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Medical Marijuana the War on Drugs and the Drug Policy Reform Movement

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Medical Marijuana the War on Drugs and the Drug Policy Reform Movement UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ FROM THE FRONTLINES TO THE BOTTOM LINE: MEDICAL MARIJUANA THE WAR ON DRUGS AND THE DRUG POLICY REFORM MOVEMENT A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction Of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in SOCIOLOGY by Thomas R. Heddleston June 2012 The Dissertation of Thomas R. Heddleston is approved: ____________________________________ Professor Craig Reinarman, Chair ____________________________________ Professor Andrew Szasz ____________________________________ Professor Barbara Epstein ___________________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Thomas R. Heddleston 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 1 Chapter I: The History, Discourse, and Practice of Punitive Drug Prohibition 38 Chapter II: Three Branches Of Reform, The Drug Policy Reform Movement From 1964 To 2012 91 Chapter III: Sites of Social Movement Activity 149 Chapter IV: The Birth of Medical Marijuana In California 208 Chapter V: A Tale of 3 Cities Medical Marijuana 1997-2011 245 Chapter VI: From Movement to Industry 303 Conclusion 330 List of Supplementary Materials 339 References 340 iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1: Major Organizations in the Drug Policy Reform Movement by Funding Source and Organizational Form 144 Table 3.1: Characteristics of Hemp Rallies Attended 158 Table 3.2: Drug Policy Organizations and the Internet 197 Figure 4.1: Proposition 215 Vote November 1996 241 Table 5.1: Political Opportunity Structures and Activist Tools 251 Table 5.2: Key Aspects of Political Opportunity Structures at 3 Levels of Government 263 Figure 5.1: Medical Cannabis Dispensaries by Region and State 283 iv ABSTRACT Thomas R. Heddleston From The Frontlines to the Bottom Line: Medical Marijuana the War On Drugs and the Drug Policy Reform Movement The medical marijuana movement began in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s in a climate of official repression. This movement represents the most successful branch of the forty-year old drug policy reform movement. Using oral histories, participant observation, and archival research this dissertation explores the genesis, growth, and transformation of the medical marijuana movement in California from 1990 until 2012. I theorize the longevity of prohibitionist ideology over the course of the twentieth century in chapter one. Chapter two narrates the social history of the drug policy reform movement and its three branches; marijuana policy reform, harm reduction, and anti-prohibitionism. The three branches are characterized by diversification, as new organizations form to pursue different areas of drug policy reform, and competition for funding, but they maintain cooperative relationships with each other. My ethnographic fieldwork uncovered three types of physical sites, (hemp rallies, conferences, and the Internet), which play important roles in recruiting, networking, and facilitating cooperation on campaigns. The context and political opportunity structures of the San Francisco Bay Area were crucial factors in the genesis of the medical marijuana movement, but that activism and civil disobedience were also necessary for the movement to form. Activists and organizations in the metro areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego were able to shape different political opportunity structures that affected the regulation of medical v cannabis dispensaries in each specific locale. Medical marijuana began as a social movement and then transformed into an industry by shifting from the field of social movement action to the field of commercial action. New types of participants, a perceived change in political opportunity at the national level, and a more prominent public profile typify this shift. The shift also contributed to a refocused federal campaign to dismantle the system of medical cannabis provision that activists and entrepreneurs built over the twenty-one year history of the medical cannabis movement in California. vi DEDICATION I would like to thank my dissertation committee members Andrew Szasz and Barbara Epstein for their suggestions and helpful comments in writing this dissertation and my field statements that preceded it. I would especially like to think my dissertation chair and advisor Craig Reinarman. Craig has been an excellent mentor to me during my graduate studies. His expansive knowledge of the field of drug policy and drug studies has been an invaluable asset to me during my research project. I am very grateful for all of the time and expertise he has invested in me during my time in Santa Cruz. vii INTRODUCTION The four decades old drug policy reform movement is comprised of individuals and organizations working to liberalize drug policies and move away from the system of “punitive prohibition” that typifies current drug policy in the U.S. According to Blain (2002: 3) this “campaign is a ‘movement’ in the sociological sense that it employs the conventional repertoire of contention (e.g. public protests; rallies; meetings; conferences; mobilizing structures and SMOs; efforts to create political alignments with political parties).” Drug policy reform organizations have trained their efforts on a wide variety of policy arenas, including, marijuana decriminalization, needle exchange programs (and other forms of “harm reduction”), medical marijuana, and decreasing the penalties for drug offenses. Over the years, the number of organizations has increased and the specific concerns of various organizations have fragmented. The movement is made up of advocacy and membership-based organizations (Walker, McCarthy & Baumgartner 2011), a shifting mass base, and wealthy benefactors. Although the movement is ideologically powerful and well funded, successful campaigns in the political arena are few and far between. The drug policy reform movement has encountered opposition from both parent groups opposed to drug policy liberalization (or counter social movement organizations), and, uniquely, resistance from government agencies such as the Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The various organizations in the movement focus on a variety of campaigns of local, state, 1 and national scope, yet the two most successful forms of drug policy reform have been medical marijuana and needle exchange programs Medical marijuana has been the most successful form of drug policy reform. In early 2012, sixteen states and the District of Columbia, have laws that allow qualified people to use marijuana (cannabis) for medicinal purposes. Individual medical marijuana dispensaries, storefront locations that sell cannabis to qualified patients, operate openly in California, Colorado, Montana and Washington. Clandestine medical cannabis dispensaries have been opened (and sometimes closed) in several other states including Nevada, Michigan and Oregon. Along with needle exchanges and safe injection facilities, medical cannabis dispensaries represent specific modalities of drug policy reform. Modalities are different from changes in drug laws and sentencing policies because they have a physical location and present an active challenge to prohibitionist policies. The drug policy reform movement uses a combination of legal change to alter drug laws it finds unfavorable and direct action to put new policy modalities in place. While legislative change occurs comprehensively through ballot initiatives and the adoption of new legislation, activists, organizations and providers institute change on the ground slowly through protracted interactions with law enforcement agencies and state and local governments. 2 Existing Literature Drug policy has been a central problematic in the social science literature for decades. In the 1930s, Alfred Lindesmith became the first scholar to look critically at the harmful consequences of punitive drug policy. His work paved the way for later scholars who looked at the negative effects of a policy that some have characterized as “punitive prohibition” (Reinarman and Levine 1997). In the 1940s, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of New York City organized a team of scientists to investigate the cannabis use and policy in the Big Apple in response to fantastic allegations put forth by the director of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in the previous decade. In the 1960s and the early 1970s, sociologists Becker (1963), Gusfield (1963) and Duster (1970) all looked at the symbolic content of drug prohibition and the role of social status in determining which types of drugs were prohibited. During the 1980s and 1990s, epidemiologists and other scholars concerned with the intersection of drug use and drug policy would develop the harm reduction approach in response to the AIDS epidemic (Erickson, Riley, Cheung and O’Hare 1997; Marlatt 1998, Paone et al. 1999; Sherman and Purchase 2001). Beginning the 1990s, the racially discriminatory consequences of the war on drugs became a major area of inquiry for scholars of drug policy (Tonry 1995; Reinarman and Levine 1997; Wacquant 2001; Western 2006). While they have often been critical of drug policy, these scholars have rarely had the opportunity to analyze how drug policy becomes more liberal. The emergence and growth of medical cannabis in California presents a unique case of drug policy 3 becoming less punitive. Consequently, it provides me with interesting questions as a scholar of drug policy change. Until the latter half of the 2000s, academics have not afforded medical marijuana (and marijuana law reform in general) the
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