VCU author Christina Mancini traces the drug’s path toward recreational use
The Wilder School professor’s new book, ‘We’ed (for) the People,’ covers more than a century of cannabis criminalization and legalization.
When Christina Mancini was a child, her grandmother warned her to stay away from “dope.” In school, she was taught to avoid drugs through D.A.R.E., as the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program was known.
Christina Mancini, Ph.D.
“It was a lot of, ‘If you use drugs, you’re a loser,’” said Mancini, Ph.D., an associate professor of criminal justice in the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. “If you use drugs, even marijuana, it was across the board seen as a bad thing.”
Mancini went on to study public perceptions of crimes and criminals, focusing on how the public views those who commit crimes against children as well as sexual crimes, including on college campuses. More recently, she has turned her attention to how the public views recreational marijuana, and how that perception has shaped policies across the country.
In her new book, “We’ed (for) the People: Pot, Public Opinion and Drug Policy in the U.S.,” Mancini traces marijuana’s criminalization and legalization across the 20th and 21st centuries, and she explores how public opinion has driven that process, from the drug’s initial criminalization to the so-called war on drugs to the present.
“The public was really disillusioned with what was going on with the status quo,” Mancini said of recent shifts in opinion. “And this ‘get tough’ approach was really just kind of rethought.”
VCU News spoke with Mancini to learn more about her new book.
Give us a quick history of marijuana criminalization in the United States.
For much of the nation’s early history, the production of hemp, which is closely related to cannabis, was encouraged by the government. And throughout the 1800s, marijuana was a key ingredient in medicines and tinctures that were frequently sold in pharmacies and widely accessible to the public.
But in the early 20th century, drug regulations started to pop up. In 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act required clear labels on drug packaging, and the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 was the first law to criminalize a drug: It created regulations around the prescription of opium.
In 1937, as part of a campaign to link cannabis to Mexican migrants, Congress enacted the “Marihuana Tax Act,” which placed heavy federal taxes and rules on the plant and effectively started a national prohibition.
Then, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 greatly strengthened and expanded federal sanctioning for drug-related crimes, and it placed drugs into the “schedule” classification system that we know today.
This continued theme of “get tough” continued into the 1980s and 1990s through the war on drugs, a criminal justice reform that emphasized longer sentences, greater sanctions and increased social stigma toward drug use, including marijuana use.
What is the current status of marijuana legalization?
Many states are working on legalizing not just medical but also recreational marijuana. While the distribution, manufacture and possession of cannabis and cannabis-related products remain prohibited at the federal level, the current federal administration has announced efforts to de-schedule cannabis from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3 substance. This new classification would open up research opportunities and reduce the banking restrictions associated with the cannabis retail market.
However, those efforts are ongoing, and importantly, those changes alone would not trigger outright legalization of marijuana use, at least recreationally.
How has the public’s view of recreational marijuana changed over recent decades?
Many scholars trace the current enthusiasm for marijuana legalization to the medicinal marijuana movement of the 1990s, starting with California’s Compassionate Use Act of 1996. Since then, public sentiment has started to shift toward a more permissive stance, especially for medical cannabis use.
At the same time, there has been a strong public backlash, with an astonishing 80% of the public believing the war on drugs was a failure rather than an effective drug prevention policy.
How has public support for recreational marijuana pushed legalization forward?
I see a strong connection between public opinion and the “green rush,” as the growth of the marijuana industry is known.
The public also has a direct impact on crime policy. Half of the jurisdictions that have legalized recreational cannabis use have done so through successful ballot initiatives or referendums, starting with California and Washington state in 2012. That means voters have directly influenced contemporary drug policy simply through engaging in the democratic process.
Even indirectly, the public votes for elected officials, who in turn advance initiatives that affect the functioning of law enforcement, the courts and the correctional system. Concerned citizens could also engage in social activism by donating to advocacy groups or organizations lobbying for crime reforms, or by engaging in public protests and demonstrations. In turn, such forms of activism could pressure the criminal justice system or influential public figures to act.
As recreational marijuana legalization unfolds across the country, where does the public stand on the issue?
The general trend appears to be one of broad public consensus, and behaviors suggest marijuana use is highly normalized. For example, cannabis is the most widely consumed (but federally illicit) drug in the United States.
If there are accounts of highly publicized incidents of unintended effects, like increases in impaired driving, harm to children or an increase in crime, I think public sentiment could easily shift back to embracing a more restrictive stance. There have, for example, been three referendums that failed recently (in Florida, North Dakota and South Dakota), and 1 in 10 Americans still oppose legalization for any purpose.
But the reality is that the “green rush” is here, as over 50% of the public now resides in a legalized state.
https://news.vcu.edu/article/how-has-public-opinion-influenced-marijuana-policychristina-mancini
https://cap-press.com/books/isbn/9781531028961/Weed-the-People
