How do people know what to think about marijuana legalization? Is the media responsible for our opinions? If so, how do people develop differing opinions? Questions like these are essential for understanding the legalization discourse. However, although excellent work has been done in these areas,1 the underlying structure that provides the basis for a person’s evaluation of knowledge is lacking in our understanding of the legalization debate. Thus, what makes one person “for” legalization (medical or otherwise) and one “against” is not solely the question in which we should be interested. Rather, it is important to understand the underlying knowledge constructs for opinions about marijuana legalization, and these can crosscut the categories of pro- and anti-legalization.
Therefore, although it was clear that many participants generally could be placed into the categories of “for” or “against” legalization—particularly when pressed for an answer—many of them held positions that were substantially more nuanced than a simple pro or con regarding the legalization of marijuana. Additionally, although examining the positions of different groups from teachers to law enforcement officers is essential to understanding the legalization debate, in part what it lacks is an explanation of how these individuals come to their positions. Though any attempt to examine that question fully is fraught, this chapter and the following two chapters examine parts of that question by looking across groups to see how individuals framed different issues important to their understanding of the legalization debate. Moreover, because no one develops opinions in a vacuum, we try in these chapters to relate these framing issues to larger issues in society.
Chapter 9 examines specifically the question of how respondents see the ideas of knowledge and expertise within the legalization debate. How individuals see these social constructs, or at least how they discuss them, is intimately linked with how they see the legalization debate moving forward. It is also essential to understand what kinds of information and expertise are admissible to individuals, as these strongly affect whether, how, and how completely an individual believes marijuana should be legalized. As such, this chapter and the next two link participant beliefs about the legalization debate to wider trends within society, taking seriously C. Wright Mills’s call to link biography to history in the context of social structure.2
In this discussion, we hope that these characteristics help readers understand not only how groups are dealing with the legalization debate, but some of the key elements within the debate that have become important across groups. This, in turn, may help to anticipate future conversations about the legalization of what have historically been considered “vices,” like prostitution or gambling.3 If nothing else, the findings in this chapter should drive interesting discussions.
Knowledge within Society
How knowledge is constituted within society is a contested question.4 Perhaps even more so when the knowledge in question touches directly on issues of politics or crime.5 The question of whether or not to legalize marijuana touches both, making it a particularly interesting area to explore questions of knowledge formation, what information people use to formulate their opinions on marijuana, and what types of information they value in forming these opinions.
Given that the development of knowledge is a political topic—after all, all definitions are arguments6—it is appropriate to examine some of the literature on the subject of knowledge in modern society. One frame of reference that is helpful in understanding the modern constitution of knowledge is Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society,7 in which he examines part of the contestation that we see in the debate regarding marijuana legalization. Specifically, he explores the role of expertise and the changing constellations of knowledge creation in late modernity—a time in Western society characterized by important technological reliance on science but increasing mistrust of scientists and the scientific method.8
Beck and Giddens,9 who make a similar claim, believe that the role of experts—and particularly scientists—is declining in society while reliance on complicated scientific concepts and tools is becoming increasingly important. This has significant implications regarding how people see and accept different conceptions of knowledge. Specifically, there are those who hold to the modernist framework in which scientists tend to be held in a kind of intellectual awe, with their findings considered, if not irrefutable, certainly of greater significance than experiential knowledge. Others, however—and perhaps a growing part of society as we move further into late modernity10—have come to view science as fallible and scientists as part of a larger system that may fail in both its findings as well as its methods of knowledge creation.
Beck and Giddens both argue that this debate about the roles of knowledge and expertise has, in part, reframed how society operates. Specifically, they argue that risk has become the central organizational principle within Western society during late modernity, with different groups essentially attempting to negotiate risk among a variety of factors, many of which are beyond their control. This, in turn, leads to existential anxiety. Other authors, notably Jock Young,11 have examined this anxiety in relation to elements like social identity and subcultural insularity.
These ideas about how knowledge has become more contested are apparent in the development of individual positions regarding the marijuana legalization debate. Notably, individuals have different criteria in terms of what constitutes, for them, acceptable sources of knowledge. These are often associated either with specific figures of expertise—notably doctors or scientists—or with individual experiential knowledge. In both cases, these ideas are reflective of a type of risk negotiation implied by Giddens and Beck. As is discussed more completely at the end of this chapter, individuals tended to disagree on risks in terms of their framing—either risks from marijuana, which were often characterized by a lack of official knowledge, or risks from not legalizing marijuana, which tended to focus around social issues related to legalization or the individual risk for things like pain from not taking the drug.
Findings
Examining the interview data regarding how individuals viewed marijuana legalization yielded interesting findings about their conceptualizations of knowledge and expertise. Notably, those interviewed broke down largely into two groups, though some individuals expressed sentiments from both. The knowledge issues focused on what kinds of information were credible and what types of expertise are acceptable upon which to base opinions regarding legalization.
Knowledge
Examining the question of knowledge, we encountered individuals who believed that the science was settled regarding marijuana, as well as those who believed that many issues surrounding marijuana use were open scientific questions. For instance, one of the participants interviewed suggested that “marijuana should be legal for medical reasons: it has been used for centuries by people all over the world.” The suggestion here is that society collectively knows the effects of marijuana already because people have been using it for a long time. This in turn suggests that the underlying structure of the knowledge is both historical and experiential in nature. We “know” about marijuana because people’s use of the drug extends back centuries.
Additional examples of this approach abound. For instance, one marijuana rights group advocate stated, “so for a vast majority of human history . . . cannabis has been legal at least in some form, utilized widely in many cases, so let’s get out of this little box of 1970 to 2017 and realize this has been around forever.” Another advocate stated, “this plant has been in use since like 3,000 BC in China and was cited over history as one of the most effective treatments for a number of the most devastating illnesses of our time, not just in Asia, but other places in the world as well.”
This view of marijuana, in turn, is contrasted with individuals who believe that the questions are still open. For instance, one respondent said, “If I were sick, I would only use it if there is proof that it worked. Right now there is no proof.” This suggests, in opposition to the previous examples, that the underlying structure of the knowledge regarding marijuana is scientific and experimental in nature.
Examples of both approaches occurred frequently, though they were not always as obvious as those in the previous quotations. One less-clear instance of the historical/experiential basis of knowledge can be seen in the response of a participant who said, “I would say that it’s [dosage limits for medical marijuana] more an individual basis. I mean, how do you know what dose works for me versus the other guy?” Though this seems less obvious than the first example, it still relies on the same assumptions. The respondent clearly thinks that medical marijuana has a benefit, which is implicit in the response, and the question regarding the role of doctors in determining the dosage was in response to their positive view of medicinal marijuana. This has been already decided and is not subject to further analysis. The experiential element is also implicit, suggesting that the dosage should be controlled by individuals because they best know their use and desired effects.
A second example of the scientific/experimental basis of knowledge can be seen in the context of the statement by a participant focused on her knowledge of marijuana as a medicine. She said, “I am not sure if it has medical benefits because I’m not a doctor.” This again implies that the knowledge underlying the idea of marijuana use is scientific in orientation (only scientists know if it’s useful as medicine) and experimental, which is implied in this case by the necessity of a scientific approach for its utility.
Although much of this knowledge structure was focused on the use of medical marijuana, it could also be seen in statements from participants who were speaking of adult use, or recreational marijuana use. For instance, one participant speaking of recreational use stated, “Marijuana is not a gateway drug. No proof that it is. People who use pot won’t turn to heroin. Lots of people use marijuana and never use anything else. Prescription drugs are more of a gateway drug than marijuana.”
This again suggests that evidence for marijuana’s safety—and implicitly for the desirability of its legalization—is to be found in the common knowledge historical record. Moreover, that evidence is experientially based: society has dealt with marijuana, and therefore we already know the effects.
The relationship between the historical/experiential knowledge base and proponents of legalization was not universal, however. Several individuals used this as a basis for opposing the drug, though often this was based on personal history rather than aggregate historical experience, as in many of the examples of the historical position (e.g., “people all over the world”). For instance, one participant stated, “From my experience, it just seems like young brains shouldn’t be exposed to marijuana, alcohol, or any other drugs.” This, though generally opposed to legalization, relies on the experience of the respondent as the basis for knowledge rather than any kind of scientific elements.
Although there were individuals who relied on the historical/experiential knowledge base for their support for legalization, many individuals did not support legalization. Many of the respondents relied on their perceptions of the scientific evidence to support their positions regarding legalization. One respondent, not a scientist or doctor, suggested “there are medical benefits to [using marijuana] . . . for anxiety and pain.” The statement that there is evidence of medical effectiveness demonstrates that many of the respondents were convinced of the veracity of the claims regarding marijuana—mostly those relating to medical use but also to the relative harm of using marijuana versus using alcohol use. Another example came from one of the marijuana business owners, who stated,
there is a plant here that not only works [inaudible] in our system, but we don’t have any sort of weird interactions with it. Our bodies are actually like accepting of this plant in our bodies. Everyone is always talking about the cure for cancer. Well, we have a plant that can reverse the growth of cancer cells and cause cancer cell death. That is a cure for cancer. It may not cure all cancers, but it cures enough. We’ve got kids who suddenly are not having seizures anymore and who are actually leading healthy lifestyles. I mean seizures are very debilitating, but they also cause a tremendous amount of brain trauma. Even rheumatoid arthritis—people who can’t move are suddenly able to use their hands again. I mean, this is crazy . . . that people can’t have this access and access to this plant.
Perhaps most interestingly, the same respondent not only talked about the supposed scientific knowledge involved in the medical uses of marijuana, but also spoke to personal use as a motivating factor contributing to the scientific knowledge we have about marijuana. She stated,
I started actually . . . really thinking about what healing and health looked like from a different perspective altogether, and I was using our product on myself, just to kind of see what the . . . impact would be on different things that were going on, you know, pain, sprains, all kinds of stuff.
Thus, she believes that although scientific evidence exists for medical uses, she also believes that her own personal “experimentation” with marijuana gives a credible sense that it is effective for specific medical uses. This also demonstrates that although the experiential/experimental knowledge functioned as a dichotomy, they are not truly oppositional, as a person can hold both views simultaneously.
Although this echoes some of the literature on marijuana,12 it is to this question—whether or not there is finality in the debate regarding the effects of marijuana—that we now turn in this analysis.
Room for Debate?
One of the dividing lines between knowledge and expertise within the debate regarding legalization is whether questions remain regarding marijuana’s safety. This, though largely following the lines of the historical/experiential versus scientific/experimental view, has several unique characteristics, making it a particularly useful area to examine how individuals conceive of knowledge and expertise within the legalization debate.
Broadly speaking, there are two positions our participants took regarding the evidence of the use of marijuana’s effects. The first position was taken by individuals who believed that the evidence was settled, that we know the effects of marijuana and that we should legislate accordingly. The second position was taken by individuals who believed that significant questions still remain regarding the effects of marijuana. For example, one of the educators who was interviewed stated, “research needs to be done to figure out dosage and stuff,” though the respondent added that “then it should be legalized.”
Although there was some overlap in terms of the positions taken by respondents regarding the abovementioned evidence and their positions on legalization, it’s important to recognize that individuals on all sides of the legalization debate held both positions on the openness of the effects of legalization, meaning that many legalization advocates acknowledged that questions remained regarding the effects of marijuana use and the implementation of any legalization scheme. On the other hand, many individuals who were opposed to legalization (medical and adult use), felt that the evidence regarding the effects of legalization—both on individuals and society—were settled.
Interestingly, some of those who were interviewed had significant issues with the research that was being done, and thus the scientific knowledge we had was not accurate even though scientific evidence itself was considered credible. For instance, one respondent (a marijuana business owner) stated
why would you use . . . the absolute worst product available . . . for your medical science, for your medical research, for your scientific research instead of the best products available? Because I think that what’s going to happen is, even in these studies that are being conducted, the efficacy and impact are severely affected by the quality of the product that’s being grown. And the quality of the product that’s being grown is abysmal at the federal level compared to what’s readily available from a thousand sources . . . in the state of Colorado, or Oregon, or California, or anyplace else where there’s a legal system in place.
Thus, even those individuals who wished to rely (at least in part) on scientific evidence see the issue as unresolved due to the quality of the studies that have been carried out. On the other hand, those who relied more on experiential evidence tended to believe that the matter was settled. For example, one of the law enforcement officers stated, “the problem is that kids use it and then they are screwed up for the rest of their lives,” and a teacher explained that “kids won’t succeed in the future. Marijuana affects young people’s minds permanently.” Both of these were predicated on their experience rather than on particular evidence established through either scientific or medical experimentation.
Some of the respondents were quite clear in terms of where their knowledge came from. For instance, one person (a medical user) said, “I take in my personal accounts . . . my own personal [use]” as the primary source of his knowledge. In response to the statement, “it seems like the thing that informs your view most is in your personal experience with cannabis” from one of the authors, one marijuana policy advocate stated, “Absolutely. Yup.” It should be added that in the cases of both of those respondents, they also cited scientific studies but made it clear that they believed their use was essential in terms of how they understood the risks (or lack thereof) of marijuana use.
This, of course, was not only true of those who used the experiential knowledge base. One anti-legalization advocate stated, “you look at the National Academy of Science reports that just came out, you look at the World Health Organization report on marijuana that came out late last year, I mean, on and on and on about objective folks looking at what’s going on. It’s a very grim picture, actually.”
He also cited current social experience, in particular the implementation of recreational use marijuana in Colorado, as a significant source of information for his opinion. Needless to say, he viewed legalization’s impacts as largely negative saying, “I’m looking at what’s going on in Colorado and other states. I think it’s too early to make a final conclusion, but I think things aren’t going well.”
As with sources of credible evidence, there was not perfect alignment in terms of those individuals who believed the question of marijuana’s safety to be settled and whether or not marijuana should be legalized. Many of those who believed the question to be settled disagreed about whether the effects of marijuana use were positive or negative. This is perhaps best exemplified by comparing the business owner quoted earlier, who believed that the evidence about marijuana’s effects was inconclusive but that marijuana should be legalized, nonetheless, with the teacher who believed that the question was closed and that marijuana should be outlawed based on her personal observations.
Knowledge Typology
One of the key findings to emerge from this analysis is the ability to construct a typology of knowledge acceptance in the legalization debate.
This typology revolves around two of the dimensions identified in the previous sections: whether the question of marijuana’s effects is open or closed and whether experimental or experiential evidence is acceptable to answer the question. This typology represents a useful way to represent how individuals think about marijuana legalization and what evidence may be required to convince them of a particular position (see figure 9.1). Those in the top right quadrant believe that experiential evidence is primary, but the question remains open. Those in the top left believe the question remains open, but that experimental evidence is required to sufficiently answer the question. Those in the bottom left believe that the existing experimental evidence is sufficient to close the question regarding whether or not marijuana has positive effects, and those in the bottom right believe that our experiential evidence is sufficient to close the question.
Figure 9.1. Two-dimensional Typology of Knowledge
Perhaps more interesting than those who clearly fall into one quadrant or another are those near the middle, who may combine evidence types to reach a conclusion or who argue for additional information. In all events, the typology can be useful in understanding where different audiences fall in relation to the question, and it offers an opportunity for thinking about how to address different kinds of knowledge concerns among proponents and opponents of legalization.
One last interesting element is that the typology could be duplicated for pro- and anti-legalization positions, since no particular quadrant seemed to have an abundance, meaning that those for and against legalization were evenly distributed across the four groupings. The same could be said for medical use versus adult recreational use of marijuana, as there were multiple positions on the question of effects and the type of evidence in both cases.
Making Sense of the Noise
The above gives an interesting and complicated picture in which opinions about marijuana legalization tend to revolve around issues of knowledge. However, because the context of the interviews was simply marijuana legalization—though many respondents associated marijuana legalization with drugs more generally—the above does not present a context that explains why and how individuals end up conceptualizing and valuing knowledge regarding marijuana differently. One perspective that can help make sense of this development, and indeed helps us understand how individuals discuss legalization, is the approach taken by Jock Young13 regarding the development of identity in the context of the “exclusive society.”
Essentially, Young14 argues that society has shifted from a modern paradigm to a late modern paradigm. While this paradigm shift has two primary components, identity and economics, in both cases the change in paradigm increases inequality, since those who are excluded from the economic sphere are often cast as “other” in the social sphere. However, as “late modern” suggests, we have not left behind many of our ideas regarding identity stemming from the modern age. One way to interpret the differences regarding how individuals spoke about marijuana legalization is to think of the group that relied on scientific knowledge and experts to give credence to their fears about marijuana as those who are maintaining the modernist perspective of the role of society (as the great social integrator of deviants or “others”) and the other group that relied on historical-experiential criteria for their lack of fear as those who have embraced the late modern perspective, which values diversity and inclusion.
This can be seen in some of the debate that happens regarding the historical elements of marijuana use and effects. Whereas many of those who support legalization maintain that our society has long exposure to marijuana with few ill individual effects and highlight the social costs of outlawing marijuana, those who believe in continued prohibition tend to argue that the social costs are unknown (but assumed) specifically because we have made marijuana illegal in the past.
For instance, one of the marijuana policy advocates suggested that because marijuana has not been legalized as alcohol and tobacco has, that’s an argument for continuing the prohibition. He said,
Alcohol has been in our history, used by a majority of the West, by a majority of Americans for five thousand years. If the majority of people regularly use marijuana—and I’m not talking in college or while they’re a high school student or in their lifetime—but if they regularly, on a weekly, monthly basis, like alcohol, well, obviously then we’d have to figure something else out, another kind of policy, but the reality is there are . . . six times as many drinkers than there are people who use marijuana. There’s a reason why we think of marijuana as a counterculture. And what does the word counterculture mean? It’s not a part of mainstream culture, and so I think we should prevent it from being part of the mainstream culture.
This is indicative of the position mentioned earlier, that marijuana should continue to be outlawed because of the unknown social consequences due to the fact that it is outlawed. In fairness, this respondent believes that there is sufficient scientific information to infer that marijuana is (on the whole) harmful, but he also believes that the question regarding legalization is closed specifically because we already have the solution—prohibition.
On the other hand, a marijuana policy advocate with a different perspective had this to say:
You know, this plant has been in use since like 3,000 BC in China and was cited [throughout] history as one of the most effective treatments for a number of the disease classes of our time, not just in Asia, but in other places in the world as well. Why we chose to demonize it is an issue of politics and and really good lobbying and maybe a little xenophobia.
A “marijuana rights group” advocate argued, “who are we as human beings to basically . . . outlaw something that’s kinda been in our sphere for so long? And think of it this way: how can you outlaw like that when you are it? We are cannabis [referring to the endocannabinoid system].”
This again affects the conceptualization of knowledge regarding the use of marijuana and therefore ill effects, since those individuals not only are approaching issues of credibility differently (as mentioned earlier) but also are potentially operating within entirely different paradigms regarding society as a whole and therefore the role of drugs in it.
This, in turn, fits well with the differential perspectives offered by Young.15 He separates recent history into two periods based on the movement from modernity into late modernity. The modernist view of deviance is one involving assimilation—moving the deviant into the mainstream. Thus, among other things, drug users (as a particular kind of deviant) are seen as either needing to be “cured” of their addiction or “punished” in order to (re)assimilate into broader society. Marijuana users are no different, at least in this regard, from other deviants or drug users.
This, too, is contested by those who take a late modern perspective. This tends to be much more individualist and identity based than the modernist perspective. Thus, marijuana use can be seen as one of many expressions of identity. Moreover, those who are shaped by the late modern perspective tend to see individual choice and self-actualization as core principles (as opposed to assimilation in the modern era), thus certain forms of deviance, like marijuana use, fit into those processes and choices more easily than in the modernist perspective.16
Although we did not gather age data on the respondents, there was (anecdotally) a relationship between age and support for marijuana use. This can be related to Young’s17 ideas presented earlier. In addition, these two cultural perspectives pertaining to identity and economics are at odds with one another, which can be seen in the knowledge construction typology presented earlier.
Bringing It Back to Risk
As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, in many ways the legalization debate—at least in terms of how it relates to knowledge and expertise—can be framed as a question of risk negotiation. Some individuals, often those of the modernist perspective, believe that the risk of legalizing marijuana on a large scale entails unknown consequences, which they know to be negative within society. Alternatively, a modernist also could argue that we know the risks from the science and medical research that has been done regarding the effects of marijuana, but those risks are unacceptable on a large scale.
On the other hand, an individual who has embraced a late modern perspective may suggest that we already know the consequences of the introduction of wide-scale marijuana use in society because we, collectively, have been using marijuana throughout much of history without significant negative consequences. Or, alternatively, that the scientific research we have done that demonstrates risk is insufficient due to the assumption of the negative impacts of marijuana use or even due to the quality of the marijuana being used.
Ultimately, then, both perspectives rely on what we could consider contested knowledge.18 Even the question of what remains open to debate does not have a clear answer, as individuals from both sides of the legalization argument may adopt knowledge constructions that close the question. Moreover, those involved do not agree on the risks that should be examined, with some arguing that the health risks are primary, others the developmental risks to children, and still others countering that the societal risks in terms of maintaining prohibition (e.g., mass incarceration) are primary.
Given the fact that the sources of knowledge are contested, the openness of the question is contested, and even the worldviews of the individuals involved in the debate are largely disparate, it is unclear whether the question of legalization is fully resolvable. However, it is possible to identify a group of individuals from both sides of the debate who is willing to acknowledge the openness of the question and who can agree on acceptable sources of information. Thus, for those wishing to influence the debate moving into the future, these are the individuals on whom they should focus their efforts.
Conclusion
This chapter examined the role of knowledge and expertise in the marijuana legalization debate while relating it to larger changes and questions within society. As expected, when examining responses across groups, many of the participants expressed nuanced views of marijuana legalization. However, from their responses, it is possible to glean how participants viewed the questions surrounding legalization and what sources of knowledge were acceptable to them. From these, a knowledge typology consisting of how open the question of legalization was and what types of knowledge could be considered authoritative was constructed, and some implications regarding how people could be influenced were drawn.
Largely, what this analysis suggests is that legalization is likely to remain contested as long as individuals from the modernist and late modern perspectives continue to exist in society together. These different frames of reference give shape to how respondents perceive knowledge and what kinds of solutions are acceptable. In the next chapter, we turn to how respondents spoke about marijuana, particularly the kinds of metaphors they used. These, too, as we will see, are contested.