were concerned, it seems as if virtually the sole preoccupation was with people's initial motivation for either taking or avoiding the drug. The key problem, in other words, seems to have been defined as one of whether the effectiveness of control measures would in practice be negated or undermined by their simultaneously serving to enhance the symbolic status — and hence appeal — of the drug.

Now in one sense this may appear less surprising if one considers for a moment the likely impact of two important features of what has for long passed as conventional wisdom about marijuana use. These concern, respectively, the dominant conception of the sources of the drug's apparent effects and the dominant conception of the likely fate awaiting the person who develops a desire (or, more accurately, need) to experience them. As we shall see more clearly later on, both user and non-user conceptions about the actual effects of marijuana have traditionally been strongly positivistic in character: the tendency has been for the particular effects that the user experiences to be attributed first and foremost to the quantity and/or quality of the drug he has ingested. Clear illustrations of this tendency can be found in the text of a book published only a few years ago whose reliance upon the "first-hand" reports of users themselves is claimed by its authors to bring about "a demystification of the cannabis experience".7 At one point, for example, they say that "one of the first changes pot initiates is in the quantity of conversation. The sheer number of words being exchanged increases enormously".8 Elsewhere, on the other hand, it is said that "Cannabis leads people to explore their internal realities . . . the smoker, as he gets high, does not simply become introverted, rather he becomes introspective".9 Now clearly the most immediately striking feature of these two statements is their apparent inconsistency, and it might well be asked whether such inconsistency does not, on the contrary, serve more to mystify than to demystify in the absence of any attempt to account for it. In the present context, however, their more important significance resides in the clear testimony that they provide to a positivistic conception of marijuana's effects. Paradoxical though this may appear, I would suggest that a key consequence of this enduring reliance upon positivism has been to inhibit analysis of the social meanings of marijuana use. Because pharmacology has been deemed to play so important a role in determining the specific character of drug effects, the implications of the fact that the drug experience is also very much a social experience have too often been neglected.

Compounding the blinkering effect of this positivistic legacy, secondly, have I think been the side-effects of the still surviving stereotype of the marijuana user as someone who, if he does not "escalate" to heroin, becomes either psychologically dependent upon the drug and/or ensnared by the "pusher" and the doubtful company of fellow-users. An almost unavoidable corollary of the embodiment of this stereotype in both official and public thinking about marijuana use in the '60s and early '70s was the existence of a widespread belief that the person who had "fallen victim" to marijuana was virtually beyond redemption. In effect, given the almost equally wide-spread belief that he must be someone who lacked the strength of will necessary to resist the lure of the drug and its advocates, the most that could be done to rescue him from their influence was to subject him to various forms of harassment and/or cut off his supply of the drug. Correspondingly, appeals to reason (or, more commonly, lurid reminders as to the supposedly dreadful consequences of marijuana use), were likely to be considered more effective if directed at those who had not so far crossed the invitational edge of the phenomenon. If, moreover, one could fully understand what actually "caused" young people to take illicit drugs in the first place, then the deterrent effectiveness of such appeals would possibly be enhanced still further.

Partly for such reasons as these, therefore, it was the population "at risk" that consistently received most attention from the various control agencies. However, as Kenneth Burke has often been quoted as saying, a way of seeing is always a way of not seeing.' ° And I would contend that this peculiar combination of a highly positivistic conception about marijuana's effects, a continuing faith in stereotypical ideas concerning dependence and/or escalation, and a widespread preoccupation with preventing people from even experimenting with marijuana, largely obscured or inhibited an appreciation of other possibilities. A most significant consequence was that no satisfactory explanation was provided for certain changes in patterns of marijuana use that subsequently occurred among (apparently) a large section of those people who had been using the drug in the late '60s and early '70s. Confronted with the phenomenon — which nobody denied — of alcohol's growing return into favour, even among the population "at risk", the social meanings that had become attached to marijuana use were largely ignored. Instead, a curious alliance developed: though they understandably expressed very different feelings on the matter, both marijuana users (or ex-users) and members of control agencies could be found agreeing that any movement away from marijuana use could most plausibly be attributed to factors external to the drug experience. In the event, the most important factor seems to have been judged by both to be the activities of control agencies. Consequently, much emphasis was place upon the supposedly increasing scarcity and (correspondingly) high price and/or poor quality of the drug. Yet in their respective concern to argue for either the abolition or the maintenance of existing control measures, both parties to the debate ironically overlooked the important fact that many actual users, when asked why they had ceased or diminished their use of the drug, reported that they had simply lost interest in it.

If, on the other hand, more attention had been paid to the changing social meanings of marijuana use and some of their possible effects, a rather different and more complex form of explanation might have appeared to commend itself. A principal aim and rationale of this book is to develop just such an explanation. It will also, in the process of doing this, attempt to point to some of the limitations of dominant conceptions about the relationship between marijuana use and social control. However unwelcome such a conclusion may seem to those who believe — or would like to believe — that it is possible to exercise effective control over drugtaking through purely formal means, I hope to make it clear that an adequate understanding of the factors involved in the social control of marijuana use — and, for that matter, other forms of drugtaking — cannot be acquired by confining one's attention to official control agencies and institutions and examining the nature and immediate consequences of their activities alone. In addition, I suggest, one has to look at the ways in which the kinds of social meanings that become attached to drugtaking in any given historical period are capable of exercising control over the activity.

Before embarking upon the task of trying to elucidate these remarks, it may be helpful to provide a brief outline of the structure of the book. First of all it is clearly necessary to situate the analysis both historically and in terms of the particular problems which it sets out to address. In the chapter which follows, therefore, I shall review some of the manifestations of public and official reaction to marijuana use in the early 1970s, paying attention first to the interlocking activities of the various control agencies involved and proceeding then to consider the difficult question of the extent of their effectiveness in actually accomplishing the objectives that they set themselves. Even if viewed purely from a theoretical standpoint this issue of effectiveness is a crucial one; for whilst I believe that there are grounds for remaining very sceptical about the degree to which these agencies were successful in deterring people from actually using marijuana, it is a key argument of the book that the practical and ideological problems that their functioning posed for users assisted in setting certain subtle limitations upon the sustained pleasurability of he activity. Subsequent chapters explore this possibility in some detail, taking as their central focus the problem of providing a coherent sociological account for some of the anomalies and changes in the dominant patterns of marijuana use that apparently occurred in this country (and also in certain other highly industrialized Western societies) during the early 1970s: particularly the return into favour of alcohol — a drug that had previously been scorned by many users — and the recurring finding that by comparison with the reported numbers of people who had "ever" used the drug, the numbers of those becoming regular users of it were curiously remaining consistently low. Chapter 2 presents some of the evidence for such changes, and discusses the extent to which it challenges the then prevalent conception of marijuana as the "new social drug". It also considers some of the evidence against positivistic explanations of the drug's effects. This latter point is treated in more detail in the two following chapters, which are concerned respectively with the factors of "set" and "setting". Chapter 3 examines the social and cultural origins of the neophyte's expectations about marijuana's effects; whilst Chapter 4, taking a lead from David Matza's phenomenological analysis of the marijuana experience,' 1 looks at the ways in which the social situation confronting him may manage to transform these into a distinctive subjective reality. The chapter concludes with a reexamination of some of the effects commonly attributed to marijuana. Against this background, Chapters 5 and 6 attempt to provide an explanation for the anomalies and changes referred to in Chapter 2. The analysis proceeds through two stages. Chapter 5 examines the declining ideological and symbolic support for the activity as reflected in certain of the contributions to the British "underground" press in the early 1970s. Utilising an ideal-typical conception of marijuana use as a career, Chapter 6 then goes on to look at the various constraints which are, or were, likely to impinge upon the subject should he progress beyond the neophyte stage and become confirmed as a regular and experienced user of the drug. The changes and anomalies referred to earlier are seen as representing what historically were in effect adaptations to the limitations upon the pleasurability of marijuana use produced by these constraints. Finally, in Chapter 7, some of the research and policy implications arising from this analysis are considered.

The book, then, endeavours to embrace both macro and micro levels of analysis; to treat both social and situational factors. Even within its own specified area of reference, however, it is inevitable that certain features will receive more detailed treatment than others. I shall have little to say, for example, about the organization and functioning of the social control bureaucracies that developed in response to the creation of the "drug problem" in the 1960s. Nor shall I have much to say about the structure and operation of the drug supply network. Whilst both of these constitute between them an important backdrop to the present study, the detailed analysis — arguably even the very observation — of either of them would, I feel, have required a personal commitment and identity of a kind that I myself have consciously eschewed. Although the polarized character of much thinking on the issue of marijuana use might appear to demand it, I have tried to avoid "taking sides" where doing so might have unnecessarily restricted the scope of the resulting analysis.' 2 Rather than allying myself wholly with either those who uphold the existing law or those who have chosen to violate it, I have, instead, elected to pursue a possibly more hazardous middle path. It would be foolish to deny that I have certain sympathies. However, these lie more with the drug marijuana itself than with those who have uncritically sought either to proselytize or to prohibit its use. One of my principal aims, indeed, will be to rescue it from the constricting embrace of those who steadfastly maintain that it "does" either this or that to whoever uses it. Erich Goode summarizes much of the thinking which has guided my approach to the subject when he writes that "the most interesting thing about a drug to a sociologist is not what it does but what it is thought to do. In fact, what it is thought to do often has a great impact on what it actually does".' In a context where, after a long period in the doldrums, the issue of possible changes in the legal status of marijuana has once again been attracting public concern in this country, such matters would appear to demand serious consideration. After all, the scale of popular demand for the substance (and, by implication, the kinds of controls that might be thought necessary to regulate it) is inevitably governed to a considerable degree, precisely, by what it does or is expected to do. Indeed, if one accepts the not unreasonable principle that people will tend to court those experiences that they find or anticipate finding pleasurable and to avoid those that they do not, then one can make out a good case for arguing that empirically this is the single most important factor in influencing people to indulge in or abstain from its use. Yet — as I hope will become fully apparent — the pleasurability of the marijuana experience should by no means be taken for granted. Nor, in cases where its pleasurability is in doubt, should this be seen as being unrelated to the whole framework of social control in existence at the time. To assign this the label of a historical study, therefore, does not mean it might not also be a study that possesses some contemporary relevance.