By Megan Swim
About half of all university students have said they’ve used cannabis at least once, according to research from three Canadian universities. So, what does this mean for the normalization of cannabis use for youth and young adults?
Prof. Andrew Hathaway, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, has been researching cannabis use since the 1990s. He says cannabis use is not the deviant, addictive habit is has so often been portrayed as, but rather a mainstream phenomenon.
“Back in the 1950s and 1960s, sociologists pegged cannabis use as this subculture of deviance,” Hathaway says. “My experience was different than this, in the sense that I found every group of youth, such as athletes, are participating in it in some way or another—it wasn’t just one specific group like it was back in the day.”
Though not acceptable to all and often stigmatized by non-users, there is widespread social tolerance for cannabis in Canada. And, although the drug is still illegal for most users, media representations of the drug don’t demonize it in the same way as was comically depicted in the ‘reefer madness’ era.
Hathaway’s past research has examined motivations for the use of cannabis. As a tool for recreation during leisure time, the drug is often used to enhance other activities. In addition, it is used for work-related tasks from spurring creativity to performing monotonous tasks—and as a means of coping with chronic and acute conditions ranging from insomnia to depression and anxiety.
To further understanding of the normalization process as experienced by students at Canadian universities, in 2012 Hathaway collaborated with professors teaching first-year classes in the social sciences at the University of Alberta and the University of Toronto to conduct an online survey and follow-up interviews with users and non-users of the drug.
An understudied marker of normalization is found in attitudes of students who do not use the drug. In particular, Hathaway notes there used to be a distinction between the non-users and users, but as normalization happened among high school and university students, the two groups mixed together and it is not a source of conflict anymore.
Hathaway says there are clear signs of normalization in Canada, with policy changes such as the legalization of cannabis. Informally, however, the process has long been facilitated by the casual boundary between dealer and supplier (such as buying cannabis from a trusted friend) that reduces fear of stigma in gaining access to the drug.
“Cannabis use has always been a marginalized area of study where it is trivialized because it is illegal…we do not take it as seriously as other substances such as alcohol,” Hathaway says. With the current wave of attention being paid to research in this area, clearly this attitude is changing, providing opportunities for students in a wide variety of academic disciplines to participate in the dawning of a new era of cannabis research.
This research is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.