Research PaperThe three betrayals of the medical cannabis growing activist: From multiple victimhood to reconstruction, redemption and activism
Introduction
Cannabis continues to enjoy an ambiguous status in the UK. It is a Class B drug with strict penalties for possession and supply, but consumption is not a crime per se1 and police rarely bring charges and do not go proactively looking for people in possession of small amounts.2 Prominent anti-cannabis campaigners have cited the falling number of cannabis arrests in their claim that to all intents and purposes cannabis consumption has been decriminalised (Hitchens, 2012). The numbers are indeed low considering that 16% of 16–24 year olds are reportedly using cannabis (Home Office, 2016). However, there remains a significant rump of cannabis users who do face sanctions, and criminal records, for production and supply.
The UK, as other European countries, subscribes to a “balanced approach” (Home Office, 2015), making a sharp distinction between consumption, with its associated potential health and socioeconomic harms, and supply, dealt with by the police and courts. This has allowed the state to maintain an uncompromising prohibitionist policy stance even while consumption is becoming socially embedded with stable drug prices and ready availability. Import substitution continues apace, with cannabis resin from Morocco largely replaced by domestically produced herbal cannabis (Hargreaves and Smith, 2015, Potter, 2010).
It has been estimated that around 300,000–500,000 people are now growing cannabis in the UK.3 Cultivation ties up financial resources, encroaches on indoor living space, greatly increases the risk of detection and facilitates the prosecution with incontrovertible material evidence as well as demonstrating mens rea. The question therefore arises why so many people are willing to risk criminalisation by amplifying their offence from cannabis possession to cultivation and supply.
The paper explores the motivation of a sub-set of cannabis cultivators who use cannabis therapeutically, or supply cannabis to people with medical conditions who find relief from using different cannabis preparations.
Section snippets
Methods
We were awarded a small grant from the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust4 to study cannabis cultivation in the UK, with a focus on initiation into and progression of cannabis growing careers. We opted for an inductive, ethnographic approach in the anthropological tradition, with in-depth qualitative interviews and observations of real life situations, as best suited for establishing an understanding of motivation and outlook. From previous work we hypothesized that
Victimless crimes reconsidered − medical cultivators as anomalies in the drug war dramaturgy
By cultivating cannabis and sharing the product with other users our informants had moved from petty offender to criminal perpetrator of a class B supply offence, which carries potentially up to 14 years imprisonment. Craig opened with the familiar assertion of the victimless crime: “if I am not hurting anyone what is that crime”. He then turned the more serious charge of drug production around, arguing that he was in fact helping to reduce overall criminality: “I am not contributing to a
Inadvertent cultivators
Cultivators often presented their lives as journeys beginning with the life-changing illness and a series of cumulative events, such as the discovery of cannabis, quests for greater knowledge, encounters with significant teachers, and the decision to start growing. The stories contain elements of what the anthropologist Victor Turner (1969) describes as the ritual progress and, subsequently, the idea of social drama. Individuals experiencing a crisis that breaches the common norm are pushed
Three betrayals
Already let down by their bodies, our activist medical growers identified three other ways in which they felt betrayed: by the legal system that labels them as criminals, by conventional medicine that cannot help them, and by criminal operatives in the illegal cannabis market.
Reconstituting selfhood
The situation, as seen by our respondents, can be easily summarised. People with a medical need for cannabis but criminalised by government, denounced by their doctors and cheated in the underground markets, find themselves the victim of successive betrayals. Their rupture with prevailing norms is no wilful pursuit of egotistical or hedonistic ends, but an act of self-preservation. The resulting anomie, in the Durkheim (1893) sense of “derangement” as a mismatch of standards between the group
Medical cannabis healers and apomedication
Doug, who works cannabis butter into a poultice that he applies to his injured rotary cuff, is proud to share his homemade medication. Discussing the dissemination of therapeutic expertise on cannabis in Canada, Penn (2014) noted the critical role of dispensaries organised into the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries (CAMCD) in forming an “embodied health movement”. Less formally in the UK, individuals, small-scale producers such as the CBD brothers and loose, unrecognised
Conclusion
There is still a lack of clear scientific understanding about when and how cannabis − and which constituent cannabinoids − does effectively treat particular medical conditions, and it may be that for some medical users effects are palliative rather than curative. Nevertheless, many people clearly perceive medical benefits − sometimes very strong benefits − from their cannabis use.
Further, we acknowledge that our sample are both extreme and ‘ideal’ cases of medical cannabis growers, and that
Conflict of interest
We confirm there are no conflicts of interest for either author.
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