The Dagga Problem

Town Cape of University The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No quotation from it or information derived from it is to be published without full acknowledgementTown of the source. The thesis is to be used for private study or non- commercial research purposes only. Cape Published by the University ofof Cape Town (UCT) in terms of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author. University j j j j j j j j j j . j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j j -- J D E D I C A T I 0 N To the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and its workers throughout the Republic of South Africa this thesis is respectfully dedicated A C K N 0 W L E D G E M E N T S I should like to thank my supervisor, Professor Brunhilde Helm, for her constant guidance, advice and encouragement over the past two years in bringing this study to its fruition. The research for this thesis covered many disciplines, and her wide experience and knowledge of the social sciences contributed greatly to the final exposition of the ideas put forward here. Mr. Roland Graser, Director of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO) has helped me considerably with his valuable comments, and in making certain refer ences available to me. My gratitude is also due to Mr. Murray Coombes, Assistant Director of the South African National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (SANCA), who spent a great deal of time in discussing this thesis with me, and who lent me many references re levant to the study of drug dependence. Mr. W. Tyrrell-Glynn, Assistant Director of the South African Library, as well as the staff of the Reference Section of this library, gave me a great deal of help in researching countless Government pub licati~ns, and I am most grateful to him. In this regard my thanks also go to Mrs. N. Shackleton and the staff of the inter-library loans of the J.W. Jagger Library at the University of Cape Town. I am also grateful for the assistance of many other specialists who either corresponded with me on the topic of this thesis or who were able to advise me personally: Dr. Theodore James of Pinelands; Dr. Graham Fuller of Rondebosch; Dr. Joseph Andriola, Senior Lecturer in Applied Sociology at the· University of Cape Town; Professor G.K. Engelbrecht of the University of Durban-Westville; Professor T.J. McCarthy, Head of the Department of Pharmacology at the University of the Western Cape, and Dr. J. Young of the Enfield College of Tech nology, Middlesex, England. My thanks are no less due to Professor Ellison Kahn, Head of the University of the Witwatersrand School of Law, to Mr. Justice J.H. Steyn, National Chairman of NICRO, to Mr. S.W.V. Wessels, Chief Magis trate of Johannesburg, and to Councillor A.B. Widman, former Mayor of Johannesburg, for their advice on the legal sections of this study. Special thanks must also go to Mr. J.D. van Zyl of the South African Pharmacy Board, and member of the Grobler Committee of Inquiry into the Abuse of Drugs, as well as to Brigadier C. Bouwer, statistician of the South African Police, Pretoria, for their assistance in furnishing me with certain technical information. A special word of appreciation goes to Mrs. Velma Vulliamy for her painstaking typing and proof-reading of the typescript, and to Mr. Carel van Wyk and Mr. Peter Dryding for bringing their expertise to bear in the production and collation of the manuscript. In conclusion, I wish to emphasize that none of the views ex pressed in the following pages necessarily reflect the opinions of any of the above persons or their organizations. University of Cape Town, April 1974 Fran£ois Theron • That humanity at large will ever be able to dispense with Arti- ficial Paradises seems very unlikely. Most men and women lead lives at the worst so painful, at the best so monotonous, poor and limited that the urge to escape, the longing to transcend themselves if only for a few moments, is and has always been one of the prin cipal appetites of the soul. Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception. CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION (i) PART ONE: THEORETICAL BASIS OF THE PROBLEM Chapter I Anomie, Deviance and Societal Reaction 1 The Problem of Alienation . 1 Anomie: Theory and Development 5 Anomie and Drug Addiction . 12 Deviance and Societal Reaction 14 Chapter II The Modern Drug Subculture ••. A General Approach: Subculture and Contraculture 27 The Dagga Subculture 36 Chapter III The Question of Legalization • 48 PART TWO: DAGGA AND SOCIAL POLICY Chapter IV Britain and North America: Recommendations on the Dagga Problem .. 66 Wootton Report (United Kingdom- 1968) •. 69 Le Dain Report (Canada - 1970) 77 Shafer Report (United States - 1972) 85 Chapter V South Africa:· Emergence of the Dagga Problem ... 97 Introduction 97 Van Schalkwijk Report (1952) 101 Chapter VI Abuse of Dependence-Producing Substances and Rehabilitation Centres Act No. 41 of 1971 .. 122 Introduction 122 Act 41 of 1971 -- a Socio-Lega1 Overview 127 Chapter VII Conclusions 145 BIBLIOGRAPHY 157 INTRODUCTION Statement of the Problem In Western cultures the escalating problem of drug abuse among young people has in the past decade come to be regarded as one of the most urgent social problems. Public concern about the rapidly- changing pattern of drug use undoubtedly stems from the anxiety that various forms of drug experimentation cot1ld lead to the permanent im- pairment of mental and physical health among an essentially younger generation of users. This concern also has a broader focus. Contemporary social scientists have been trying to establish the wider meaning of the com- paratively recent preoccupation with drug use, and the implications and social significance in the lives of those concerned. This in- crease in drug-taking has become associated with the emergence of various youth-oriented subcultures: Flower Child1·en, Hippies, and "campus radicals" -- a new generation influenced by cult figures such as Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary. 1 In the 1960's, a drug subculture evolved which became inextric- ably associated with a host of new cultural phenomena: Pop music and fashions, so-called permissiveness and new sexual mores, a "generation gap" quickly exploited (if not created) by contemporary journalism, and a new cultural vision, generally referred to as "psychedelic" with obvious connotations of the drug experience. New behaviour pat- terns also evolved, of which Blum and Associates have said: It is our impression that of the several forms of student conduct which have been per turbing to some if not' most citizens, acti vism as such has received a greater share of (ii) public interest and mass-media attention ... than has student drug use. Activism, which includes a variety of protest demon strations, the construction of experimental programs (for example, free universities), the development of fledgling political movements, and the enunciation of several distinguishable ideologies (for example, the New Left, pacifism, anarchism), has also had the advantage of a great deal more scientific study and scholarly comment. The response to student surprises -- whether activism or Hippie styles -- on the part of public officials, journalists, and probably millions of unquoted adults appears to have been more immediate and their characteriza tions more negative and sweeping than those of the scholars. Since the former have a wider audience than the latter, the general public has been encouraged, if not induced, to adopt pat judgments as to what is going on.2 Blum also discovered that there were many other factors involved: Drug users were more likely to be irreligious and opposed to their parents' authority, felt that they had experienced more interpersonal disruptions, and tended to be more curious, more venturesome, and more responsive to social pressures than their non-drug-taking peers. He also found that the committed drug user -- as opposed to the casual experimenter tended to be more pessimistic, more dissatisfied, and to have felt a greater degree of rebellion against authority. There was also a greater measure of emotional insecurity among drug users. 3 This theme has been taken by Donald B. Louria, whose comments on the position in the United States are quoted below: In 1969, a whole new set of explanations be came popular. More and more sociologists and psychologists, as well as educators, began to tie together drug abuse and the mood of rebel lion sweeping this country. They suggested that to some extent drug use could be ascribed to the generation gap, to the war in Vietnam, to racial injustice, to urban decay, to en vironmental pollution, and to the threat of a nuclear holocaust. I have followed the drug scene closely over the last few years, and my personal conviction is as follows: In 1967 (iii) the study of drug abuse among young people be came extraordinarily popular. At that time, the major reasons given by students for use included boredom, curiosity, and peer group influence. But those who began to investi gate the drug scene in depth, and many more who were seeking material for speeches, began to look for less obvious causes than those listed by the students themselves. Thus the generation gap, the Vietnam war, and the in-· ability to control one's future, none of which was listed in 1967, began to creep into t~lks and articles about the drug scene.

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