“Enjoy your experience”: Symbolic violence and becoming a tasteful state cannabis consumer in Canada

This article explores the legalization and marketing of recreational cannabis in Canada, specifically the province of Nova Scotia, that has extended state monopoly over sales. Beginning with Howard Becker’s classic analysis of “becoming a marijuana user,” this ethnographic investigation of the first day of state cannabis sales utilizes and extends Bourdieusian analyses, particularly by showing how “symbolic violence” and “taste distinctions” work beyond overt class reproduction to establish state classifications and rituals. The practices we observe show state formation in action at the point of sale, including education, warning, prohibition, and promotion. As we demonstrate, the state marketing of cannabis works to invite emotional identification toward becoming the state consumer as an embodied habitus. The citizen is not just redeemed morally by the legal recategorization of cannabis but brought into a new subject position as good consumer citizen at the moment of ritual consumption, that is, brought into a “tasteful state.”

Syphilitic pemphigus

A 34-week premature newborn, child of a mother without prenatal controls, a marijuana user, with gestational syphilis with a positive rapid plasma reagin test (RPR) titer 1:16, did not receive treatment during pregnancy. The newborn presented congenital syphilis, RPR titer 1: 256 positive test.

The marijuana user in US news media: an examination of visual stereotypes of race, culture, criminality and normification

In the wake of growing legalization efforts, both medicinal and recreational marijuana use in the US is becoming more prevalent and societally acceptable. However, racial, criminal and cultural stereotypes linger in mediated visual portrayals. This study examines the extent to which mediated visual portrayals in mainstream news have been impacted by these recent legalization efforts. Employing a quantitative as well as a qualitative analysis of visual images used to represent marijuana use in mainstream news, this study draws upon the power of visual framing and the construction of social reality to examine how visual symbols and iconic signifiers are used to construct both stereotypical and ‘mainstreamed’ or ‘normative’ depictions of marijuana use. Analyzing 458 visuals across 10 different media outlets across the political spectrum, both before and after legalization of marijuana in Colorado, this study shows how news portrayals perpetuated stereotypes about marijuana users, particularly around criminality and pot-culture iconography. Relatively few depictions of marijuana users in the US are visuals of ordinary, ‘normal’ people or families. This study thus interrogates the relationship between representations of race, criminality and ‘pothead’ stereotypes associated with marijuana use, and how these visual representations differ amongst liberal and conservative news sites, finding that the political ideology of the news outlet largely influences the visual stereotyping of marijuana users. The study concludes by considering both the legal and cultural implications of how mainstream news visually represents marijuana use, considering how persistent decades-old representations were largely perpetuated rather than challenged in light of legalization efforts.

Finding a Voice

Shilts’s journalistic “voice” begins to emerge. Shilts’s clash with David Goodstein comes to a head, with Shilts fired from The Advocate but later hired by KQED as a contributor to the “Newsroom” TV program. Shilts begins to address his personal alcohol abuse issues amidst lack of full-time employment but remains a daily marijuana user. Shilts’s TV journalism career covers election and subsequent assassination of Milk (along with Mayor George Moscone), and gay battle against Proposition 6. Shilts covered riots following the trial of convicted Milk-Moscone killer Dan White. Shilts’s relationship with KQED begins to erode as he struggles to master television journalism. Shilts gains scorn for connections to conservative Republican Senator John Briggs.

"Marijuana Moms" : the collective work of negotiating individual and group identity in the age of cannabis legalization

This research is the result of a qualitative study that explored the ways in which marijuana using mothers come to identify as such and how they structure their relationships and parenting as a result. The experiences of 57 self-identified marijuana using mothers (aged 20-48 years-old) from across the United States participated in semi-structured interviews and shared their everyday experiences with both marijuana use and motherhood. Participants were all mothers with children between 3 months and 19 years at the time of the interviews. A thematic narrative analysis uncovered common experiences among these women in constructing both individual and group identity: Participants varied in how each of these themes identified were reflected in their lives, depending upon each participant's interpretation of her local social context. Both motherhood and self-identifying as a marijuana user were valuable and meaningful parts of their identity

Newer Forms of Tobacco Products: Characteristics of Poly Users Among Adults Living in Colorado—A Secondary Data Analysis of the Attitudes and Behaviors Survey on Health 2015

Aims: Data from The Attitudes and Behaviors Survey (TABS) conducted in 2015 were used to investigate the prevalence of different forms of tobacco use and marijuana use among adults in Colorado. Methods: A secondary analysis of TABS on health data was conducted. A representative sample of 8616 adults 18 years and older participated in the survey, with sample weights used to adjust for oversampling. Results: Lifetime prevalence of cigarette-only use was 25.8%, compared with 10.6% for hookah use, 7.0% for both hookah and cigarettes, 12.6% for anything except cigarettes, and 43.0% for marijuana. The typical hookah user was a single/living alone (15.9%), English-speaking (11.6%), male (16.7%), age < 30 years (24.2%), with some college education (13.0%), and income less than 35 000 per year (14.3%). Hookah users, whether or not they also used cigarettes, were similar to those who used any other noncigarette tobacco products. The typical marijuana user was a single/living alone (50.2%), white (46.0%), English-speaking (46.7%), male (48.5%), age < 30 years (50.1%), with a graduate degree (40.8%) and salary of at least 50 000 per year (43.4%). Implications: In Colorado, in 2015, cigarette use was still highest among all forms of tobacco, but the use of other tobacco products such as vaping and hookah is on the rise, especially among young adults. Marijuana and hookah users were demographically similar to each other, and different from the typical cigarette user. These results indicate the need for further study of alternative tobacco product use, especially among young adults.

Making Decisions With Trees: Examining Marijuana Outcomes Among College Students Using Recursive Partitioning

Exploratory analyses were used to identify a unique constellation of variables that are associated with marijuana use outcomes among college students. We used recursive partitioning to examine more than 100 putative antecedents of lifetime marijuana user status, past-month marijuana user status, and negative marijuana-related consequences. Participants ( N = 8,141) completed measures online across 11 sites in the United States. Norms (descriptive, injunctive, and internalized norms) and marijuana identity best distinguished marijuana users from nonusers (i.e., lifetime/past month), whereas marijuana use frequency, use of protective behavioral strategies, and positive/negative urgency best distinguished the degree to which users reported negative consequences. Our results demonstrate that tree-based modeling is a useful methodological tool in the selection of targets for future clinical research. Additional research is needed to determine if these factors are causal antecedents, rather than consequences or epiphenomena. We hope this large sample study provides the impetus to develop intervention strategies targeting these factors.