The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse
Chapter IV
social response to marihuana use
THE NON-LEGAL INSTITUTIONS
Law enforcement authorities, given available and prospective resources, cannot possibly
enforce the existing marihuana laws fully. The best they can do is keel) marihuana use
contained and out of sight. In addition, many officials within the criminal justice system
are reluctant to enforce the marihuana laws, being either uncommitted to the usefulness of
this particular law or opposed to the law itself. The net result is for the legal system
to leave much of the responsibility for social control to other social institutions such
as family, schools, churches, and the medical profession. Since these other institutions
themselves have relied heavily on the legal system for control, caution and confusion now
dominate the social response to marihuana use.
The diminishing severity of the law enforcement response may not have occurred if the
other institutions of society had continued to regard the marihuana user as a criminal.
However, many of these institutions have come to view the marihuana user primarily in
social or medical terms, and to recommend a form of social control in accord with their
respective self-interests or orientations. In many cases, the ,attitudes of these other
institutions mirror that of the criminal justice system: uncertainty about the proper role
of formal legal control.
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