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The Marijuana Smokers
Erich Goode
Chapter 2 — A Profile of the Marijuana Smoker
Who is the marijuana smoker? The question might seem obvious and
unnecessary: the marijuana smoker is one who smokes marijuana.
But the question cannot be answered so facilely. How much marijuana?
How often? With the heroin addict, we find a more or less built-in
polarization. The syndrome of heroin addiction is more clear-cut
than with marijuana where we do not find the same compulsion to
use. We will, of course, encounter the heroin experimenter, the
nonaddicted weekend "joy-popper," the on-again-off-again-heroin
user, a high percentage of whom eventually slide into outright
addiction. But the proportion of addicts among the universe of
heroin users is so enormous that we will be able to characterize
the outstanding features of heroin addiction as a way of life,
and capture the use-patterns of a significant segment of all heroin
users. Our job is more difficult with marijuana use. There is
not the same tendency to polarization. Instead, we must think
of marijuana use in dimensionalist terms.
Again, who is the marijuana user? What of the college student
who, on three occasions, puffed part of a passed-around joint,
never became high, and never again used the drug? If we exclude
him, what about the housewife who tried the drug ten times, got
high twice, decided that her curiosity had been satisfied, and
refused it thereafter? Or the Wall Street lawyer who happens upon
a pot party once every two months and accepts opportunities to
smoke every time they are offered? Is he a marijuana smoker? The
solution has to be arbitrary. I have found there is no precise
line that may be drawn which delineates the user from the nonuser.
There is an unbroken continuum in use from the person who tried
it once to the daily user, the mythical six-cigarettes-a-day smoker.
(This is often cited as the "average" consumption of
the "typical" smoker;[1] probably
fewer than one out of a hundred individuals who have tried marijuana
smokes that much.)
Although an exact line between the user and the nonuser is impossible
to draw, some crude but useful categories of degrees of use might
help to clarify the kinds of involvement with the drug that are
likely to be encountered. We have the experimenter, the occasional
user, the regular user, and the frequent user. Where we separate
these categories is partly a matter of taste and cannot be decided
with much rigor or with impelling logic. Further, it must be realized
that there is no necessary progression from the least to the most
involved category. A given user may float in and out of these
categories over a period of time.[a] The
experimenter may be the largest of these groups, and forms perhaps
a half of the total universe of all individuals who have at least
tried marijuana at least once. The experimenter may have obtained
a high, but perhaps not. He has invariably not sought out the
drug, but has been turned on by friends. He is curious about its
effects, but, at this point, little more than that. It could be
that his curiosity has been satisfied by his first few experiences,
but it is as likely that his initial encounters have been either
insufficiently conclusive or pleasurable, that is, he did not
become as high as his expectations led him to believe to induce
him to accept later offers.
In a sense, the experimenter is not really a drug user.[2] However,
my analysis includes him. The one-time, two-time, or twelve-time
marijuana "taster" will be, in many ways, half-way between
the more regular user and the individual who has never had a puff
of a marijuana cigarette. By including the experimenter, we capture
this spectrum effect of drug use and users, rather than committing
the error of reification in thinking in terms of natural airtight
categories of use. Moreover, an experimenter has a far higher
likelihood of moving into the categories of regular use than does
the complete abstainer, although we must not make the opposite
mistake and assume that this progression is inevitable. It is
neither inevitable nor is it typical. But it is more likely among
experimenters, and for this reason, the experimenter is of great
interest to us. In much of the description and analysis that follows,
both here and throughout the book, I will be describing the user.
It must be kept in mind that all social categories are abstractions,
and our decision to use one or another must often be based on
their usefulness. In most cases, I will term the marijuana user
anyone who has tried the drug at least once. I do not claim that
a consistent life-style will typify all of these individuals.
Nor do I say that a radical disjunction will separate this group
from the nonusing group. We have not trapped a distinct social
animal by characterizing the marijuana user. But when we compare
this gross category with the nonusing category, instructive and
dramatic differences emerge. I will rely mainly on the vehicle
of the molar comparison—the user versus the nonuser—in delineating
the marijuana-smoker portrait. Whenever a different categorization
is made, it will be explained.
Public stereotypes change more slowly than that which is being
stereotyped. Often an activity or a group will never have its
image catch up with itself. These images and stereotypes must
be thought of as a kind of reality; they may not accurately describe
the group they claim to apply to, but the fact that they are believed
makes a great deal of difference, and to understand the social
patterns of a given social group, we must often understand the
myths that have purported to describe it. The media today transmit
public images more rapidly and, possibly, more accurately, than
they did a generation ago. The image of the marijuana user in
the 1930s was not very different from that of the narcotics addict.
The term "addict" as applied to the marijuana smoker
was far from unusual; in fact, it was the rule. The milieu from
which he came, the day-to-day activities in which he engaged,
the dominance of the drug in his life, his involvement with crime,
and the effects of the drug on his body and mind, were all thought
to be continuous with the junkie's.
Although today many would recognize this typification as bizarre
and anachronistic, there will be strong disagreement on even the
bold outlines of a contemporary portrait of the marijuana smoker.
How, then, can we characterize the potsmoker? What is distinctive
about him? We could have our choice of various cliches. The
most popular is that he conforms to the current stereotype
of the hippie. He is unkempt, unemployed, politically radical
(often apathetic), slightly mad, sexually promiscuous, and under
the influence of the drug all of the time. Fading under the impact
of mass media reports,[3] this
image is gradually being replaced by one almost as absurd: the
marijuana user is no different from the rest of us. There are
the over-forty users, just as there are those under fifteen; there
are bankers, executives and physicians, just as there are juvenile
delinquents, hippies and criminals. There is the girl next door,
and the girl "in the life." There are policemen and
political demonstrators, clergymen and atheists, congressmen and
the politically disaffected. In short, he could be anyone.[4] No
one has ever studied a cross-section of marijuana users, of course,
and it is not possible at the moment. Yet, in the absence of such
definitive data, it is possible, from dozens of scattered surveys,
to construct something like a reasonably accurate picture of what
the social characteristics of a large proportion of users are
likely to be.
Age
The marijuana user is more likely to be young than old. He is
most likely to be in his late teens and early twenties; before,
say, age thirteen, and after age thirty, the drop-off in the percentage
who have ever used is sharp. Since very young users are extremely
conspicuous, and since the fears of the older generation concerning
the dangers of drug use are compounded when grade school children
are involved, the opinion that use typically reaches down into
the ten to thirteen age range has become widespread.[5] Actually,
the average age for smoking marijuana is probably dropping, but
it is far from typical for grade school children to smoke. In
fact, the average high school or even college student has not
tried marijuana, although in both milieu it is common among a
big minority; however, in some schools, such as some in New York
and California, a majority of high school students have tried
marijuana. Moreover, among the very young, experimentation will
be far more common than is true with older teenagers and young
adults; frequent, daily use among early teenagers is extremely
rare. In my survey, I interviewed an eight-year-old who
smoked marijuana, but this does not mean that use among eight-year-olds,
even in New York's East Village, is common.[b] The
median age of my informants was twenty-two, with slightly over
one-fifth in their teens (21 percent), and less than a tenth (
7 percent) were thirty or over. At about the same time I was conducting
my survey, The East Village Other, a New York underground
newspaper whose 25,000 readers include a considerable percentage
of drug users, did a study of its own. In the April 1967 issue,
EVO included a fill-out, mail-in questionnaire on its readers'
drug use. Keeping in mind the extraordinary possibilities for
bias and distortion,[6] it
should be noted, nonetheless, that the age range of my own study
and that of the EVO study are remarkably similar ( see Table 2-1).
TABLE 2-1
Age Range in Goode and EVO Studies
(percent)
| Goode | EVO |
|---|
| 17 or under | 5 | 16 or under | 4 |
| 18 or 19 | 16 | 17 or 18 | 11 |
| 20 or 21 | 25 | 19, 20, 21 | 28 |
| 22, 23, 24, 25 | 30 | 22, 23, 24, 25 | 35 |
| 26, 27, 28, 29 | 18 | 26 to 30 | 12 |
| 30 or over | 7 | over 30 | 10 |
|
| |
TABLE 2-2
Age Range in New York Medical College Study (percent)
| Teens | 22 |
| Twenties | 70 |
| Thirties | 8 |
| | |
A third study, conducted by two sociologists at the New York Medical
College in early 1969, interviewed seventy-four New York user
respondents collected by "reputational" methods.[7] The
age composition of this group was almost identical to mine and
to EVO's (see Table 2-2).
Although none of these studies is random
in its composition of users, or in its method of collection, the
closeness in correspondence lends credence to the assertion that
the age distribution of marijuana smokers in general (or at least
in New York City) is very likely to be as described. More striking
than its mere youth (since the median age of the American population
in general is about
twenty-seven) is the high degree of concentration within the specific
age range of about fifteen years, the middle teens upward to about
thirty. It is possible that use is spreading beyond these boundaries,
both upward and downward; perhaps in a few years, as the present
user population grows older, and, possibly, continues to some
extent in using marijuana, this over-representation among those
in their late teens and early twenties will no longer hold true.
In any case, this is, at the present time, the age breakdown of
the average user.
Sex
The user is more likely to be male than female. Or, to put it
another way, men are more likely to smoke, or to have smoked,
marijuana than women. The differences between men and women in
their potsmoking participation are always fairly small, but distinct.
For the addicting drugs, especially heroin, the differences are
massive. Only about one-fifth of all known addicts turn out to
be women. Men have five times greater chance of becoming heroin
addicts than women.[8] The
male dominance in marijuana use is never as great as that. In
the 1969 American Institute of Public Opinion study (Gallup Poll)
of a representative sample of college students,[9] 25
percent of the men and 18 percent of the women had tried marijuana
at least once. (The figure for the entire sample was 22 percent.)
In the EVO study, all of whom had used drugs, 98 percent of whom-
had smoked marijuana, and 85 percent had used hashish at least
once, the sex distribution was 69/31, a remarkable over-representation
of males in New York's East Village drug-using community. In a
study of a sample of students at a small upstate New York college,
about 20 percent of the women and 30 percent of the men had used
marijuana at least once.[10] Regardless
of the locus of the study in question, men were more likely than
women to smoke pot.[11]
In our sample, there was a slight skew; 53 percent of our respondents
were men, and 47 percent were women. However, since it is not
representative, this figure, in and of itself, means very little.
The simple population of all those who have had so much as a single
puff of a marijuana cigarette is less relevant than levels
of use and involvement. Not only are men far more likely to
have had at least some minimal contact with drugs, the greater
the degree of involvement and use, the greater the over-representation
of men will be. Heavy and frequent marijuana use is a decidedly
male-dominated activity. Men are more likely than women to use
drugs, to use them often, to have tried and used more drugs, and
to have participated in a greater variety of drug-related activities,
such as buying and selling, turning others on, and, in short,
to be far more involved in the drug subculture. These differences
are more remarkable for their consistency and direction than for
their strength. Of the 105 men in my study, 17 percent said that
they smoked marijuana every day, while this figure was 7 percent
for the 99 women; 17 percent of the men smoked less than once
per month and 28 percent of the women were such infrequent smokers.
The men in my study were also more likely to have tried drugs
other than marijuana, as we see clearly in the Table 2-3. Forty-two
percent of the women had taken no other drug besides marijuana,
while this was true of only 22 percent of the men. This male dominance
was maintained for every drug. The proportion of men taking
LSD more than a dozen times, as well as the proportion ever taking
heroin was about three times that for women: 19 percent versus
7 percent in the first case, and 19 percent versus 6 percent in
the second. Men were more likely to be involved in drug-using
activities and in the drug-using community in a variety of ways.
They were more likely to have drug-using friends than women were.
They were also more likely to have bought and sold marijuana.
Only one-sixth of the men said that they had never bought marijuana
(16 percent), while this was true of between one-third and one-half
of the women (42 percent). Typically, the woman is offered the
marijuana cigarettes she smokes by a man, and if she buys, she
usually buys it from a man. A majority of women have never
sold marijuana (69 percent), while a majority of men (55
percent) have.
TABLE 2-3
Percentage by Sex Taking Different Drugs at Least Once
| LSD | Amphet-
amine | DMT or
DET | Barbi-
turates | Opium | Cocaine | Mescaline
or Peyote | Heroin |
|---|
| Men | 55 | 47 | 28 | 31 | 22 | 25 | 27 | 19 |
|---|
| Women | 41 | 37 | 25 | 14 | 18 | 12 | 8 | 6 |
|---|
One of the more striking differences in the entire study had to
do with the number of people whom the respondent had turned on.
A quarter of the men (26 percent) said that they had introduced
ten or more people to marijuana for the first time, while only
a tiny percentage of the women boasted of this degree of
proselytization (3 percent). In part, all of these differences
reflect general nondrug and nondeviant differences in gender.
The man, after all, buys alcoholic drinks for his female
companion, and he is more likely to introduce her to alcohol
for the first time than she is to introduce him. These parallels
should not be pushed too far, but the use of marijuana, as
well as the hallucinogenic drugs, is a decidedly masculine
activity. The male can be seen as somewhat "marijuanogenic";
he is more likely than the female to use the drug, to "progress"
to other, more powerful, drugs, to buy and sell drugs, and
to persuade others to use marijuana. It is from the male that
use spreads. So much is this the case that I would speculate that
in milieu in which drug use is high, as in colleges and universities,
the women who interact most frequently and intimately with males
are most likely to at least have tried marijuana, while the women
who are least active and most isolated socially are the most likely
to be "drug free."
Urbanness
The marijuana user is more likely to live in or near an urban
environment than is true of the population at large. Large cities
remain the centers of use; in rural areas, marijuana smoking is
relatively rare. To be more precise, the larger the urban center,
the greater the percentage of its inhabitants who will have smoked
pot; the smaller the community, the lower is this likelihood.
One of the few exceptions would be in colleges and universities
located in rural or small-town areas, but this only confirms our
point, since (1) students in these colleges who do smoke are far
more likely to come from an urban area; (2) it is generally from
the more urban-originated students that use spreads; and (3) in
the more urban-located college, the greater the likelihood of
use is anyway.
A very rough measure of the gross relative amount of use of
various geographical areas may be gleaned from official arrest
figures (though there is not space here for a critique of official
crime data) and they confirm our impression. We would, of course,
expect more marijuana arrests in urban areas, simply because of
their larger numbers, but even on a per population basis, urban
arrests are far more common with marijuana charges than rural
arrests. (This is true of most crimes.) For instance, in California
in 1967, half of all adult arrests on marijuana charges ( 13,000
out of a total of 26,000) as well as all juvenile arrests (5,000
out of l0,000) took place in Los Angeles county; the rest were
in the remaining part of the state.[12]
(However, it is possible that urban police
are more diligent and observant, making use and possession more
easily detected. ) In a nationally representative survey of the
sexual patterns of college youth, Simon and Gagnon found a high
correlation between marijuana use and the size of the community
in which the respondent had attended high school.[13]
Only 3 percent of the college men and 1 percent
of the college women from a small town or rural area had ever
tried marijuana, whereas the figures were percent and 13
percent of urban and suburban men and women.
Social Class
The class backgrounds of marijuana smokers, as opposed to those
who have never smoked marijuana, are relatively higher. Probably
the higher the income of one's family, the higher the education
of one's parents, and the greater the prestige of one's father's
occupation, the greater is the likelihood of smoking marijuana.
Also, for the young adult who has begun working, and who has left
his family of orientation, the higher is his education, income
and occupational prestige, the greater are his chances of smoking
marijuana. This might seem peculiar to someone with a narcotics-addict
model of marijuana use. Heroin addicts, it is true, are more likely
to stem from poorer areas, especially the urban slum. Yet not
all social classes find drugs equally appealing. The picture is
even stranger in view of the fact that it is possible that a few
years ago (before 1960), the class background of the average marijuana
user was different. A 1958 textbook on drug use attempted to explain
the greater incidence of marijuana use among blacks by the "greater
incidence of poverty, slum residence, and socioeconomic discrimination
among Negroes," and the author claims that the marijuana user's
home is typically poverty stricken.[14]
Possibly ten or more years ago, it might
have been fair to say that there was something of a negative relationship
between social class and potsmoking. Probably the only two groups
that used with any frequency were residents of the urban slum
ghetto, and Bohemians and beats on the edges of the slum and the
black culture—jazz enthusiasts especially.
Today this pattern has been reversed. Regardless of the specific
measure of social class we wish to use—whether income, occupation,
or education—the higher the social class, and the higher the
social class of one's parents, the greater the likelihood the
individual will smoke marijuana. There seems to be something like
a linear relationship between social status and potsmoking.
In a representative study of the high school youth of Michigan
conducted in 1968, this relationship was empirically confirmed.[c] Using
the father's education as an index of social status, a strong
and stepwise correlation between the social class of the high
school student and his chances of smoking pot reveals itself;
moreover, the higher the student's father's education; the more
likely it was that he would see marijuana as harmless or beneficial.
( see Table 2-4).
A Gallup Poll, released in October 1969, verified this positive
association between social class and the likelihood of marijuana
smoking. About 4 percent of a nationally representative sample
of adults said that they "ever happened to try marijuana."
The percentage of respondents with a grade school education
who had done so was 1 percent; the figure for respondents with
a college education was almost ten times as high, or 9 percent.
Even in colleges, the same pattern holds. (College students are
already a preselected group with regard to class, since
their parents' occupation, income and education are generally
significantly higher than that of their noncollege age peers.)
The June 1969 Gallup Poll of college youth found that those students
whose parents' family income was over $15,000 were considerably
more likely to have smoked marijuana than those students whose
family income was below $7,000.[15] One
of the most complete studies of the drug-use patterns of college
students, by Richard Blum and others, found that those from the
wealthiest families were more likely to have tried marijuana—indeed,
to have experimented with all drugs, except the opiates—than
those from less affluent families.[16]
TABLE 2-4
Marijuana Smoking and Evaluations of Marijuana by Father's Education
| Father's Education | Ever Smoked
Marijuana?
(per cent "yes") | Believes
Marijuana
Is Harmful | Believes
Marijuana
Is Beneficial
or Harmless |
| College graduate | 22 | 52 | 48 |
| Some college | 11 | 62 | 38 |
| High school graduate | 12 | 69 | 31 |
| Some high school | 10 | 77 | 24 |
| No high school | 6 | 79 | 21 |
Not only is the youth with middle-class parents more likely to
smoke marijuana than his working-class peer, but middle-class
parents are more likely to be tolerant of their children smoking
marijuana than working-class parents. Of course, parents of all
social and economic levels overwhelmingly oppose marijuana
use, especially by their children. But the higher the class level,
the greater the chance that a parent will be part of that small
minority which does not oppose its use. A Harris survey in 1968
documented this relationship. While 85 percent of the total sample
of American parents of teenagers "would forbid" their
children's smoking marijuana, this was true of 74 percent of the
"affluent" parents. Not only were middle-status parents
somewhat more likely to be tolerant of pot use, they also were
more likely to know someone who smoked marijuana. While 5 percent
of the total sample knew a youth who smokes marijuana, this was
true of three times as many of the relatively affluent. Although
this was true of every instance of "controversial" behavior
questioned in the Harris poll, the edge was greater for marijuana
smoking than for any other aspect. "... tolerance of controversial
activities among teenagers is greater among the better educated
and relatively wealthy [parents]."[17]
The "rebellion" and "rejection of authority"
hypotheses of marijuana use and other socially illicit activities
would predict that youngsters whose parents most oppose
such activities would be most likely to participate in them. My
view is that marijuana use like many other forms of behavior that
much of society condemns, is partly an extension of the social
climate with which the individuals are involved. While most teenagers
and young adults who smoke marijuana will find that their parents
will condemn their behavior, it is the young adult whose parents
are most tolerant toward marijuana use who will be most likely
to try using it. Highly authoritarian parents discourage experimentation
of all kinds. In part, the use of marijuana is an outcome of less
authoritarian parents granting responsibility, initiative, and
self-reliance to their children. Teenagers will move somewhat
beyond parents' expectations; if those expectations lie close
to the unconventional, the child will move into the arena of the
unconventional. If the expectations are more severely restricted,
the child will move a little beyond that. The potsmoking of young
adults is partly an outgrowth and an extension of their parents'
attitudes and expectations on marijuana, as well as related issues.
The classic view of class differences in freedom and authoritarianism,
still believed today by many practicing psychiatrists, has been
that the lower or working classes are freer, more unrestrained,
less repressed, more natural and spontaneous, than is true of
the middle classes. This point of view has been informed by the
"noble savage" ideology, and, later, by many forms of
romantic Marxism. Freud, in watching a performance of Bizet's
Carmen, was struck by the differences between his own repressed
middle-class upbringing and the free, willful, and savage outburst
of emotion expressed by the crowds. This tradition influenced
social research and theory until a generation ago, when careful
surveys revealed that quite the reverse was true.
Working-class parents are far more likely to raise their children
in an authoritarian manner; they are more likely to believe,
for instance, that the most important thing a child can learn
is obedience. The middle-class child is granted more autonomy,
responsibility, and freedom, and allowed a freer expression of
his emotions than the lower-class child. He is allowed to experiment
more, to strike out on his own. It would be strange that these
differences did not find their expression in such adolescent activities
as marijuana use. (Of course, one problem in interpretation is
that the historical trend. has been from a predominantly working
and lower-class clientele in marijuana use to a predominantly
middle-class one. ) In any case, the lower-class parent, as well
as the lower-class child, is more conformist, tradition-oriented,
conventional, restrictive, and more likely to stress obedience
and a conformity to externally imposed standards. The middle-class
person is more permissive, more likely to stress curiosity, exploration,
self-satisfaction, self-direction and equalitarianism.[18]
All of these attitudes have their impact
on the readiness to use marijuana, to re-examine society's restrictions
and decide for oneself what might be the most satisfying and interesting
and fulfilling path.
College/Noncollege Differences
It is common knowledge that use has spread into the colleges
and universities. Studies indicate that perhaps one-quarter of
all college youth have smoked marijuana, and more will do so by
the time they graduate.[19] This
is a massive rise which has taken place only in the past few years.
Studies conducted as recently as 1966 and 1967 showed that only
something like 6 percent of all college students had tried pot.[20]
At least part of this four to five times
rise in the space of two or three years is actual. The Columbia
Broadcasting System study, based on interviews conducted in April
1969 with about 1,300 nationally representative, randomly selected
youths age seventeen to twenty-three, slightly more than half
(723) in college and slightly less than half (617) not in college,
showed the powerful difference between the average college and
noncollege youth in their acceptance or rejection of the marijuana
prohibition. College youths were far less likely to accept
the prohibition, and far more likely to say that they reject
it outright (see Table 2-5).[21]
TABLE 2-5
Columbia Broadcasting System Study
| Marijuana Prohibition | College | Non-College |
| Accept easily | 48 | 72 |
| Accept reluctantly | 20 | 11 |
| Reject outright | 31 | 17 |
It is, of course, conceivable that these differences do not
translate into actual use patterns. Obviously, not all those who
say that they reject outright the prohibition actually use pot,
or have ever used pot. But equally obvious, those who say that
they reject the prohibition are far more likely to smoke marijuana
than those who say they accept it. It seems permissible to conclude
from these figures that today's college student is more likely
to use marijuana than is his noncollege age peer. But we must
keep in mind the fact that the parents of college students are
more likely to be middle class than the parents of youths who
do not go to college, and by that factor alone, they would be
more likely to try pot.
There are, in addition, systematic differences among different
types of colleges, as well as different types of college students.
We mentioned the urban factor: colleges in or near urban centers
will have students who are more likely to smoke pot than rural
schools. A second factor is geographical location: colleges and
universities on the two coasts, especially in New York and California—especially
California—will contain higher percentages of pot-smoking students
than those in the South, Midwest, or Rocky Mountain areas. A third
factor, interestingly enough, is the quality of the school: the
higher the academic standing of a college or university, other
things being equal, the greater is the likelihood that its students
will smoke marijuana. A study conducted in 1966 demonstrated that
a fifth of the students attending the "top ranking"
institutions had ever smoked pot (or used "similar drugs
or narcotics") while this was true of only 1 percent at the
"not very selective" colleges.[22]
Since 1966, of course, a rise in marijuana
use has occurred in all schools regardless of quality.
Jewish/Gentile Differences
Perhaps because of their urban residence, or partly as a result
of their almost exclusively middle-class socioeconomic status,
Jews are far more likely to smoke marijuana than Gentiles, at
least among young adults. About one-quarter of New York's population
is Jewish, and by that factor alone, the Jewish youth is more
likely to be exposed to opportunities for use than is the less
urban Gentile population. My sample, although not representative,
even of New York City's marijuana smokers, at least lends credence
to Jewish over-representation among potsmokers; 44 percent of our
respondents were Jewish in background. Although it is possible
that this over-representation can be entirely explained by Jewish
dominance in academic and quasi-academic milieu in New York City
(the groups to which I had readiest access), there are indications
that lead me to suspect that there are social and cultural factors
linking the Jews to activities such as marijuana use.
Jews have historically been at the growing edge of every civilization
where they have been a part. Many of the avant-garde political
and artistic movements today are associated with marijuana smoking,
and the Jews are strongly over-represented in these movements.
This does not mean that all Jews are so associated, or that all
participants of these movements are Jewish. (Nor is it to say
that only those actively involved with social change are likely
to smoke marijuana.) But it is to say that Jews will be more likely
to be found among the more progressive artists and writers, and
among the more radical and revolutionary political activists in
America today. And it is precisely the political and artistic
avant-garde that is most likely to smoke marijuana. However, we
need not even concern ourselves with society's most progressive
and revolutionary members, since they form such a tiny percentage
of any population. Even contrasting Jews in general ( not merely
the most liberal among them) with Gentiles in general, it is clear
that in many ways, Jews grow up in a richer, more complex environment,
in a family ambiance with a lower level of authoritarianism, greater
tolerance, and a respect for intellectual experimentation. (The
Jewish family is, however, much more rigid in many other ways,
such as the closeness of family ties.) The average youth need
not have participated in society's most radical and Bohemian groups
to have already developed certain attitudes toward innovation
which make marijuana use more likely.
Whatever the reasons, Jewish youths do seem to experiment with
drugs, particularly marijuana, more than Gentiles. A study was
done by the Toronto Addiction Research Foundation, entitled A
Preliminary Report on the Attitudes and Behaviour of Toronto Students
in Relation to Drugs. Of the Catholic high school students,
7 percent had taken drugs (mainly marijuana), and 75 percent said
that they would not take drugs. These figures were g percent and
74 percent for Protestants. Among the Jewish students, about 15
percent had taken drugs, and 64 percent said that they would not
use them. The differences are not dramatic, but they are significant.
And they are corroborated by a number of other studies in other
locations.
Religious Observance and Belief
Even more dramatic than the Jewish-Gentile split in the likelihood
of marijuana use is the difference between anyone who claims to
have no religion as opposed to someone who claims some
religious affiliation. A "no religion" is highly
unconventional in many ways. Politically, he is at the far left
of the ideological spectrum. In the CBS study on youth cited earlier,
while only 8 percent of the total sample claimed to have "no
religion," over 60 percent of the youths classified as "revolutionary"
in political ideology said that they had no religion.[23]
We would, therefore, expect a "no religion"
to be unusual in many other ways. In Blum's college study, for
all of the drugs on which a question was asked (except sedatives),
"no religions" were by far the most likely of all religious
groups to have experimented. (Jews were found to be second for
all drugs).[24] The
average potsmoker is highly unlikely to be religious in a traditional
sense. He is less likely to claim religious affiliation, attend
religious services, believe in traditional dogma, or participate
in any way, with any of the formal religious bodies. In my study,
only one-fifth of the respondents said that they ever attended
formal religious services—that is, at least once a year. Slightly
over a quarter said that they believed in God; 45 percent
were atheists. (The rest had their own private version of God—pantheism,
the human spirit as God, "God is love," etc. ) In a
study of the student body attending a New York City private high
school, the New York Medical College team discovered a number
of dramatic and striking differences between the drug users and
the nonusers. The largest difference by far had to do with religion.
Over half of the nonusers (54 percent ) said that they attended
religious services. Not one of the users said that they
ever attended religious services.
The Simon-Gagnon college youth study corroborated these findings.
Among men who had tried marijuana, 4 percent attended church frequently,
while 36 percent of those who had not tried and did not wish to
try marijuana, attended services frequently. Expressed differently,
2 percent of the frequent church attenders had tried pot, while
24 percent of those who said that they attended rarely or never
had done so.
Political Orientation
One of the most empirically verified of all relationships with
marijuana use is political ideology and activity. Marijuana users
are far more likely to hold what are considered in America today
liberal or radical views. The New York Medical College study of
private school youths showed that the users (all but two had used
marijuana) were far more active and radical politically. All but
two of the thirteen users had joined a Vietnam march or demonstration,
whereas just over one-third of the nonusers had done so; about
two-thirds of the users agreed that the civil rights movement is
not "militant enough," while only about one-fifth of
the nonusers agreed.[25] In
Blum's study of college drug use, a direct and linear relationship
between political leftism and the use of any single illicit drug,
including marijuana, was found. The more radical the student was,
the greater the chance that he used any drug; the more conservative
he was, the lower was this chance.[26] (The
two Marxists in the study had not used marijuana, however; I will
touch upon this point presently. ) The CBS study, Generations
Apart, also documented the powerful relationship between political
ideology and the acceptance or rejection of the marijuana
prohibition.[27] The
more radical the student, the greater were his chances of rejecting
the marijuana laws. ( see Table 2-6 ).
TABLE 2-6
Political Ideology by Accepting or Rejecting the Marijuana Prohibition
| POLITICAL IDEOLOGY |
Marijuana
Prohibition | Revolutionary | Radical
Reformer | Moderate
Reformer | Middle of
the Road | Conservative |
| Accept easily | 5 | 47 | 43 | 77 | 85 |
| Accept reluctantly | 3 | 8 | 25 | 10 | 8 |
| Reject outright | 92 | 45 | 32 | 13 | 7 |
The bulk of the most radical of these students (revolutionary)
reject the marijuana prohibition, while the same is true of the
most conservative wing accepting the prohibition, while the in-between
ideological elements are also in-between on the pot issue. Marijuana,
by and large, is part of the ideology and even, to a large degree,
the politics, of the left wing in America today; at the very least,
liberalism and radicalism increase one's chances of approving
of pot and using it.
The 1969 Gallup Poll of college students also documented the linear
relationship between potsmoking and political attitudes. Whereas
about lo percent of the students who classified themselves as
conservatives had smoked marijuana at least once, about half (49
percent) of those who said that they were extremely liberal had
done so. Only 15 percent of the students who had never participated
in a political demonstration had ever smoked pot, but 40 percent
of those who had demonstrated had tried marijuana. While over
half of the whole sample felt that campus demonstrators who broke
the law should be expelled from college, this was true of about
a third of the marijuana smokers.[28] By
any measure, then, the politics of the average college marijuana
user runs at least somewhat to the left of his nonsmoking peers.
Political leftists, in general, seem to smoke marijuana more than
those who are considered to the right on the American political
spectrum.
As a qualification to this massive and unambiguous relationship,
it should be stated that there are a number of revolutionary leftist
political parties and groups that implacably oppose marijuana
use as a "tool" of the ruling classes. Marijuana, the
reasoning goes, acts as a pacifier, tends to blunt the revolutionary
fervor, one's activist drive.[29] This
is, for instance, the position of the Progressive Labor Party,
basically, a Maoist organization, which recently split off with
the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In the film, The
Battle of Algiers, the smoking of hashish was depicted as
counter-revolutionary; certainly, internationally, communists vigorously
oppose use of drugs of all kinds for the same puritanical reasons
of many conservatives in America. Many Americans of the far right,
however, believe that communists wish to impose drug use on Americans
to corrupt them, make them peaceful, decadent and easily conquerable.[30]
One of my interviewees, a twenty-one-year-old
college student who described herself as a Marxist, revealed her
political opposition to the use of marijuana. She said that she
had not smoked marijuana for eight months. The following is a
section of the interview I completed with her.
Q: Why don't you smoke marijuana more regularly?
A: I'm not letting the big boys take over my mind.
Q: What do you mean, the "big boys"?
A: President Johnson, all the political bosses. I feel powerless
and inert if I smoke—I feel guilty. Some people think it's better
for us to be stoned.
P: What people?
A: The power structure. They want us stoned because we aren't
as politically active then.
Sexual Permissiveness
Potsmokers are more liberal and unconventional in a variety
of ways, not merely in political orientation. Sexually, they are
more permissive. Or, expressed differently, sexually permissive
people are more likely to try and to use marijuana than those
who are more restrictive, conservative, or conventional. The more
liberal in sexual matters the individual is, the greater is his
chance of using marijuana once, a dozen times, or regularly. The
two are part of the same basic thrust—freedom from some of the
restraining mores of American society. Far more of the Simon-Gagnon
college student study who were classified as liberal in sexual
attitudes (24 percent of the men, and 14 percent of the women)
had tried pot, than those whose attitudes were conservative on
the sex-attitude scale (7 percent of the men, and 5 percent of
the women). Sexual liberalism seems to increase considerably
one's chance of taking marijuana. Sex is another area wherein
the middle-class individual is more liberal and permissive—the
age-old myths concerning the sexual aura of the lower and working
classes notwithstanding. The middleclass sexual relationship is
more equalitarian; the female expresses more satisfaction, and
reports a higher frequency of orgasm; in intercourse, the couple
is more likely to experiment with novel positions, ideas, and
situations, and the couple prolongs having sex further into old
age. The lower-class sexual pattern is more often characterized
by "homosociality"—that is, conquest and exploitation
of the female by the male for the purpose of approval from one's
peers, rather than for its intrinsic satisfaction. It is characterized
by the double standard, by the dichotomy between the good girl
and the bad girl, by a narrower range of acceptable activities
and a lower level of expressed satisfaction in the quality of
the sex experienced, especially by the female, and an earlier
discontinuation of sex relations in middle age.[31]
(These are, remember, comparative statements.)
All of these attitudes and forms of behavior have parallels in
marijuana use. The more sexually permissive the person is, the
greater the likelihood that the person will smoke marijuana, or
try it at least once. The more equalitarian he envisions and acts
out his sexual relationships, the greater the chances of potsmoking.
The more he rejects many of conventional society's sexual restrictions
and prohibitions, the more acceptable marijuana will seem. The
more that he feels that the acceptability of a given sexual relationship
is defined by the partners involved, rather than by some impersonal
and absolute standard, the more "self-direction" he
assigns to sexual partners, the less he will reject and condemn
marijuana use, and the more willing he will be to actually try
it himself. It should be realized, however, that these relationships
are not directly dependent on sex itself, but on more fundamental
underlying attitudes and behavior. Sexual permissiveness may merely
be a manifestation of a general anti-authoritarian stance, a rejection
of conventionality of all kinds. Both marijuana use and
sexual permissiveness are dependent on the same basic factor,
rather than one being dependent on the other.[32]
Authoritarianism
Many of these relationships can at least partially be captured
by the notion of authoritarianism. Two decades ago, a massive
study entitled The Authoritarian Personality was published.
Although its authors assigned to the concept of authoritarianism
an almost cosmic and all-embracing status, we need not be so ambitious
in our use of it. Regardless of the generality of its applicability,
the fact remains that some of us are more rigid in our thinking
processes and in the way we act than others. Some seek comfort
in rules, orders, and a strict hierarchy of power, in a black
and white notion of right and wrong, an unambiguous morality;
these people have an intolerance for ambiguity. Others are more
comfortable with ambiguity. They do not need clear-cut rules,
nor do they wish to follow a powerful leader. They do not find
the need to divide the world up into good and bad, right and wrong;
they recognize shades in between, and this does not distress them
unduly. They do not ask, upon entering a new social situation,
"Who's in charge here?" They seek the relevance of axes
unrelated to power and authority, which are far less important
to them. Some of us, in short, are highly authoritarian, while
others are far less so. As we might expect, this conceptual scheme
has relevance for marijuana use. Some are content to rest with
society's prohibition: "No pot." Others, with a more
flexible notion of right and wrong, do not accept this axiom.
They have a more relativistic notion of right and wrong. Individuals
with authoritarian attitudes are far less likely to smoke marijuana
than those low in authoritarianism. In the Simon-Gagnon college
survey, only 6 percent of the high-authoritarian men had tried
marijuana, whereas 28 percent of the low-authoritarian men had;
the figures for women were 3 percent and 15 percent, respectively.
N O T E S
a. Actually, the way I have constructed these categories, it would
be possible to move back and forth between the last three—from
occasional to regular to frequent use and back again—but not
in and out of being an experimenter. I look upon experimentation
with marijuana as having used the drug less than a dozen times
in one's lifetime, so that after that, one moves out of this category
for good. Thus, this scheme is not a true typology. (back)
b. In fact, I saw marijuana-using parents give a joint to their
two-, three-and four-year-old children, much as a French mother
might give her child a sip of wine to quiet him but this is, obviously,
extremely rare. (back)
c. The study was conducted by Richard Bogg of the School of Public
Health, University of Michigan. This table was not tabulated in
the study. I want to thank Professor Bogg for supplying me with
the IBM cards on which the data are stored, so that I could make
these tabulations myself. (back)
1. Six cigarettes a day figure was cited in the classic, The
Marihuana Problem in the City of New York ("The LaGuardia
Report"), and quoted thereafter as gospel. No one bothered
to check its validity. It bears about as much correspondence to
reality as does the statement that the typical drinker of liquor
consumes a half a quart of Scotch a day. (back)
2. Kenneth Keniston, "Heads and Seekers: Drugs on Campus;
Counter-Cultures and American Society," The American Scholar
38 (Winter 1969): 99. (back)
3. During the period of the interviews I conducted (July and August
1967), most of the mass magazines with the largest circulation,
such as Look, Life, Newsweek, ran full-length articles
on marijuana use, emphasizing the complexity of the users' characteristics.
Many of the smokers I interviewed incorrectly took this as evidence
of the immanence of the end of the marijuana laws. (back)
4. John Rosevear, Pot: A Handbook of Marijuana (New Hyde
Park, N. Y.: University Books, 1967), p. 118. (back)
5. For a report expressing concern over the youth of recent smokers,
"The Drug Generation: Growing Younger," Newsweek,
April 21, 1969, pp. 107-108, 110. (back)
6. Obviously, readers of EVO are not representative of drug users
in general, even those living in New York's East Village. And
those who had the six cent stamp to mail in the questionnaire
will be somewhat different from those who did not, those who are
willing to fill it out in the first place will be dissimilar in
some ways from those who are not willing. And so on. (back)
7. Richard Brotman and Frederic Suffet, "Marijuana Users'
Views of Marijuana Use" (Paper presented at the American
Psychopathological Association Annual Meeting, February 1969).
(back)
8. See Ernest Hamburger, "Contrasting the Hippie and Junkie,"
The lnternational Journal of the Addictions 4 (March 1969):
123-126, for data on the sex ratios of drug addicts. (back)
9. American Institute of Public Opinion, Special Report on
the Attitudes of College Students no.48 (Princeton, N. J.,
June 1969), p. 30. (back)
10. Martin E. Rand, J. David Hammond, and Patricia Moscou, "A
Survey of Drug Use at Ithaca College," The Journal of
the American College Health Association 17 ( October 1968):
43-51. (back)
11. See also Richard Blum et al., Students and Drugs (San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1969), p. 64; Brotman and Suffet, op.
cit., p. 6. (back)
12. State of California, Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal
Statistics, Drug Arrests and Dispositions in California, I967
(Sacramento: State of California, 1968), pp-4,5 (back)
13. William Simon and John H. Gagnon, The End of Adolescence:
The College Experience (New York: Harper & Row, 1970),
forthcoming. (back)
14. David P. Ausubel, Drug Addiction (New York: Random
House, 1958), pp. 94, 95. (back)
15. AIPO, op. cit., p. 30. (back)
16. Blum et al., op. cit., p. 66. (back)
17. Louis Harris, "Parents Draw the Line at Drug Use,"
The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 4, 1968. (back)
18. Hundreds of articles, books, and studies have discussed and
tested these relationships. See Albert K. Cohen and Harold M.
Hodges, "Lower-Blue-Collar-Class Characteristics," Social
Problems 10 (Spring 1963): 303-334; Melvin L. Kohn, Class
and Conformity (Homewood, III.: Dorsey Press, 1969). See also
the relevant papers in Rose Laub Coser ed., Life Cycle and
Achievement in America (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969),
and Alan L. Grey, ed., Class and Personality in Society (New
York: Atherton Press, 1969). (back)
19. AIPO, op. cit., p. 30. (back)
20. American Institute of Public Opinion, Views of College Students
on Drug Taking," unpublished manuscript (June 1967), and William
J. Bowers, "A Study of Campus Misconduct," unpublished
manuscript (Boston: Northeastern University, The Russell B. Stearns
Study, 1968). (back)
21. Columbia Broadcasting System News, Generations A part:
A Study of the Generation Gap, conducted for CBS by Daniel
Yankelovitch, Inc., 1969, p. 18. (back)
22. Bowers, op. cit., table 3. (back)
23. CBS, op. cit., p. 82. The question of whether a "no
religion" stance influences one's political orientation,
or vice versa, is not relevant at this point.
(back)
24. Blum et al., op. cit., p. 66.
(back)
25. Richard Brotman, Irving Silverman, and Frederic Suffet, Some
Social Correlates of Student Drug Use," unpublished manuscript
(New York Medical College, Division of Community Mental Health),
p. 13. (back)
26. Blum et al., op. cit., pp. 69-70.
(back)
27. CBS, op. cit., p. 62. (back)
28. AIPO, op. cit., pp. 9 12, 21, 23, 24,30.
(back)
29. For two Marxian analyses of the role of cannabis in the class
struggle, see Allen Krebs, "Hashish, Avant Garde and Rearguard,"
Streets I, no. 2 (May-June 1965): 17-22, and B. W. Sigg,
Le Cannabism Chronique, Fruit du Sous-developpement et du Capitalisme
(Marrakesch, 1960-Algiers, 1963). An exposition on the latter
work, which is inaccessible (as is the former) may be found in
Blum et al., op. cit., pp. 73-76. For another article which
emphasizes the political apathy-producing effects of marijuana
see Hunter Thompson, "The 'Hashbury' is the Capital of the
Hippies," The New York Times Magazine, May 14, 1967,
pp. 29, 123, 124. (back)
30. See L. T. Frey, "Memorandum to All Marine Aircraft Group
11 Personnel," excerpts printed in Avant Garde, no.
4 (September 1968): p. lo, and Paul G. Rogers, "Transcript
of Panel Discussion, Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965,"
in International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association, Sixth
Annual Conference Report (Miami Beach, Fla. September 26-October
1, 1965), pp. 20-21. (back)
31. One of the most comprehensive of the many studies exploring
this relationship is Lee Rainwater, "Some Aspects of Lower
Class Sexual Behavior," The Journal of Social Issues 22,
no. 2 ( April 1966); 96-108. (back)
32. The sociologist and the psychiatrist are likely to see different
ranges of the sexual spectrum. While a sociologist, when he thinks
of someone who is defined as "sexually permissive,"
is likely to think of the most permissive half, third, or quarter
of the entire population, the huge majority of which are clinically
healthy individuals, the psychiatrist will rather think of the
tiny minority who are the most sexually active ( comprising possibly
1 percent of the population ) many of whom act on the basis of
motives defined by much of the medical profession as neurotic.
(The promiscuous girl, for instance.) Thus, he will take a dimmer
view of sexual permissiveness. In fact, many of the most sexually
active individuals, such as the promiscuous girl, actually reject
the validity of their behavior, and could not, therefore, be called
attitudinally permissive. In any case, if we were to adopt a broader
view, and look at the most permissive half, third, or quarter
of the population, we would find a much higher level of self-acceptance.
(back)
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