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OPERATION INTERCEPTThe Multiple Consequences of Public Policy
Analysis of the Findings: Public Policy and the Drug Abuse Problem
Observations and interviews during and following the Operation Intercept period have confirmed the conclusion that there was, in fact, a severe marihuana shortage in New York City during the summer and early fall of 1969. Although a general shortage was evident, the extent of the shortage for various groups and individuals was not found to be constant.
Those who experienced "no shortage" and "no higher prices" were atypical of the vast majority of marihuana users. These persons were unaffected for one of the following reasons:
1. A few had access to an adequate supply of domestically grown marihuana. Although this situation was quite rare in the New York City area, evidence suggests that it was more common in other sections of the country.
2. Prior to the shortage, some marihuana users had accumulated a supply large enough to last through the summer and early fall of 1969, so that purchases during this period were unnecessary. Those who were in this situation sold marihuana on a full-time or part-time basis; although personally unaffected, selling activities were adapted, in various ways, to the marihuana shortage.
3. Many sporadic users of marihuana were unaffected since, due to infrequent use prior to the shortage, a layoff of several months went unnoticed.In contrast, many users of marihuana were completely unable to obtain the drug for a period of at least one month during this period. This situation was particularly common among two distinct types of marihuana users:
1. Middle- and upper-middle-class businessmen, professionals, and others in "respectable" occupational and community positions, whose only tie to a drug subculture consisted of one or two personal contacts from whom they previously purchased marihuana.
2. Young black and Puerto Rican users of marihuana, who were students, unemployed or marginally employed, and who resided in low-income ghetto areas.
Although some users were able to maintain their regular intake and supply simply by paying higher prices for the drug, the majority of marihuana users found it less available as well as more expensive. Those who found it to be readily available, although more expensive, identified strongly with a drug subculture and had sold marihuana at some time. They most closely resembled those who were unaffected due to an adequate supply for personal use. However, even among those with selling experience and a strong counterculture identification, most experienced decreasing availability and increasing prices during this period. This two-sided dilemma was the most common situation among marihuana users in the New York City area. Generally, it was found that those who stressed the difficulty of obtaining marihuana were older, had greater financial resources, and were less involved in the drug scene than those who emphasized high prices.
Thus, although there were probably as many different specific experiences as there are drug-using cliques in New York City, some useful generalizations emerge from the data. These differential experiences suggest the many types of relations that exist between the marihuana market and various types of marihuana users, as well as underlining the highly differentiated and uncontrolled nature of the marihuana market.
It was seen that the immediate and intermediate objectives of the Operation Intercept policy were realized. Importation of marihuana was substantially curtailed, its price increased, and its availability was reduced. However, the reduction and hopefully the elimination of illegal drug use in the United States, particularly among the young, was the ultimate objective of this public policy. Assuming that the policy makers' stated concern about the problem did in fact reflect their most basic motivations, and that their diagnoses and recommendations were informed and realistic, we would have expected to observe a general decrease in drug use during this period. Ideally, the policy aimed at complete abstention by a significant proportion of drug users. Thus, both abstention and decreased use can be characterized as intended consequences of the Operation Intercept policy.
The findings of this study indicate that abstaining from all drug use was a highly atypical reaction to the marihuana shortage. In fact, those who reported no drug use at all for at least one month during this period were such infrequent users of marihuana and so uninvolved in a drug use subculture, that "abstain" would be an inappropriate term. Just as these sporadic users experienced "no shortage," they also experienced no real change in drug use behavior.
Although less marihuana use was reported by many drug users and observers of the drug scene, most of these went on to note an increased availability and use of drugs other than marihuana. Those who did report a personal decline in total drug consumption were distinguished by certain identifiable characteristics, which can be categorized as follows:
1. Middle-class and upper-middle-class men and women, between the ages of 24 and 55, who previously used marihuana on a regular basis (four times a week), but who had little identification with a drug subculture, a counterculture movement, or a drug-oriented way of life. Prior to the shortage, these respondents had never used any illegally obtained drug other than marihuana or hashish.
2. Very infrequent users of marihuana who might have gone several months without using it, even if the shortage had never developed. These were middle-class people, over 20 years of age, involved in white-collar employment or educational endeavors. As in the former groups, these respondents had never used any illegally obtained drug other than marihuana or hashish prior to the shortage.
Therefore, the ultimate objectives of Operation Intercept were realized only among a very limited segment of drug users in the New York City area. Further, these marihuana users are distinguished by certain objective and subjective characteristics, which, taken as a whole, make them unrepresentative of the general drug-using population. These factors include serious involvements in respectable social institutions, lack of identification with a drug subculture, an average age above 20 years old, and rare involvement in multiple drug use experimentation. Many of these reportedly resorted to an increased use of alcohol.
It is evident that those who reacted as anticipated were not those for whom drug use in general or marihuana use in particular was posing a serious problem of personal adjustment. Nor were they the drug counterculture devotees who were seen as posing a threat to the nation's social order. If any of the studies, official statistics, and polls are to be believed, they are also nonrepresentative, in attitudes and behavior, of the vast majority of marihuana users.
While we can generalize about the characteristics of those who decreased or temporarily discontinued drug use during the shortage, this is not the case concerning those who reacted in an unanticipated manner. Those who manifested increased experimentation, a greater reliance on drugs other than marihuana, heavier involvement in drug distribution, and an increased or reaffirmed skepticism concerning the intentions and basic intelligence of the authorities cannot be uniformly characterized. These types of unintended reactions and adaptations were experienced by marihuana users from a wide range of residential, socioeconomic, occupational, and age groups in the New York City area. Further, such unanticipated reactions were reported among persons representing various stages of involvement in drug use subcultures. In sum, the various types of unanticipated reactions and the types of persons involved in same are as follows:
1. Many marihuana users - representing all ages, residential areas, and socioeconomic strata, and various stages of involvement in drug use subcultures - became much more involved in trying to purchase marihuana than ever before. Through this involvement, contact was often established with individuals and groups more "advanced" in drug use and drug distribution.
2. Some marihuana users, particularly younger people who were able to obtain marihuana during the shortage, became involved in its sale for the first time.
3. Among all types of marihuana users, there was a sharply accelerated interest in "home-grown" marihuana. This "do-it-yourself" movement was reflected in the publication and sales of books, articles, and pamphlets devoted to the subject.4. The use of alcohol increased for individual marihuana users from all age, residential, and socioeconomic groups. This was least true among those drug users for whom marihuana was not the primary drug used prior to the shortage.
5. The most general result of the marihuana shortage was the sharply increased availability and use of hashish. This phenomenon was reported in all neighborhoods except the low-income, black and Puerto Rican sections of New York City. It occurred among groups representing the full spectrum of age, occupational, and drug use involvements.
6. Many regular users of marihuana, particularly younger people, became involved in the sale of hashish. This was especially true for youths from middle- to upper-income families who had previously sold marihuana at some time.
7. The increased availability of hashish reflected a step-up in its illegal importation into this country. Whether more people became involved or established networks simply increased their activities is not known. It is believed that both of these factors played a role. However, it was evident that the knowledge of high profits and, consequently, the enticement to become involved in hashish smuggling was experienced by many marihuana users. This seems to have been particularly true regarding United States citizens who were vacationing overseas.
8. This period witnessed a substantial increase in the use of barbiturates, amphetamines, and psychedelic drugs in predominantly white neighborhoods throughout the New York City area. This switch was most prevalent among youthful drug users (high school and college age) who had previously experimented with one or more of these types of drugs (although many who had never done so previously also became involved) and who identified with a drug subculture or counterculture movement.
9. More people, particularly young drug users heavily involved in a drug-oriented lifestyle, became involved in the sale and distribution of barbiturates, amphetamines, and psychedelics than ever before.
10. For certain individuals, there was an introduction into the use of cocaine for the first time. Rather than a distinct ambiance or preference, this phenomenon appeared to be a part of the heavy multiple drug experimentation that was taking place in many groups at this time. Several factors, including limited availability and high cost, account for the fact that few continued cocaine use on a regular basis.
I 1. A few drug users, usually teenagers, resorted to cough medicines (prescription medicines containing codeine and terpin hydrate elixir or commercial syrups such as Robitussin A-C, which contains codeine, an antihistamine and a muscle relaxant), herbs such as catnip, nutmeg, or mace (inhaled), antihistamines (sometimes mixed with alcohol or cough syrups), over-the-counter "sleeping aids" (such as Sominex which contains scopalamine, known to cause hallucinations when used in high doses), commercial solvents, including gasoline, cleaning agents, model airplane glue, paint thinners, nail polish remover, lighter fluid (inhaled), a variety of prescription medications for special ailments (inhalants, pills, and liquids), and an assortment of other homemade concoctions, in the attempt to "get a head" when nothing else was available.
12. The increased availability of heroin was evident throughout the New York City area in many types of neighborhoods and among various types of drug users. Further, its price became competitive with the rising price of marihuana. It is not known whether the increased availability and reduced price of heroin was caused by a coincidentally large supply of heroin in the United States, a step-up in heroin importation, the fact that it was now being sold more aggressively, or simply that it was being cut more and packaged in smaller amounts. Reports suggest that all of these factors were instrumental. The fact remains that suddenly, during the marihuana shortage, there was more heroin around in more types of neighborhoods and at lower prices than most experts could recall in the last twenty years.
13. Although the increased availability of heroin was reported in many neighborhoods and by drug users in various stages of involvement in the drug scene, a significant switch to heroin use during this period was generally confined to particular localities and to specific types of drug users. This development was most widespread in the low-income ghetto areas of New York City, where heroin use was rapidly accelerated by the marihuana shortage. In these areas, this mode of adaptation was found among individuals and groups that were in various stages of involvement in the drug scene prior to the summer shortage, including some young people who had never used any drug previously. In contrast, in predominantly white, middle-class and affluent communities, the switch to heroin was primarily among younger drug users (I 6- to 20-years old) who had used a variety of drugs regularly prior to the shortage (although marihuana and hashish were usually the primary drugs) and who were heavily involved in a drug-oriented lifestyle.
14. Some drug users who were using marihuana as part of an effort to stop heroin use reverted to the use of heroin when marihuana became unavailable.
15. As more people became involved in heroin use during the summer and early fall of 1969, many of the new recruits also became involved in its sale. This was true of heroin users from all age, socioeconomic and neighborhood groups. These new entrepreneurs acquired a vested interest in the continued expansion of the market for heroin, which prompted them to seek more new recruits from younger and younger age groups in their respective schools and neighborhoods.
16. Many very young people who had acquired a desire for a "drug experience" started experimenting with illegal drugs other than marihuana, which was unavailable to them.
17. The attitudes expressed by drug rehabilitation workers, journalists, writers, drug users, and drug dealers alike generally coincided in terms of a basic distrust of the intentions and intelligence of the policy makers. While some attacked the authorities' lack of understanding of the drug problem, others accused them of using the policy as a means to attaining some unstated ulterior objective, unrelated to the "war on drugs." Unquestionably, this "communications gap" existed before Operation Intercept. But it is equally true that, for many, Operation Intercept was an important factor in the alienation, polarization, and radicalization process.
These findings indicate that a vast range of unanticipated consequences resulted from the Operation Intercept policy decision. In this regard, Merton alerts us to an analytical requirement: "Rigorously speaking, the consequences of purposive action are limited to those elements in the resulting situation which are exclusively the outcome of the action, i.e., those elements which would not have occurred had the action not taken place."1 Without access to a control group, we can have no way of knowing with any statistical certainty whether some of these developments might not have materialized anyway. Since all marihuana users in the New York City area were affected, no within-area group could be used for comparative study. And, since the enforced marihuana shortage was nationwide, we could not study another section of the country as a "control population." Even if this were possible, the problems of comparability would have been numerous. So the link between these consequences and the policy to which they have been attributed was drawn by those who were personally exposed to the "particular concrete situation"2 in which we were interested.
Many of the statements presented in Chapter 2 clearly depict a direct relationship between the policy and these developments. Further evidence of this relationship derives from the fact that at the end of the marihuana shortage the vast majority of respondents reported a return to drug use patterns quite similar to those adopted during the preshortage period. However, one significant change was evident among those marihuana users who had experimented with other drugs. Although marihuana once again assumed the role of "primary drug," other drugs used regularly during the shortage were added to the repertoire but on only an occasional basis. Another exception was represented by those youngsters who had first experimented with drugs while marihuana was unavailable and subsequently switched to marihuana after the shortage ended.
Contrary to much professional as well as popular opinion, the switch back to marihuana was even reported by many of those drug users who turned to heroin during the shortage. Obviously, the poor quality of the heroin that was being sold at that time, thus its limited physiologically addicting potential, was a major factor. However, another important factor that is generally overlooked in the literature is that many drug users, even those who may depend on a "harder drug" for a period of time, rely primarily on marihuana. Further, many multiple drug experimenters prefer marihuana to other drugs that come to be used only on specific occasions or in specific types of situations. Thus, it is believed that the "worse it is for you, the more you're going to like it and use it" hypothesis, is not generally valid.
In sum, the link between the Operation Intercept policy and the resulting situation appears to be quite clear. Further, the behaviors of drug users after the shortage ended adds greater credence to this causal formulation. Based on the statements of those who were personally involved, "the validity of hypotheses derived from content analysis and social-psychological theory"3 has been confirmed. In the next section, "Additional Evidence Concerning the Unanticipated Consequences of Operation Intercept," two types of supplementary evidence will be cited:
a. published accounts of drug use patterns in the New York City area during this period, and
b. published accounts and interviews with professionals concerned about the drug abuse problem, depicting the situation in other sections of the country.
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE CONCERNING THE UNANTICIPATED CONSEQUENCES OF OPERATION INTERCEPT
Although the issue has been most vehemently debated in the past decade, concern over the unanticipated consequences of antimarihuana legislation is not something new. Nearly 80 years ago, the British published the largest and one of the most impartial reports ever done on hemp, a seven-volume, three-thousand-page study entitled "Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission." Their conclusion, that the moderate use of hemp produces no injury to the character, the mind, or the body4 has recently received a good deal of exposure. However, Kaplan and Aldrich point out that a recommendation of the report, which has been all but ignored, holds that the prohibition of marihuana would lead to the increased usage of other considerably more harmful drugs.5
Lindesmith's analysis of the effects of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 also focuses on the negative consequences of such legislation:
If it is true that marihuana users were not switching to heroin in 1937, it seems probable that it was the 1937 anti-marihuana law itself that brought about the change. With the risks increased, prices and profits on the now illicit commodity went up, with the result that merchants who had earlier handled one or the other of these drugs, but not both, now began to handle both of them. The marihuana user thus found himself able to purchase heroin from merchants who had previously sold only marihuana. 6
With the advent of Operation Intercept, concern over the negative consequences of the attempt to suppress the supply of marihuana came into public view to an unprecedented degree. Much of the controversy was reminiscent of the issues raised by Lindesmith and by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission; many of the conclusions reached by writers and professionals in the drug abuse field, as well as mass media journalists, reaffirm the findings previously stated in this report.
Two distinctly diverse sources, John Kaplan, author and Professor of Law at Stanford University, and Rolling Stone, using information obtained from Andrew Kopkind, editor of Hard Times, quoted Thomas Lynch, Attorney General of California, as saying that the use of dangerous drugs increases among marihuana users in times of marihuana scarcity because marihuana and dangerous drugs have become interchangeable. Based on Lynch's statements, Kaplan concludes: "Mr. Lynch refuses to draw from this the obvious conclusion that his efforts at suppression of marijuana are, insofar as they are successful, doing his state more harm than good."7 Rolling Stone points to the inherent contradiction between Mr. Lynch's statements and the policy-enforced shortage as follows: "If this is so, it would seem almost immoral - by their standards - for the Feds to cut down on the flow of marijuana."8 Kaplan goes on to note that during the marihuana shortage in the summer of 1968, use of a "new" drug, jimsonweed (also known as locoweed), previously almost unknown in the United States, was reported on the increase in Southern California.9
The Nation also offered an ominous prediction concerning the policy's effects:
The objective, according to Mr. Kleindienst, is to deter smugglers, so that the price of marijuana will rise and an estimated 30 million young Americans will be obliged to forsake the weed for lack of funds. At least the more impecunious of them will undergo a money cure. Some, of course, may turn to heroin or other addictive dangerous drugs. If the price of heroin is also jacked up, the addicts will have to steal more to get their daily fix. . . . It is more likely, according to Southern California authorities, that African hashish, cheaper and more potent than Mexican marijuana, will take over most of the market.10
These inherent contradictions, past experiences, and dire predictions obviously carried little weight in terms of the formation of policies for 1969 and thereafter.
According to Life, although marihuana had all but disappeared from the streets, "Heroin, LSD, hashish and all varieties of uppers and downers are around in great abundance."11 Similarly, U.S. News & World Report quoted Lieutenant Norbert Currie, head of San Francisco's narcotics bureau, as saying: "But we did notice that in the first six months of this year, young people - in high schools particularly - were switching over to pills, mainly seconal." 12 And a New York agent, John J. Riley of the U.S. Customs Bureau, was reported as stating: "Hashish has gone from $300 to $500 a pound to $1,200 a pound. There has been a terrific increase in the past year in imports in hashish."13 He went on to note another development: "Recently there has been an alarming increase in intercepts of packages containing marijuana mailed from Vietnam."14
Reports of unanticipated consequences came from many sources. A New York Times Magazine article on the drug problem in an affluent Long Island community included the following observation:
But hash right now is the hot socializing item, a bit stronger than marijuana, considerably safer than LSD. A high school informant said and a local law officer later confirmed - that Schreiber students started buying hashish and LSD when the Nixon Administration's 1969 Operation Intercept temporarily dried up marijuana supplies. 15
And Time noted that "many authorities say that the dearth of pot is prompting users to take up harder drugs like amphetamines or even heroin."16 Newsweek summarized the "switching" phenomenon as follows:
Most ominous of all, the shortage of grass has driven many marijuana fanciers to sample heavier stuff: speed (amphetamines), acid (LSD), mescaline (which is suddenly in plentiful supply), smack (heroin), and even alcohol. "I know of four kids - and they're really kids, like under 16 - who've tried smack because they couldn't get grass," reports one Cambridge dealer. "They told me they were satisfied with pot but that they couldn't get their money's worth and get high on it." This phenomenon worries Dr. David E. Smith, director of the struggling Haight-Ashbury Clinic in San Francisco. "The government line is that the use of marijuana leads to more dangerous drugs," he notes. "The fact is that the lack of marijuana leads to the use of more dangerous drugs." 17
Included in a comprehensive report to the Ford Foundation on the drug abuse problem in this country, Wald and Hutt offered the following analysis of the government's campaign to stop drugs at the border: "There is strong evidence that Operation Intercept, the attempt to impede the flow of marijuana from Mexico into the United States, has resulted in significant substitution of other drugs for marijuana." 18
At the same time, a wide range of other unintended consequences were being reported. The rapidly accelerated interest in domestic marihuana, even growing it in the home, received great coverage. The following letter from a marihuana dealer appeared in Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle.-
Now $10 to $15 a lid. Down from $20 a lid in August. We have several greenhouses in the Sacramento river area, some equipped with sunlamps to give a total of 20 hours sunlight. These are small greenhouses, each producing only 10 "keys" per growth cycle, but it's a safeguard against the Mexican situation. 19
And the East Village Other, writing for an audience that supports the use of marihuana, offered the following documentation of events and a prediction of future trends:
It now appears that efforts to tighten up supplies of dope along with somewhat more lenient penalties for possession will cause many heads to seriously get into growing their own. Already, major home-grown crops have just been harvested now that the frost is here by those who had the foresight to plant last Spring. Last week, Vermont fuzz reported that the crop was so heavy and so dispersed up there that they could not possibly find and destroy more than a small portion of it. Heads are picking up on growing methods and Sylvania is enjoying a boom on its Gro-Lux lamps for indoor growing. The underground press is filled with instruction of starting seedlings, proper fertilizers, transplanting, and the like. And, surprisingly enough, much of the home-grown is pretty good shit. You won't get high on two tokes but a skinny joint will usually get one person off, and it's free.
By next summer, the heads will be doing their part in keeping Amerika green and before you know it the weed will be everywhere. Within two years, with seeds acclimated to northern climates and growing techniques improved through experience, good home-grown dope should be so plentiful that "everybody will get stoned" and your friendly neighborhood dealer will be standing in the unemployment lines or hustling like the rest of us. 20
Newsweek summarized the developments on the domestic front as follows:
The shortage has created a vogue for manuals such as "Home Grown Happiness" an eighteen-page instruction booklet on marijuana cultivation that sold out several printings this summer in Cambridge, Mass. But those who have harvested their own cannabis in window boxes, in closets under infra-red lamps and even in the open fields (a 4-acre plantation was recently discovered as far north as Maine) report dismal results. "You have to smoke two or three sticks in a row to get a real buzz," says one smoker of the domestic product. In Kentland, Ind., last week, police arrested 24 would-be pot prospectors, who arrived carrying maps they hoped would lead to areas where the stuff grows wild.21
The increased interest in domestic marihuana was also uncovered by Congressman Claude Pepper, Chairman of the Select Committee on Crime, of the House of Representatives. As part of an inquiry into marihuana use in this country, Mr. Pepper heard testimony from Lieutenant Wayne F. Rowe of the Nebraska State Highway Patrol. Their discussion included the following remarks:
Mr. Rowe: Now, last year was the first year that we had a great deal of experience with marihuana harvesters coming in from out of State. In the year 1968 we documented 40 arrests for marihuana harvesting. These were all people from out of State. To date in 1969 we have documented 81 arrests of people from outside of Nebraska who have come in to harvest the marihuana that is growing here. This represents over a 100 percent increase over last year.
Mr. Pepper: Did you notice that those arrests increased as the supply of marihuana coming into this country was diminished.
Mr. Rowe: Yes, sir. The spring crop of marihuana in Mexico, as I understand it, was bad because of the weather. They were unable to dry it out. We also understand that Mexican marihuana is not available in supply as is demanded by the present market.
Mr. Pepper: From that experience, would you anticipate that if we are successful in our effort to diminish the available quantity of marihuana in other parts of the country, there will be greater effort to get it from Nebraska and Iowa than there is today.
Mr. Rowe: Yes, sir, this will be what will happen. By coming to Nebraska they eliminate the dangers of crossing an international border.
Mr. Pepper: Tell us approximately the number of States represented by those people whom you arrested here.
Mr. Rowe: Approximately 20 States.
Mr. Pepper: It seems rather odd that the Government of the United States is helping the Mexican farmers to kill this to keep it out of the United States, yet the Government doesn't help people in Nebraska to get rid of this weed. Doesn't that seem odd?22
The East Village Other referred to another consequence of the marihuana shortage:
Even more, with rising dope prices, every mothers-son-head is beginning to cop quantity so he can deal some off to pay for his own consumption. This has vastly increased grass use throughout the suburbs and college towns. Now, the kids are dealers instead of just users, selling off ounces to pay for their kilos. Ahh, Capitalism.23
Rolling Stone reprinted a letter from a California dealer, which points out a new money-making opportunity, brought about by the shortage of marihuana and the simultaneous influx of heroin into New York City: "It is still possible to grab a New York flight with two 'keys' of grass (about $320 - California prices), exchange it for smack or coke in the Village or Harlem, and sell the hard stuff here for over $3,000.24
Of all of the unintended effects of the marihuana shortage, the switch to "hard" drugs caused greatest concern among those with a long-standing interest in drugs and drug abuse. Allen Ginsberg, like many of the political radicals interviewed in New York City, saw this development as part of a government-police-mafia conspiracy:
One element of the conspiracy is the escalation of the junk problem. While Operation Intercept was aimed at stopping marijuana, there was simultaneously a flood of junk in all of the big cities, especially New York. The price of junk doubled and the quality of junk decreased so much that there were hundreds of deaths from overdosing. Police pressures finally busted Owsley and others in this area so there is less and less of a marijuana/acid culture and more and more of a speed/junkie culture which I attribute in great part to the activities of the police.
The other aspect of the conspiracy is that all those junkies are giving their money to the mafia, because the mafia is supplying the junk. According to The New York Times, junk is the second largest illegal income for the mafia, the first being gambling. As it now stands addiction is a criminal problem rather than a medical one. I would guess that on a state and federal level there must be some kind of working relationship between them in order to maintain the situation as it is. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for the mafia to import so much junk. If there is a collusion of interests I don't think enough people understand how that problem can be attacked morally. 25
Several months after the conclusion of Operation Intercept, Jay Levin, a reporter for the New York Post, conducted interviews with heroin-using teenagers in Jamaica, New York. Based on these interviews, the following remarks were published using the respondent's first initial only:
0: I think most of the kids are using skag (heroin), like here in Queens, for the same reason I did, 'cause other drugs were being stamped out. It's harder to get barbiturates and reefers, but with skag, all the dealers have it. . . . I started out with skag 'cause reefers, I couldn't get that. One night at a party a cat came up to me and said, do I want to try skag? I was curious so I snorted some. Then, you know, after a while I started skin-popping because they said it was a better high.
R: In the summer there wasn't much grass around, that's when I started
on dope. Everybody was doing everything to get high. . . . Before that, I
was using grass, hash, pills.
J: Yeah, I was on grass for a long time and all of a sudden the panic set in
and I didn't know what to do, so I started using skag. 2 6
Levin's interviews led to the following conclusion: "For a while last summer, the federal government mounted a massive crackdown on marijuana smuggling across the Mexican border. For most of the summer, pot was as hard to find in the city as snow. The marijuana panic' accelerated - some say drastically - the trend to heroin." 21 Kaplan also noted this development in New York City:
Recently, moreover, it appears that efforts to enforce criminalization of marijuana have contributed to the heroin problem in yet another way. New York City is presently engulfed in an outbreak of heroin use not matched since the epidemic of 1948-49. Though the mechanism for this has not yet been fully documented, most observers place the blame squarely upon Operation Intercept, which for several weeks made marijuana almost unobtainable in large areas of the United States. This marijuana drought took place at a time when, by coincidence, an ample
supply of heroin in New York City enabled the traders in heroin to pull off a "business coup." They diluted their usual grade of heroin, dropped its price, and offered it widely for sale in the high schools and junior high schools where it previously had been unobtainable at a price competitive with that of marijuana. As a result, heroin made substantial inroads on a population far younger - and somewhat more middle-class - than that previously involved with the drug. 2 8
Seymour Fiddle, Research Director of Exodus House, an East Harlem rehabilitation center for drug addicts, filled in some of the particulars of the switch from marihuana to heroin during this period. His comments are based on close observation of the situation in Harlem, although they are also applicable to other ghetto neighborhoods:
Thus, in 1968-69, there was increasing talk of inflation in the world of business and finance, and New York City was among the cities most affected by it. During that same period, the illegal market decreased the price of a bag of heroin in the ghetto. The bag, which had sold for as much as three to six dollars earlier, increasingly was sold for two dollars and not necessarily with radically fewer grains. . . . Two dollars is significant for another reason. It was also the price of three sticks or marijuana cigarettes. For a time heroin was truly competitive with marijuana, and the transition from marijuana to heroin was therefore made less costly. In addition, if I point out to you that at least once, during the summer of 1969, there was a panic in the marijuana market, you will realize the full irony of the situation. I have been told by some of my informants that potheads they know, missing their regular, as they refer to it, had snorted heroin, sometimes for the first time, to get a head. I do not know whether anything more serious developed in these cases, but clearly, these were risks taken by people on pot, not by "graduating" from the drug, but through a scarcity caused by the vg police who claim that there is always a good chance for such graduation.
The switch to heroin was also reported in other sections of the country. Several interviews were conducted with professionals and staff workers in the drug-abuse field, who had spent the summer of 1969 outside of the northeastern section of the United States. An interview with a staff worker at an East Harlem rehabilitation clinic was particularly instructive, as it underlined the close interrelationship between the drug market in New York City and developments in the southeastern United States. The respondent had lived in the Chapel Hill area of North Carolina until October of 1969. The
income for the mafia, the first being gambling. As it now stands addiction is a criminal problem rather than a medical one. I would guess that on a state and federal level there must be some kind of working relationship between them in order to maintain the situation as it is. Otherwise, it wouldn't be possible for the matia to import so much junk. If there is a collusion of interests I don't think enough people understand how that problem can be attacked morally. 2 5
Several months after the conclusion of Operation Intercept, Jay Levin, a reporter for the New York Post, conducted interviews with heroin-using teenagers in Jamaica, New York. Based on these interviews, the following remarks were published using the respondent's first initial only:
0: I think most of the kids are using skag (heroin), like here in Queens, for the same reason I did, 'cause other drugs were being stamped out. It's harder to get barbiturates and reefers, but with skag, all the dealers have it. . . . I started out with skag 'cause reefers, I couldn't get that. One night at a party a cat came up to me and said, do I want to try skag? I was curious so I snorted some. Then, you know, after a while I started skin-popping because they said it was a better high.
R: In the summer there wasn't much grass around, that's when I started on dope. Everybody was doing everything to get high.... Before that, I was using grass, hash, pills.
J: Yeah, I was on grass for a long time and all of a sudden the panic set in and I didn't know what to do, so I started using skag. 26
Levin's interviews led to the following conclusion: "For a while last summer, the federal government mounted a massive crackdown on marijuana smuggling across the Mexican border. For most of the summer, pot was as hard to find in the city as snow. The marijuana panic accelerated - some say drastically - the trend to heroin."27 Kaplan also noted this development in New York City:
Recently, moreover, it appears that efforts to enforce criminalization of marijuana have contributed to the heroin problem in yet another way. New York City is presently engulfed in an outbreak of heroin use not matched since the epidemic of 1948-49. Though the mechanism for this has not yet been fully documented, most observers place the blame squarely upon Operation Intercept, which for several weeks made marijuana almost unobtainable in large areas of the United States. This marijuana drought took place at a time when, by coincidence, an ample supply of heroin in New York City enabled the traders in heroin to pull off a "business coup." They diluted their usual grade of heroin, dropped its price, and offered it widely for sale in the high schools and junior high schools where it previously had been unobtainable at a price competitive with that of marijuana. As a result, heroin made substantial inroads on a population far younger - and somewhat more middle-class - than that previously involved with the drug. 28
Seymour Fiddle, Research Director of Exodus House, an East Harlem rehabilitation center for drug addicts, filled in some of the particulars of the switch from marihuana to heroin during this period. His comments are based on close observation of the situation in Harlem, although they are also applicable to other ghetto neighborhoods:
Thus, in 1968-69, there was increasing talk of inflation in the world of business and finance, and New York City was among the cities most affected by it. During that same period, the illegal market decreased the price of a bag of heroin in the ghetto. The bag, which had sold for as much as three to six dollars earlier, increasingly was sold for two dollars and not necessarily with radically fewer grains. . . . Two dollars is significant for another reason. It was also the price of three sticks or marijuana cigarettes. For a time heroin was truly competitive with marijuana, and the transition from marijuana to heroin was therefore made less costly. In addition, if I point out to you that at least once, during the summer of 1969, there was a panic in the marijuana market, you will realize the full irony of the situation. I have been told by some of my informants that potheads they know, missing their regular, as they refer to it, had snorted heroin, sometimes for the first time, to get a head. I do not know whether anything more serious developed in these cases, but clearly, these were risks taken by people on pot, not by "graduating" from the drug, but through a scarcity caused by the very police who claim that there is always a good chance for such graduation. 29
The switch to heroin was also reported in other sections of the country. Several interviews were conducted with professionals and staff workers in the drug-abuse field, who had spent the summer of 1969 outside of the northeastern section of the United States. An interview with a staff worker at an East Harlem rehabilitation clinic was particularly instructive, as it underlined the close interrelationship between the drug market in New York City and developments in the southeastern United States. The respondent had lived in the Chapel Hill area of North Carolina until October of 1969. The following are excerpts from this interview, conducted in January of 1970.
Over the past year drug use has expanded a lot. And more people are using harder drugs. Last year there were mostly potheads around, and now, well everybody I know that smoked pot has used something else. There are a lot more people experimenting. . . . I'm talking about people in Chapel Hill. Mostly w4ite, middle-class, between eighteen and early thirties. Mostly nonstudents. Well, people who used to be students, some are still at the University of North Carolina. Most have dropped out and are working as waitresses or in construction, or something like that.... Using pot used to be kind of an elite thing at the University. Now just about everybody does. It's even moved into the fraternities. . . . Probably, percentage-wise, there's much more drug use in the high schools than at the college. There are a lot of heroin users in the high schools. Probably as many as there are in the whole Chapel Hill area, including the non-students. . . . Heroin first came around in the summer. A lot of people from New York came down. Previously, you heard of people using it but really came into little contact with it. There were a lot of people in the black section of Durham, next to Chapel Hill, that had used heroin, but now a lot of the white kids around use it. It was really not noticeable till last summer. . . . Hashish was much more accessible than marihuana during the year. It fluctuated. The market down there, it depends. Like somebody would come up to New York or Washington and cop, say, a kilo, and when it runs out they don't always replenish their supply. So it kind of varies. Different people sell for a while and then it'll move on to somebody else. 'Then there are a few people who sell all the time.... Last summer marihuana was almost impossible to get. You could get some hashish. Marihuana went up, if you could get it, to at least $30 an ounce, sometimes more, and hashish went up 'cause it was the only thing you could get a hold of as far as smoke goes. It was about $15 a gram. There were quite a few amphetamines but they had kind of always been around only more people started using them. There were a lot of speed freaks around that hadn't been there previously. The amphetamines were there before, but they started using in the summer. Still, downs were never a big thing. Then heroin came on the scene and people started, you know got chippies, last summer. Several of these people have got pretty good habits now. . . . I really hadn't noticed it before the summer. It was really evident when I went home Christmas and, even in my home town, which is not Chapel Hill but just kind of a mill town, a lot of my friends were strung out. It was really a shock at Christmas 'cause it had grown so much since the summer.
It all started in the summer though and then spread. The people who were dealing Marihuana mainly went to dealing acid and speed or amphetamines. The heroin pushers were kind of new people on the scene. ... Mostly they came from New York. Like one guy down there. He comes up here to detoxify at a hospital when his habit gets too big and then gets a whole mess of stuff and goes back down and sells it. He does this periodically. Also, there was much more travel in the black section of Durham where mostly it was coming in through New York, so they start dealing more with the black people.... Some of the college people used it for the first time. Also last summer there were a lot of high school kids that started using it. I think it was mostly the college drop-out people who were selling it to the high school students. It's not a risk to the high school kids. Like the college kids are trying to get their education or whatever so not too many of them will want to use it. But the high school kids, there's more of a peer influence, so a lot more of them used it. . . . They were selling $8 bags of heroin. It's still $8 bags, which is comparable to a $2 bag up here in New York.... Also a lot of people started growing their own in the summer. It's never as good as stuff that came in but it would get you by until some did come in. But there were quite a few people, especially up in the mountains, who would go out and grow it. Nobody would even pay any attention to it. But it was pretty weak stuff.... There were a lot more people dealing drugs and there seemed to be a lot more money in it. Because everybody wanted to get high. They really didn't care how. They preferred to stick with pot but it wasn't around so they would use something else. There were more people dealing amphetamines and LSD and more people willing to try. Before, they were pretty uptight about using acid because of all the mass media stuff that came down about it, but then, you know like you gotta get high, so you go ahead.
In the winter of 1969, Robert Levengood, M.D., directed a research project aimed at obtaining the drug use histories of heroin using youths from Grosse Pointe, an affluent suburb of Detroit, Michigan. The project advisor was Paul Lowinger, M.D., of the Department of Psychiatry, Wayne State University. Of a known heroin-using population of 300 in Grosse Pointe, between 15 and 19 years old, 60 young heroin users were interviewed. No questions in the interview mentioned the marihuana shortage of the past summer or the Operation Intercept policy. Of the 60 youths interviewed, 18 spontaneously referred to the marihuana short age as a factor directly related to their own initial use of heroin. And of the 60 youths interviewed from this white, upper-middle to upper-class community, many began heroin use during the summer and fall of 1969, a period witnessing a severe marihuana shortage in the Grosse Pointe area. Findings, excerpted from these interviews, are presented in Appendix III.
Therefore, the association between Operation Intercept, the marihuana shortage, and a host of unanticipated consequences, most of which were directly and significantly contrary to the policy's ultimate goals, is well-substantiated by all available evidence. In the next section, through an analysis of the policy and the problematic situation it was designed to counteract, we will attempt to explain the prevalence of these unanticipated consequences.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF OPERATION INTERCEPT:
AN EXAMINATION OF CONTINGENT CONDITIONS
All available evidence points to the conclusion that Operation Intercept and the resultant marihuana shortage in the United States acted as a direct, precipitating cause of the aforementioned unanticipated developments. Although this direct relationship is apparent, Operation Intercept was neither a "necessary condition"30 nor a "sufficient condition"31 of these subsequent developments. Logically, it is quite possible that some of these occurrences may have materialized, or may materialize in the future, without a marihuana shortage. It is also possible that a similar policy, enacted at some future time, would bring different results. However, since "a hypothesis of causal relationship asserts that a particular characteristic or occurrence (x) is one of the factors that determine another characteristic or occurrence (y)"32 the hypothesized causal relationship is not negated by our inability to isolate a single determining factor.
Modern science recognizes that "the scientist rarely if ever expects to find a single factor or condition that is both necessary and sufficient to bring about an event."33 The emphasis "is rather on a multiplicity of 'determining conditions,' which together make the occurrence of a given event probable."34 This approach focuses on "contributory conditions," those that "increase the likelihood that a given phenomenon will occur,"35 because each factor "is only one of a number of factors that together determine the occurrence of the phenomenon."36 Thus, events that might never have occurred (i.e., altered drug use patterns, etc.) without the presence of a particular contributory condition (i.e., Operation Intercept) might also never have occurred if this condition were present while other relevant factors or conditions were simultaneously absent. Such other relevant factors have been called "contingent conditions," those 4 1 conditions under which a given variable is a contributory cause of a given phenomenon."37
Although a study may focus on one particular contributory condition, which is seen to be the "key factor" or "precipitating condition" of a subsequent event, causal inferences require a comprehensive examination of the contingent conditions within which the hypothesized relationship between factors and sequence of events materializes. Applying this perspective to public policy issues and political events, Lasswell and Kaplan speak of the "principle of interdetermination" and "multiple causation,"38 while Bauer uses the term "envelope of events and issues" to refer to "those events and issues that must be considered as the context within which to analyze a given policy problem."39 Similarly, Suchman states that "the effect of any single factor will depend upon other circumstances also . being present and will itself reflect a host of antecedent events."40
Further, the "principle of interdetermination" dictates that we examine the multiplicity of effects, as well as multiple causes, and the processes by which causes and effects interact dialectically,41 since, according to Merton, the effects of public policy decisions "result from the interplay of the action and the objective situation. 41 In other words, as stated by Schur, "the relation between policy and problem is reciprocal" 42 and the policy is only one aspect of the total situation leading to some resultant condition. Thus, as stated in Chapter I if we are to understand the Operation Intercept policy and the reasons behind the multiplicity of unanticipated consequences stemming from this policy effort, we must gain a comprehensive understanding of the complexities inherent in the problem situation it was designed to alleviate. Since the Operation Intercept policy must be viewed as a contributory rather than a necessary or sufficient cause of these unanticipated consequences, we must attempt to define those other relevant factors or contingent conditions, those events, issues, social and cultural realities, in terms of which Operation Intercept was a significant determiner of subsequent developments.
Traditional Controls in a Decade of Change
Traditionally, official policy has relied upon both formal and informal controls against the use of marihuana. According to Becker:
A number of potent forces operate to control the use of marijuana in this country. . . . The major kinds of controls to be considered are: a) control through limiting of supply and access to the drug: b) control through the necessity of keeping nonusers from discovering that one is a user; c) control through definition of the act as immoral.44
Becker points out the ways in which these forces operate, thus limiting the use of marihuana, in conventional groups:
Marijuana use is limited, in the first instance, by laws making possession or sale of the drug punishable by severe penalties. This confines its distribution to illicit sources not easily available to the ordinary person. In order for a person to begin marijuana use, he must begin participation in some group through which these sources of supply become available to him, ordinarily a group organized around values and activities opposing those of the larger conventional society. . . . In this sense, the social mechanisms, which operate to limit availability of the drug, limit its use. ... Marijuana use is limited also to the extent that individuals actually find it inexpedient or believe that they will find it so. This inexpediency, real or presumed, arises from the fact or belief that if nonusers discover that one uses the drug, sanctions of some important kind will be applied.... In short, persons limit their use of marijuana in proportion to the degree of their fear, realistic or otherwise, that nonusers who are important to them will discover they use drugs and react in some punishing way. . . . Conventional notions of morality are another means through which marijuana use is controlled. The basic moral imperatives which operate here are those which require the individual to be responsible for his own welfare, and to be able to control his own behavior rationally. . . . One must add to this, of course, the notion that the user becomes a slave to the drug, that he voluntarily surrenders himself to a habit from which there is no escape. The person who takes such a stereotype seriously is presented with an obstacle to drug use. 45
To most observers, the situation in the United States regarding the availability and use of marihuana had changed drastically in the period between Becker's observations of a decade ago and the Operation Intercept era of the summer of 1969. While ten years ago the controls cited by Becker usually confined the use of marihuana to specific subcultures or groups of "outsiders" - such as Polsky's "beats,"46 Winick's "jazz musicians,"47 and Finestone's "cats" 48- by 1969 this was no longer the case. Over this ten-year period, the functional meaning of these major control mechanisms was substantially altered. Several significant factors and social trends operated to:
1) indicate the decreasing effectiveness of these controls, 2) increase the probability of their continued ineffectiveness, 3) bring about a change in enforcement strategy, resulting in the Operation Intercept policy, and 4) define those contingent conditions that ultimately determined the consequences, both intended and unintended, of the new policy.
The most significant of these conditions were:
A. The absolute growth in the number of marihuana users in the United States, to the point where many experts believed that the trend was irreversible.
By the time Operation Intercept was put into effect, many observers and authorities in the drug abuse field had offered statements that carried the implication that marihuana use was so thoroughly dispersed in our culture that any attempt to curb this activity was doomed to failure. In April of 1968, Time quoted Commissioner Goddard's estimate that as many as 20 million Americans may have used marihuana.49 One and one-half years later, in a Life magazine article, Goddard concluded that there was now a distinct possibility, due to social and economic factors, that marihuana had become impossible to dislodge from our society.50 That same issue of Life carried a feature story entitled, "Marijuana: The Law vs. 12 Million People."51
During that same year (1969), Grinspoon, writing on the effects of marihuana in Scientific American, noted "the present burgeoning spread of its use,"52' while Time stated that "pop drugs have provoked a defiance of the law unprecedented since Prohibition."53 Leo Hollister, a psychopharmacologist, concluded that "For the first time pot is entrenched in our society, with untold millions using the drug. We have passed the point of no return."54
The Select Committee on Crime referred to marihuana as "a major landmark of the sixties,"55 and Carey noted the changed situation as follows: "What was formerly a small and isolated phenomenon among some bohemian groups is now taking on mass proportions."56 By 1970, Louria concluded that the use of illegal drugs "is the norm rather than an aberration,"57 and Goode stated: "Whether we like it or not, potsmoking is here to stay."58
B. The prevalence of marihuana use among the middle and upper classes, including folk heroes, children from notable families, and America's future leaders.
In the period between Becker's analysis and the Operation Intercept era, the strict association between marihuana use and "deviant" subcultural groups, as well as ethnic minorities, became increasingly blurred. The use of marihuana became recognized as an activity that crossed economic, ethnic, age, and geographic boundaries.
This phenomenon was given greatest attention as it developed among student populations, although it was also noted throughout other middle- and upper-class populations in our society. This multidimensional concern was reflected in a series on drug abuse by The New York Times. One article was entitled, "The Drug Scene: A Growing Number of America's Elite Are Quietly Turning On,"59 while another was headlined, "The Drug Scene: Many Students Now Regard Marijuana as a Part of Growing Up."60 The latter article included the following: "In the late nineteen-sixties, a nationwide survey by The New York Times has found drugs, particularly marijuana, have become for many students a part of growing up, perhaps as common as the hip flasks of Prohibition."61
By the late Sixties, studies focusing on student drug use showed that users of marihuana were not necessarily identifiable as members of a "fringe" population, either numerically or socially. For instance, one study of 200 colleges found that 47 percent of those interviewed had used it,62 while a survey of one medical school found that 70 percent of the student body were current users of marihuana.63 Kenneth Keniston's observation that "it seems that most students who use drugs are drawn from an academic and social elite"64 was confirmed by available empirical data. The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse found that:
The incidence of use seems to vary according to educational attainment. Among all adults not now in school, 5% of those with an eighth grade education or less have used the drug, contrasted with 11% of those who completed some high school, 14% of those who graduated from high school, 25% of those who completed some college and 21% of those who graduated from college. 65
Further, based on a review of studies concerned with drug use in student populations, the National Commission concluded "that the majority of young people who have used marihuana received average or above-average grades in school."66
The mass media also heightened public awareness concerning the growth in marihuana use on college campuses and the seemingly unspectacular characteristics of those who were using the drug. These themes were given wide exposure, as in a Time article entitled, "Pot Problem: College Students Use of Marijuana"; a Newsweek article entitled, "Fiedler Affair: Buffalo University Group Aims to Legalize Marijuana"; and a Life article entitled, "Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users."67 The logical implications of this development, for future investigations, were summarized by Kaplan:
As the number of students who use marijuana approaches the total population of the student community, it becomes harder and harder to make statements differentiating those who had used marijuana from the norm. Indeed, when marijuana experience hovers around seventy percent of a studied population, it becomes much more meaningful, and more significant statistically, to make generalizations about the minority who have not used the drug than about the majority who have. 68
In fact, the use of marihuana had become so closely associated with college life in the minds of adolescents that Mauss hypothesized marihuana use to be an element in "anticipatory socialization toward college." His study, conducted in 1969, found that "high school students rating high on the Scale of Anticipatory Socialization Toward College were about twice as likely to have used marijuana as those not rating high."69 Similarly, speaking of non-college as well as college-oriented populations, Farnsworth described drug use as a "coming-of-age-rite" in adolescent groups,70 a term usually associated with normal developmental sequences within a culture rather than with regressive or deviant adaptations.
The relatively high status of youthful drug users led Carey to conclude that the authorities and decision makers would not resort to repressive measures, since "the movement seems to be composed of their children or friends of their children."71 Although this prediction may have been premature, his perception of the movement was literally as well as figuratively validated when, four months after Operation Intercept, The New York Times and Newsweek featured articles on a deluge of drug-related arrests of respected individuals, including children of powerful political and business leaders.72 The list included a group of space scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (a Space Agency facility run by Cal Tech), the son of a well-known New York banker, the son of the city manager of Hartford, Connecticut, the son of the recently elected New Jersey Governor, and the son of a New York gubernatorial contender - all arrested within one week of each other. These disclosures followed many other drug-related news stories implicating well-known personalities as diverse as world-celebrated ballet dancers, the children of several senators and presidential aspirants, a long list of rock 'n roll notables, and the daughter of the Vice President of the United States in marihuana-related activities.
Although students and the rich and famous received greatest attention, observers of the drug scene were not unaware of the spread of marihuana use among otherwise law-abiding middle- and upper-class segments of our society. In this regard, Time noted that "respectable adult citizens are also using 'sticks' or 'joints' of grass."73 A survey conducted by The New York Times found that "more and more on-the-way-up and already successful adults were using marijuana and hallucinogenic drugs. . . . Among adult drug takers, marijuana was found to be the great leveler, used by the very poor, the middle class and the wealthy."74 In a notably unsensational manner, Life observed that "at many parties casual marijuana smoking simply replaces social drinking." 75
During the same month that the government was making its greatest effort to rally support for the Operation Intercept policy (October 1969), an article appeared in New York Magazine entitled, "How the Middle Class Turns On." In it, Mayer underlined the proliferating use of marihuana among New York City's white collar, civil service, and professional establishment. The following statement by a former New York Civil Court attorney was included:
"It's not just the kids - people in every business, every profession, are turning on," remarked a lawyer in his 30's who had worked at the Civil Court ' "There are 50 judges' secretaries in that court - 10 of them smoked. A few judges did, too. I know at least 15 policemen who smoke, and I don't know that many policemen. Not long ago I went to some official government reception for an ambassador, and I smelled grass there. I couldn't believe it. You never know, though, the world is full of closet-heads." 76
Similar observations led Geller and Boas to conclude that marihuana use has "progressed from an activity associated mainly with the criminal fringe to the point where it has become a middle-class phenomenon. . . . The smoker today comes from all classes of society and one particular group can no longer be tagged as the chief user and purveyor of marijuana."77 They go on to note that, unlike the other illegal drugs, marihuana use had won -support by a large membership of the respectable middle class.78 These developments led David Solomon to state:
The important point is that in contemporary America the employment of marihuana has ceased to be a subcultural affair limited to the underprivileged and the undereducated. It has become a custom that is rapidly expanding through the byways of the middle and upper classes. 79
Thus, the period between Becker's observations and the Operation Intercept policy witnessed this "permanent shift in American social habits,"80 a shift that was recognized in all segments of society, and one that was widely considered to be beyond reversal.
C. The "stepping-stone " theory is re-examined and new multiple drug use patterns and progressions are recognized.
Until the late 1940's, when the use of heroin reached new levels of popularity in the United States, the argument that marihuana serves as a "stepping-stone" to heroin addiction was given limited attention. 81 Proponents of marihuana criminalization concentrated their arguments on those social and personal evils that allegedly resulted directly from the use of marihuana itself.82 After 1949, and until the mid-Sixties, the "stepping-stone" theory became the most effective and most widely stated argument against the use of marihuana.
Due to an outpouring of sophisticated studies on the drug abuse problem published during the Sixties, the "stepping-stone" assertion that the use of marihuana inevitably leads to heroin addiction gradually lost acceptance. Although several prestigious professional bodies continued to assert a strong causal relationship between the two drugs - for instance, spokesmen for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the American Medical Association 83 - by 1969 support for this contention was far from universal.
Although the use of marihuana was still perceived by many as a predisposing factor in the etiology of heroin addiction, the relationship between the two drugs was no longer seen, or phrased, in terms of pharmacology.84 The following statement by the Special Presidential Task Force reflects this shift:
The progression is, however, probably not a consequence of the pharmacological properties of the marihuana, but rather is due to sociological and psychological factors present in a vulnerable minority of users. 85
The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice also stressed psychological and sociological variables, and concluded that:
The most reasonable hypothesis here is that some people who are predisposed to marihuana are also predisposed to heroin use. It may also be the case that through the use of marihuana a person forms the personal associations that later expose him to heroin. 86
The association between marihuana and heroin came to be stated in specific rather than general terms, and often with an implication of tentativeness. Thus, based on a study of former heroin addicts from Puerto Rico, DeFleur, Ball, and Snarr concluded that marihuana "may have served as either a facilitating or even a predisposing condition leading toward more serious narcotics usage for certain types of individuals who, because of personal or social characteristics, had high probabilities of addiction."87 Based on their own work at the National Public Health Service Hospital at Lexington, Kentucky, and on empirical data drawn from other relevant studies, Ball, Chambers, and Ball summarized the reasons why the incipient addict is "predisposed" to opiate addiction by his use of marihuana:
Marihuana is taken for its euphoric effects - it produces a "high"; both marihuana and heroin are only available from underworld sources of supply; both are initially taken within a peer-group recreational setting; both are illegal; the neighborhood friends with whom marihuana use begins are often the same friends who initiate the incipient addict to the use of opiates. A principal effect, then, is one of differential association becoming part of a drug-taking group. 88
Although marihuana was found to be "a predisposing influence in the etiology of opiate addiction" 89 among those opiate addicts who had used marihuana at an earlier time, this predisposing factor was significantly associated with opiate addiction only "among metropolitan residents of the high addiction eastern and western states."90 Commenting upon these findings, Goode emphasized the key role played by subcultural influences and differential association when he observed that:
The main point of the Ball-Chambers-Ball article ... is that where there is an illicit drug-using subculture, marijuana and heroin will be found as mutual components, making the link more likely; where there is no illicit drug subculture, the progression is unlikely, because there is no group to sustain the transmission. It is the subculture that makes for the pot-to-heroin connection, not the drug itself.91
At the same time, a growing body of evidence substantiated the fact that not all marihuana users were "incipient addicts" (and that many opiate addicts had never used marihuana). In fact, few marihuana users were heavily involved in an "illicit drug-using subculture" that defined opiate use as an acceptable activity or were "individuals who, because of personal or social characteristics, had high probabilities of addiction." Therefore, although the BallChambers-Ball and DeFleur-Ball-Snarr observations contributed to our understanding of this predisposition among those who were "incipient addicts," these observations did not apply to the vast majority of marihuana users who did not go on to opiate addiction.
In sum, most studies on the etiology of heroin addiction published during and prior to the Sixties, focused on the specific subcultural conditions and orientations existent in those low-income ghetto areas in which "addiction-prone" metropolitan residents of high addiction states became involved in drug-taking groups.92 Through this work, the association between marihuana us e and heroin addiction was subjected to empirical elaboration and specification; when such a relationship was found to exist, it was dependent upon sociological and/or psychological factors unrelated to the majority of marihuana users.
Due to the availability of this new data and the quantitative and qualitative changes in the marihuana-using population, several scholars reformulated the "stepping-stone" theory into negative rather than positive terms. For instance, Kaplan concluded:
Probably the best summary of the data is that there appears to be no association between marijuana and heroin throughout most of our society - except among poor urban Negroes and Spanish-speaking Americans who in fact make up the predominant part of the heroin population. 93
Similarly, based on a study of 3,500 undergraduates attending 14 campuses in the New York area, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse perceived this association as the exception rather than the rule, and underlined the racial aspect of this progression: "According to recent studies, heroin usage is not common among white marihuana users. Heroin is most strongly linked to marihuana use in black and Spanish-speaking ghettos".94
The Special Presidential Task Force estimated that "only five percent of the 'habitual marihuana users' progress to heroin addictions94 and went on to observe that these tended to come from "ghetto situations" and "heavy drug-using subcultures." 96 It should be remembered that even in these "addiction-prone" groups, specifically those individuals enmeshed in "ghetto situations" and "heavy drug-using subcultures" (whites), heroin addiction was found to be the condition among only a distinct minority of marihuana users. Based on available evidence, Wald and Hutt concluded that, although "a large percentage of young black males in any large urban lower-class area have tried heroin ... the majority who have experimented with it have not become addicted."97 And, even though they found that "youthful, middle-class experimentation with heroin as part of a pattern of multi-drug use does appear to be increasing,"98 they concluded that "people who become involved with heroin in this non-ghetto context have less tendency toward heavy involvement." 99 Similarly, of the four groups most likely to be involved in heavy marihuana use - the slum dweller, the bohemian, the college student, and the high school student - Glaser, Inciardi, and Babst concluded that the transition to heroin was far more likely among the urban slum dwellers than among the other three groups.100 And, in "the colony" (Berkeley, California), where the use of marihuana and the psychedelic drugs had gai ned great acceptance, Carey found that the "middle-class users of marihuana ... do not graduate from milder drugs to heroin."101
Goode pointed out that among whites involved in heavy drug using subcultures, "even daily use of marijuana will not involve the individual in heroin use if it is absent from the group in which he interacts and finds significant others."102 In his own study of 200 persons who used marihuana regularly, it was found that "only 27 respondents, or 13% of the sample, had used heroin at least once, with extremely limited use predominating."103 Explaining this relatively high proportion of "ever-users," Goode stated: "It is a safe guess that our respondents are much more heavily involved with other drugs than is the average group of cannabis smokers, including everyone who has sampled the drug at least once up to the daily
smoker."104 In a study of 350 marihuana users, Schick, Smith, and Meyers found an even higher proportion - a full 25 percent - who had ever tried heroin. However, even in this extremely heavy drug-using Haight-Ashbury "hippie subculture" of 1968, only eight persons were found to be addicted to heroin of the 350 studied."105 In sum, data accumulated during the Sixties made it clear that there was little if any association between marihuana experimentation and heroin addiction, and that such addiction was even unlikely for those involved in most groups characterized by multiple drug use and the heavy use of marihuana. Thus, the causal inference inherent in the "stepping-stone" theory was subjected to careful elaboration and specification, to the point where its application was felt to be useful in only a small and fairly well-defined percentage of cases.
During the same period in which the marihuana-to-heroin "stepping-stone" theory was being discredited as a general explanation of heroin addiction, and consequently was no longer held to be an effective argument against the use of marihuana, new multiple drug use modalities and progression sequences were being recognized and documented. These new patterns were particularly applicable to those drug-using groups for whom the old stepping-stone theory had least relevance and credibility. Specifically, these developments were observed among the young, white, middle-class drug users of the Sixties, who rarely manifested heavy involvement in heroin use. Empirical data drawn from studies of predominantly youthful populations showed that the "dangerous drugs" - the amphetamines, the barbiturates, and the psychedelics - were gaining increasing popularity in such groups during this period. By 1969 there was general agreement that such a trend did exist.
Although it was agreed that there was nothing in the pharmacological nature of marihuana that would lead its users to other drugs, the association between the use of marihuana and the use of "dangerous drugs" was becoming evident. Blum found significant correlations between the use of marihuana and the use of legal as well as illegal drugs among students.106 Of specific interest was his finding of a high correlation between marihuana and amphetamine use (.33) and a very high correlation between marihuana and hallucinogen use (.55). The marihuana-hallucinogen correlation was higher than that found for any other pair of illegal and/or legal drugs covered in the Blum study. 107
Based on a study of 200 heavy marihuana users, Goode found that "two-thirds of the respondents (68 percent) had taken at least one drug other than marijuana or hashish at least once."108 This figure included 49 percent who had used LSD (25 percent of the LSD takers had tried it only once, and it was generally found to be a drug of infrequent use), 43 percent who had used an amphetamine, and 24 percent who had used a barbiturate or a tranquilizer at least once. Goode's data included only illicit use of amphetamines and barbiturates.109 Comparing his findings to those obtained through a survey conducted by the East Village Other, Goode concluded that 4 1 although the percentage using nearly every drug is higher for the EVO respondents, the rank order (i.e., degree of popularity) of the drug used was surprisingly similar."110
A survey of students from 200 colleges, which found that 47 percent of the students had used marihuana, also disclosed that 18 percent had tried amphetamines, 15 percent had tried barbiturates, and 11 percent had tried LSD (correlations between the use of marihuana and these other drugs were not obtained - these percentages for "dangerous drug" use include students who had never used marihuana). However, these other drugs were used frequently by only a few students.111 These figures as well as other available data led Wald and Hutt to conclude:
Within the last five years there has been a substantial increase in the use of illicit nonopiate drugs by the young, particularly among middle-class college and high school students and young military personnel. The prevalent drugs of abuse for this group are marijuana (and, to some extent, the more potent cannabis product, hashish), oral amphetamines and barbiturates, LSD, and other hallucinogens. 112
Based on their studies of youthful populations, both Goode and Carey found that the heavier the use of marihuana the greater the likelihood of selling marihuana, of taking drugs in addition to marihuana, and of heavy involvement in a drug-oriented lifestyle.113 Similarly, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse stated that "being a seller rather than only a buyer-user is influential in determining the degree of an individual's involvement with, and commitment to the use of other drugs,"114' and the Special Presidential Task Force concluded that, "It is generally true that a heavy marihuana user is more likely to be a multiple drug user."115 Schick, Smith, and Meyers' study of the Haight-Ashbury subculture and Davis' study of "heads" and "freaks" supplied data that further substantiated these progressions and correlations within heavy drug using subcultures.116
Based on their own studies and other empirical data, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse concluded that "the overwhelming majority of marihuana users do not progress to other drugs. . . . Only moderate and heavy use of marihuana is significantly associated with persistent use of other drugs."117 Although the studies cited previously might lead one to believe that this is a significant underestimation of the problem, it is felt that the Commission's observation is not inconsistent with the aforementioned data for two reasons. First, the Blum, Goode-EVO, Carey, Schick-Smith-Meyers, and Davis findings were based on members of heavy drug-using subcultures (students and "hippies"). By the Commission's standards, a far higher proportion of these persons would be considered "moderate" (11 times monthly to once daily) or "heavy" (several times daily)118 users of marihuana than would be found in the general marihuana-using population. Second, although correlations cited by several of these authors show noticeable multiple drug use experimentation, the use of a drug other than marihuana "at least once" does not constitute "persistent use" (the Commission never offers an operational definition of this term). Thus, even within these nonrepresentative groups, "persistent use" correlations would be significantly lower than "ever-used" correlations.
Even with this new information, it was obvious that not enough data was available upon which to base statistically reliable conclusions concerning multiple drug use. However, a few trends were evident by 1969. First, the marihuana user was more likely to have used other illicit drugs than the non-user. Second, the heavy marihuana user and user-seller was more likely to be a multiple drug user than the intermittent or experimental user who did not sell. Third, it was widely agreed that the illicit use of the "dangerous drugs" - the amphetamines, the barbiturates, and the psychedelics was gaining popularity among young, white, middle-class persons.
The specification and qualification of the marihuana-to-heroin stepping-stone theory, combined with a simultaneous growth in the illicit use of the "dangerous drugs," and the development of new multiple drug use patterns led to the recognition of several different (although rarely mutually exclusive) drug use modalities within the "drug scene."
At the same time, with the quantitative and qualitative changes in the drug-using population well documented, making the usefulness of social-psychologically defined "common denominator concepts" such as "alienation," "marginality," "unadjusted," and "delinquent" highly questionable, marihuana itself came to be seen as the new common denominator in the world of illicit drug use, linking even diverse drug-using subcultures. Scher called marihuana a "vade mecum" (something regularly used or carried about - a staple item),119 and Goode referred to it as a "lingua franca" (common language),120 in the drug-using world, since it was found to be used in "extremely diverse settings, in groups whose members have little or nothing to do with one another."121 Cohen stated that it was increasingly "becoming a basic drug to which other agents are added."122 His observations led him to believe that as drug use progresses, additional drugs are likely to be used in or with marihuana.123 During the latter part of the Sixties, an increasing amount of research focused on the questions: What additional drugs are added? in which groups? under what circumstances?
In many groups of whites, the regular use of marihuana came to be associated with the intermittent use of the barbiturates, the amphetamines, the psychedelic drugs, and, to a significantly lesser degree, with the use of heroin. Several studies suggested that the psychedelics were particularly appealing to well-educated, middle class drug users, seeking an inner-directed orientation through introspective exploration. Lingeman described "the majority of users of LSD" as "young, middle-class, and college-educated or else from the bohemian fringe of society."124 In contrast, the less educated drug user from a family of lower socioeconomic status was more likely to favor the amphetamines. The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse observed that "the psychedelics are more often used by the white, middle to upper middle-class, college educated population,"125 while "methamphetamine, or 'speed' use is more characteristic of those lower socioeconomic white youth who are not school or work-oriented."126 Carey pointed to age and educational differences in distinguishing the regular LSD user from the heavy user of amphetamines:
The social composition of those in the Colony who use marihuana and LSD seems to be substantially the same. This is not so when we compare them with heavy amphetamine users. The heavy amphetamine users seem to be younger, may come from a lower educational strata in the community, and seem to prefer the experience of "going outwards" rather than "inwards." The regular LSD users in the Colony seem to be somewhat older, which may account for their rejection of amphetamines.127
A similar contrast was stated by Davis, when he distinguished between "heads" and "freaks." Although both groups use marihuana, the "head" (seeking "mind expansion" in order to understand "where his head is at") finds his orientation compatible with LSD use. In contrast, the "freak" (generally less educated and from a family of lower socioeconomic status) seeks "drug kicks," and finds that the amphetamines contribute to a lifestyle (with its many forms of "extreme behavior"128) that he desires.129
Although these observations seemed to indicate certain useful social distinctions concerning drug use progressions and multiple drug use preferences within the white drug-using population, the most striking differentiation to emerge from the research of the Sixties was a racial one. While young whites who used marihuana frequently experimented with one or several of the "dangerous drugs," black and Spanish-speaking youths characterized by similar marihuana-use involvements tended to try heroin. In addition, while the most heavily drug-oriented fringe of the white population often moved on to heavy use of the amphetamines and/or the psychedelics, their black and Spanish-speaking counterparts traditionally moved on to heavy heroin involvement. The National Commission summarized this situation as follows:
For example, blacks and whites have roughly equal rates of trying and using marihuana, but their choices of other drugs and styles of drug use are quite different and distinctive, due to their frequently different sociocultural backgrounds. 130
To substantiate this conclusion, the National Commission cited a survey of 3,500 college students attending 14 campuses in the New York area. The survey found that heroin and cocaine experimentation was more than twice as prevalent among black students as among white students. In contrast, more than twice as many whites had used an amphetamine, and almost twice as many whites had tried an hallucinogenic drug.131
While overuse and illicit use of the barbiturates appeared to cross age, socioeconomic, and racial boundaries (depending on the specific drug-using group), 132 the drug preference contrast was drawn most sharply in comparisons between white, middle-class users of LSD and the black and Spanish-speaking heroin users. From the vantage point of those whites interested in exploring the "inner spaces" of psychedelic experience, "The rationales for using hallucinogenic drugs preclude any interest in heroin. Its use is considered antithetical to the value of opening up one's perceptions."133 On the other hand, the psychochernical influence of LSD appeared to be antithetical to experiences valued by the young ghetto drug user. Fiddle stated the ghetto view as follows:
If heroin exercises a kind of traditional psychochernical authority, LSD is experienced as the dangerous, rational-scientific authority. The young ghetto heroin user dibs and dabs in his drug, while the young middle class drug user experiments with LSD. Heroin, like a traditional drug, soothes and relaxes; LSD, like a laboratory product of the mind, expands consciousness. One makes the problems go away, the way a good mother buffers the child from the world; the other makes one aware of one's problems, rationally or existentially, like a latter day therapist who makes you encounter yourself and your problems. 134
Fiddle found that even the enterprising, reputable, self-confident drug dealer found LSD to be a losing item in Harlem.135
However interesting the psychopharmacological view of differential drug use preferences may be, it appears to be only one element in a very complex selection process. According to Goode, the link between marihuana and the more potent drugs "is that a specific social group defines both as acceptable and pleasurable, offering opportunities for members to use both."136 Fiddle's analysis of heroin use in the ghetto contributes to our understanding of the bases upon which these differential and relativistic judgments of "pleasurability" and "acceptability" are grounded. As Fiddle points out, specific drugs come to be considered pleasurable and to be accepted within a specific drug-using subculture to the extent that they seem to meet needs generated within the peer groups bearing the addict culture . . . whatever appears to contribute to the different peer groups in the addict culture will be acceptable; whatever does not will tend to be rejected, at least by the majority of drug addicts and users. 137
Whether or not a specific drug is "perceived" to make a contribution is based on the different roles, daily routines, and ultimate goals that characterize different drug-using peer groups; the symbolic nature or "image" of the drug as perceived by the members of a specific peer group; its history ("tradition of use") or lack of history in a particular area; as well as its psychochernical effects.138
Once a drug is defined as pleasurable and acceptable and a tradition of use is established, the "objective, negative implications and possibilities" implicit in the young drug users' conduct will be deflected by "the sheer ubiquity of deviation and risk-taking among their peers and elders"; an awareness of "the risks of losing prestige in the peer group by deviating from the group's risk-consensus"; the availability of "successful models" with which to identify; and a view of "their involvement with drugs as temporary."139 When these "risk-discounting" factors are present, the young drug user is likely to disregard any negative publicity surrounding a particular drug. In the absence of these factors, he is likely to accept the messages carried in the mass media.140
Although Fiddle's analysis was intended to explain "risk discounting among young ghetto heroin users," it was equally valuable in helping us to understand those processes by which some young, white marihuana users became involved in the use of the "dangerous drugs." The key distinction seemed to be in the "ends" rather than the "means." For most young, white drug users heavily involved in a drug-oriented subculture, LSD or "speed" represented the "goal of the drug scene." In the ghetto, heroin was perceived as the "boss high,"141 or, quoting Claude Brown, "the hippest thing was horse."142 While ghetto drug users were generally unwilling to take the "risks" associated with LSD, white drug users were far more likely to avoid the "degradation" associated with heroin involvement. Although there was a gradual growth in the number of exceptions to these generalizations throughout the Sixties, it was recognized that different "progression ladders" were operating in different drug use subcultures. Due to the racial segregation characteristic of the major urban areas in the United States, the most striking distinction (in terms of drugs used in addition to marihuana) was the sociocultural division reflecting this racial dimension.
Other factors made the picture even more complicated. Six of these factors, to be mentioned only briefly here, further undermined traditional, simplistic conceptions of the drug abuse phenomenon. First, the licit overproduction and overuse of prescription and nonprescription pharmaceuticals came to be recognized as an integral part of the drug problem. Second, the fact that tobacco and alcohol are also "drugs" seemed to be rediscovered. Third, the use of narcotic drugs was documented in otherwise conformist groups, most notably in the medical profession. Fourth, some drug users reported initiation to illicit drug use through experimentation with the "harder" drugs, often heroin. Fifth, the use of heroin and the dangerous drugs, even on a regular basis, did not preclude a continued interest in marihuana. Sixth, the "softer-to-harder" hypothesis was complicated by the fact that most marihuana users did not "graduate," and many "hard" drug abusers were willing and able to switch to a "softer" drug on a temporary or regular basis.
In sum, as the realities of the drug-using world were demythologized, the "stepping-stone" theory became more complex.
D. During the Sixties, there was a growing controversy over the fairness and efficacy of the official government approach to marihuana use.
As the quantitative and qualitative changes in the marihuana-using population were becoming widely acknowledged, and the complexities of the drug abuse phenomenon were emerging from the simplistic myths of the past, the government's punitive approach to marihuana use was being subjected to increasingly careful scrutiny in ma ny quarters. Overt criticism of and resistance to government policies were most noticeable among students, academics, many scientists and attorneys, and the mass media, as well as a wide assortment of anti-establishment spokesmen. Although it is beyond the scope of this report to fully document these changes, we will briefly examine a few developments on the administrative, judicial, and legislative fronts for the purpose of underlining this growing conflict within "the establishment" throughout the 1960's.
In 1962, the White House Conference on Narcotic and Drug Abuse offered the following statement: "It is the opinion of the Panel that the hazards of marijuana per se have been exaggerated and that long criminal sentences imposed on an occasional user or possessor of the drug are in poor social perspective."143 Although the findings and recommendations of the White House Conference were in line with those presented by government committees many years earlier (i.e., Panama Canal Zone Governor's Committee, 1933; The Mayor's Committee to Study the Marihuana Problem in the City of New York, 1944),144 more than ever before such recommendations were receiving serious official attention. The suggestions of the White House Conference were followed, in 1963, by the recommendations of the President's Advisory Commission. Concerning offenses for the use and possession of small quantities of marihuana, the Commission suggested that all mandatory sentences be eliminated, giving full discretionary powers to judges.145 By 1967, the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, was again calling for the removal of mandatory penalties, and a total reevaluation of the punitive approach to the marihuana phenomenon. Although a few members of the Commission urged a more radical departure from past approaches, the full body concluded that "enough information exists to warrant careful study of our present marihuana laws and the propositions on which they are based."146 By 1969, it was generally recognized in government circles that the anti-marihuana laws were being unevenly enforced, were accused of being used for ulterior political motives, and were creating widespread disrespect for law, especially among the young. In addition, the ambivalence of judges throughout the country was indicated by the fact that as the number of arrests rose sharply between 1966 and 1969, the proportion of defendants convicted declined, the percentage incarcerated declined, as did the average length of their sentences.147 All of these themes were examined in the First Report by the Select Committee on Crime, a report based on data collected during 1969 and submitted to the House of Representatives in April of 1970. In a section of the report entitled "Trend Toward Reduced Penalties," the Select Committee called attention to legislative changes over the past few years:
An analysis of the above State laws reveals a recent trend to adopt laws dealing with marihuana less severely for so-called "simple possession" offenses, and where appropriate, parole, deferral and suspension of sentences for first offenses.... In addition, at least 23 States have recently amended their laws to reduce the penalties for violations of the laws dealing with marihuana (Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming). While no State appears to have eliminated all statutory control over the possession and/or sale of marihuana, 23 States now provide misdemeanor type penalties, with suspension and probation possible, for mere so-called possession for personal use type marihuana offenses.
Thus it seems clear that the trend of State amendments to their drug abuse laws is toward a program of care and treatment for the drug addict, more judicial discretion in the sentencing of first offenders, and a reduction of penalties for possession-type marihuana violations.
The above trend is indeed a considerable one and it would be the hope of this committee, as is later pointed out in this report, that the U.S. Government will follow the same trend. Certainly under existing law, the penalty imposed under Federal law is disproportionate to the "crime against society" of experimenting with marihuana....
Criminal conduct cannot be condoned. However, the penalty attached to the prohibited act should bear a rational relationship to the harm or potential harm to others. In the case of simple possession of marihuana (the person who has a small quantity for personal use), it would appear that the penalty proscribed [sic] in both Federal and many State statutes is too severe. 148
By May of 1970, 27 states had reduced penalties for first offenders (possession) and nine others were expected to do so in the near future.149 Public awareness of this controversy can be appreciated when it is remembered that each of these legislative changes followed heated debate in every one of the affected states' legislatures. Such debates included the testimony of respected authorities from many fields, including legal, medical, law enforcement, behavioral science, and judicial representatives, which served to underline the idea that many highly respected and knowledgeable citizens were vehemently opposed to existing state penal provisions. At the same time, public exposure of this controversy and the airing of critical testimony called attention to the fact that the dangers previously associated with marihuana use were being rejected by a growing number of authorities, thus further debunking the premises upon which official federal policies rested.
Thus, by late 1969, the marihuana controversy was at its height and pressure was mounting on the federal government to alter its position. Noted authorities, including anthropologist Margaret Mead150 and Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation, Geoffrey C. Hazzard,151 had come out in favor of repeal of all penalties for possession of marihuana. In California, a police sergeant had joined a "smoke-in" demonstration and a Deputy District Attorney resigned his office, both in protest against the existing marihuana laws and the time "wasted" in their enforcement."152 Editorials in college newspapers throughout the country, from the Yale Daily News 153 to the Stanford Daily 154 called for an end to the criminalization of marihuana use, an appeal that was also sounded by The New York Times, The Washington Post, the New Republic, and in an article published by the conservative National Review.
Concern over the constitutionality of anti-marihuana legislation had been voiced in numerous student-run law reviews, including Vanderbilt Law Review, Georgia Law Review, Arkansas Law Review, New York Law Forum, and Iowa Law Review155' Support for the decriminalization of marihuana was even voiced in the Congress, by legislators of various political backgrounds. Two-thirds of the 50 states had revised or were in the process of revising laws covering t, possession and use of marihuana. According to Wald and Hutt, the focus of the marihuana issue had shifted in an important way:
The real issue over marijuana appears to be not whether it causes mild physical damage but whether its use has already spread so widely that, as is true with alcohol, the social costs of efforts to prohibit it exceed the physical costs that would be incurred by eliminating criminal penalties for, or even legalizing, its use. 156
The Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, noting that "the Nixon Administration softened its proposed new penalties for marijuana offenses,"157 predicted that "Legalization, proposed by more authoritative voices in 1969 than in earlier years, still appeared unlikely, but penalties for marijuana use were almost certain to be softened by the 91st Congress."158 The American people and their representatives within the administrative, legislative, and judicial branches of government were deeply and at times bitterly divided over the marihuana issue. At the height of this trend toward leniency (valid in terms of first-level enforcement only if calculations are based on the "proportion of violators arrested" rather than on the "arrest rate"159 ) and in the midst of this wide-ranging controversy, Operation Intercept was implemented by the federal government.
The Ineffectiveness of Traditional Controls and the Formation of the Operation Intercept Policy
The qualitative and quantitative changes in the population of marihuana users (therefore, of law violators as well), the recognition of new drug use patterns and the clarification of old ones, and the growing controversy over the marihuana laws were some of the most noted hallmarks of the Sixties. The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse called the marihuana issue a "pungent symbol of dramatic changes which have permanently affected our nation in the last decade."160 Similarly, these developments led Goode to remark: "The increased use of illegal drugs is one of the most dramatic social changes in this decade."161
Whether these trends were primarily a result or a cause of other changes in the society cannot yet be determined. There was obviously a good deal of reciprocity in the relationship between drug use and an array of other sociocultural factors. However, there is widespread agreement that the Sixties was a decade of rapid social change and marked internal differentiation, and there is good reason to believe that the growing use of marihuana and other illegal drugs was a valid indicator of these processes. For the kinds of control mechanisms that failed to limit the use of marihuana were also ineffective in curtailing many forms of disapproved behavior during this period.
As Williams notes, periods of rapid social change are marked by apparent cultural inconsistency and relatively high rates of social nonconformity.162 Further, according to Bennett, when the gap between old and new social institutions is great, as occurs in periods of rapid social change, there is an intensification of cultural instability characterized by conflicting social standards and the weakening of primary social controls.163 Throughout the decade of the Sixties, the three "major kinds of controls" that previously limited the use of marihuana in this country became decreasingly effective in light of rapid social changes within the society.
As the number of marihuana users rose rapidly during the decade of the Sixties, it became evident that the supply of marihuana coming into the United States was filling this increased demand. In spite of continuous increases in customs operations 164 and border seizures, 165 the use and availability of the drug increased at an even faster rate.
By the late Sixties, although marihuana users tended to be more liberal, less involved in formal religion, and to come from wealthier and better-educated families than non-users, the radicalism, marginality, alienation, and subcultural involvement that characterized their middle-class counterparts of the early Sixties were no longer distinguishing characteristics.166 Noting this change in the marihuana using population, the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse stated:
However, all this changed markedly in the mid-1960's. For various reasons, marihuana use became a common form of recreation for many middle and upper class college youth. The trend spread across the country, into the colleges and high schools and into the affluent suburbs as well. Use by American servicemen in Vietnam was frequent. In recent years, use of the drug has spanned every social class and geographic region. 167
When marihuana use began making inroads into the middle class, it was generally associated with the "campus drug culture." As Kaplan observed, by 1969 initiation was no longer confined to this avenue:
Furthermore, in large areas of the United States today, the campus drug culture is no longer necessary to initiate one into marijuana use or to assure a supply of the drug. Marijuana use is so widespread today that many youths who are otherwise "straight" can provide sufficient support, fellowship, and supply for one another.168
The increasing heterogeneity of the using population underscored the fact that "illicit sources" had become available to the ordinary person. It was no longer necessary to participate in "a group organized around values and activities opposing those of the larger conventional society" 169 in order to gain access to marihuana. In fact, most users were getting the drug from a friend or an acquaintance, 170 a person who might be called an "illicit source" only insofar as he was breaking those laws prohibiting the possession and sale of marihuana. In this regard, the illicit source and the marihuana user differed only in degree.
On the other hand, this decade of rapid social change, marked internal differentiation, and high rates of social nonconformity witnessed a substantial growth in the number of individuals and groups "organized around values and activities opposing those of the larger conventional society."171 This situation led analysts of the "new consciousness" - such as Kenneth Keniston, Charles Reich, Theodore Roszak, and Philip Slater - to "recognize the irony in the fact that the most prosperous and educated societies in world history have generated the most massive youthful opposition in world history."172
Whether as a precursor or as a result of youthful opposition (social-political) and simultaneous disengagement (social-psychological), the use of marihuana came to be closely associated with these processes. Keniston saw, "Immersion in drug use as a part of a phase of disengagement from American society," 173 and the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse believed that marihuana use in the Sixties had "become equated with unconventional youth lifestyles."174' To the National Commission, this equation was both real and symbolic: "Marihuana has become both a focus and a symbol of the generation gap and for many young people its use has become an expedient means of protest against adult values." 175 Kaplan concluded that, "Marijuana is perhaps the perfect symbol of this generational conflict." 176
Although more often than not the use of illegal drugs was closely associated with these generational conflicts, assaults on the established order, nonconformist attitudes, and groups organized around the same, most unconventional users opposed the "conventional society" primarily on other grounds. At any rate, the proliferation and expansion of these "opposition groups" and the growth in the marihuana-using population occurred side-by-side. Not surprisingly, this highly heterogeneous population of marihuana users, uniformly regarded as social or legal outcasts by the authorities, gained a degree of unity through the crystallization of this "common cause."177
In sum, control through limitation of the supply and confining access to the drug failed for two reasons. First, many otherwise conventional and law-abiding citizens were able to obtain the drug without participation in groups organized around nonconformist values, attitudes, or behaviors. Thus, although expressing no general opposition to society, their ambivalent situation contributed to the kind of cultural inconsistency characteristic of all periods of rapid social change. Secondly, a growing number of individuals and groups, primarily composed of younger people, were already expressing values and attitudes opposing those of conventional society. The association between nonconformist groups and the use of marihuana, rather than serving as an obstacle or deterrent to drug users and potential drug users, symbolized an added incentive for the growing number of young people who were eager to be with others who shared this orientation.
As Becker points out, most marihuana users in the United States have been "secret deviants."178 The regular user of marihuana either learned to hide the effects of the drug when in the company of non-users or altered his social participations in order to minimize contacts with non-users or he changed both his behavior and his participations.179 Such adjustments were based on the assumption that some kind of sanctions would be applied should the user be -'found out" by non-users. 180
At the same time, marihuana has generally been perceived as a "sociogenic" drug. According to Goode, those factors that distinguish sociogenic drug use from other forms of drug use that are "conducted in relative isolation, without group support" (i.e., the use of barbiturates, tranquilizers and/or amphetamines by housewives; meperidine or morphine addiction among physicians), 181 include the following:
(1) it is characteristically participated in a group setting; (2) the others with whom one smokes marijuana are usually intimates, intimates of intimates, or potential intimates, rather than strangers; (3) one generally has long-term continuing social relations with the others; (4) a certain degree of value consensus will obtain within the group; (5) a value convergence will occur as a result of progressive group involvement; (6) the activity maintains the circle's cohesion, reaffirms its social bonds by acting them out; (7) participants view the activity as a legitimate basis for identity - they define themselves, as well as others, partly on the basis of whether they have participated in the activity or not. In these senses, then, marijuana use is sociogenic. 182
From the time that marihuana smoking came to be associated with the lower classes, specifically within immigrant, minority, and marginal groups in this country, it has been characterized by group initiation, participation, and, to a certain degree, value consensus. Although a shared "in-group" activity, such groups tended to keep this indulgence insulated from outside observation, due to the perceived threat posed by non-users. While "sociogeneity" and the "need for secrecy" appear to represent inherently contradictory reactions to external pressures, this type of bimodal response has characterized many types of deviant, illegal, and nonconformist adaptations in American society. This two-sided response continued to characterize the use of marihuana throughout the Sixties. However, when viewed within the context of those contingent conditions that defined the marihuana issue during this period, both sociogeneity and the need for secrecy took on new meanings. Those new meanings substantially altered the total situation, including the perceptions and responses of users and non-users alike. Each of the aforementioned trends had a direct bearing on this new situation.
First, the total as well as the proportionate growth in the marihuana-using population had a logically necessary result. For those who still felt it important to keep this activity a matter of secrecy, there were now fewer potential sanctioners (non-users) as the number of persons who shared the "secret" increased. Further, since its use was most common in certain areas of the country (the large cities, particularly on the east and west coasts), in certain age groups (persons under 25 years of age), and in certain types of communities (i.e., college campuses), the likelihood of sanctions being applied by non-users was minimized. Within such surroundings, whether or not the user participated in a deviant or marginal subgroup, he was likely to interact with others who used marihuana also, or at least with others who knew others who used it. In fact, in many circumstances, he would find that a majority of persons also engaged in this illegal activity. Thus, the need to mask the effects of the drug was necessary in only specific situations, since contacts with non-users were minimized due to individual social selection processes, the demographic distribution of the activity, and the sheer number of like-minded participants. Under such conditions, few felt constrained to keep their activities secretive, even in many contacts with non-users. For many, the only non-users perceived to pose a significant threat were the representatives of law enforcement agencies.
The qualitative changes in the marihuana-using population changed the meaning of the "need for secrecy" in various ways. Prior to the Sixties, the sociogenic character of marihuana use was closely related to widely shared subcultural experiences, marihuana use being only one element in a complex and divergent lifestyle. Users were likely to be persons who had achieved, or who had been ascribed, a marginal position in society due to their rejection of or by the dominant population. Generally these were marginal individuals, interacting in subcultural groups cut off from the mainstreams of power and influence, whether or not they used illegal drugs. Value consensus as well as progressive group involvement were more closely linked to shared feelings emanating from common experiences with the dominant population than to the group's preference for a particular type of intoxication.
While to a certain degree these observations apply to the hard-core counterculture devotees of the Sixties, most of the middle- and upper-class marihuana smokers of the Sixties were "outsiders" only insofar as they used marihuana. Unlike the "beats," Mexican-Americans, and Negroes, their fear of sanctions was a specific rather than a general response to conflict situations. They were socially secure, they had articulate spokesmen, they were not excluded from the channels of communication and power, and they sought to have their views heard. The sociogenic character of marihuana use became an avenue to change instead of a retreatist adaptation to the fear of external sanctions.
Further, as marihuana use was no longer strictly associated with lower-class groups, it started to lose its "bad reputation" (a reputation based on that previous association instead of on any objective appraisal of the drug itself). Although most users still felt constrained to keep this activity beyond the observation of law enforcement authorities, it was no longer something about which one would necessarily feel ashamed. The need for secrecy was seen as a temporary, pragmatic compromise.
The qualitative changes in the marihuana-using population also meant that the desire to associate with fellow marihuana users no longer dictated that one step out of the socioeconomic and cultural milieu in which one felt most comfortable. One could find "smoking companions" among advertising executives, college professors, military officers, and research scientists often as easily as one could find them in Harlem or Greenwich Village. This also meant that marihuana use in and of itself no longer implied a degree of "value consensus" or "brotherhood," particularly outside of one's specific group of intimates. As stated by Goode:
The less deviant and criminal marijuana becomes, and the more easily obtainable it is, the less use becomes special and therefore significant. Under these circumstances, a detribalization occurs, and marihuana use loses its subcultural impact and its socializing power. 183
Due to these trends of the Sixties, initiation to marihuana use was taking place in a vast range of social circles and situations. In many areas, it came to be an accepted aspect of adolescent socialization. These factors combined to normalize the experience (since other "normal" people did it), thereby undermining the need for secrecy, a need which was based on the fear of social or moral stigmatization and reprisal as much as it was based on the fear of legal penalties.
Research on marihuana and its use, which specified the marihuana-to-heroin stepping-stone theory and pointed to the increased use of the dangerous drugs, also served to minimize many of the ominous overtones previously associated with marihuana. Public awareness of "LSD cults," "speed scenes," and "heroin in the suburbs" came to be seen as far more frightening developments than the increased use of marihuana. Many felt that the time and money spent in arresting marihuana-using college students could be used more productively in cutting off the supply of heroin, a theme given great attention by the mass media. Further, comparisons between the effects of marihuana and the effects of alcohol served to make many non-users increasingly ambivalent about applying any informal pressures or sanctions.
Among non-users, even if marihuana use was not condoned (due to its illegality), the use of the opiates and the dangerous drugs came to be seen as far more serious problems. It was in these areas of drug abuse that the public (including marihuana users) started to press for tough sanctions and correcting measures, and it was in these areas that drug users felt the greatest need to keep out of public view. In essence, the growing number of users of these "harder" drugs assumed the stance previously taken by the marihuana user, who thus moved one step closer to the mainstream.
The public controversy surrounding the marihuana issue was a direct result of the growing use of the drug among the more vocal and influential middle- and upper-class segments of society. The trend toward leniency was also a direct result of this development. The mass media coverage of this controversy and of the growing use of marihuana among all segments of society further served to bring marihuana users out into the open and to add a degree of legitimacy to their opinions.
Since the work of Durkheim, many theorists of deviant behavior have assumed that public exposure of the violation of group norms acts to enhance group cohesion.184 However, in a situation approaching widespread "normative evasion," and at a time when a norm is generally losing its controlling authority,"185 such exposure may be counterproductive. According to Williams:
The consequences of the widespread and dramatic exposure of such covert systems of institutional evasion deserve analysis on a scale far beyond what has been done. it seems to be generally assumed that public exposure of violations of norms strengthens consensus and the commitment to the dominant institutions. This assumption is sometimes true, but in other cases the disclosure may actually weaken support of the nominal institutional regulation by changing expectations (the realization that many others share the practice and by activating interests and values previously defined as forbidden. 186
Based on analyses of television campaigns addressed to the problem of drug abuse, both Nelson187 and Zinberg188 concluded that they may very well have had the opposite effect of that which was intended, actually increasing experimentation with drugs. In other words, through the activation of latent interests and the disclosure of widespread violations, publicity may set in motion that which Merton has called a "self-fulfilling prophesy."189 This point was stated by the Select Committee on Crime as follows:
The committee's consultant contends that whether the use of marihuana, alcohol, and cigarettes is actually increasing or not, is really not important. "As long as the perception of the student is that drug usage is on the increase," he says, "then the problem of a self-fulfilling prophecy becomes important. In other words, when adolescents feel that the use of habit-forming substances is on the increase, their behavior and interaction toward self and others tends to accept usage as 'normal' and it establishes the expectation that others as well as self 'can,' 'must,' and 'should' experiment."190
Thus, the public controversy and the exposure of massive violations often portrayed by the media in a noncondemnatory way (often quite sympathetic to the plight of the apprehended violator) served to "normalize" and ',legitimize" this activity in the perceptions of users and non-users alike. Further, such publicity had a direct effect on the stand taken by many individual users. According to Lazarsfeld and Merton, this process works in the following way:
Publicity, the enforced acknowledgment by members of the group that these deviations have occurred, requires each individual to take such a stand. He must either range himself with the nonconformists, thus proclaiming his repudiation of the group norms, and thus asserting that he, too, is outside the moral framework or, regardless of his private predilections, he must fall into line by supporting the norm. Publicity closes the gap between "private attitudes" and "public morality." Publicity exerts pressure for a single rather than a dual morality by preventing continued evasion of the issue. 191
When the norm in question is no longer seen as an essential component of the "moral framework," and when publicity operates in a situation of controversy rather than "psychological monopoly," and when it is out of accord with opinions expressed in face-to-face contact, and when it is not congenial to prior attitudes and seeks to modify basic values, such publicity is least effective and has minimal value as a means of control.192 The publicity and controversy surrounding the marihuana issue probably increased experimentation with the drug, while also giving to users the security that comes from knowing that one is not alone and that the "secret" is out in the open.
In sum, in light of the changes witnessed during the decade of the Sixties, the meaning of the need for secrecy changed as relations between users and non-users were drastically altered. The need for secrecy, based on the fear of sanctions, was most effective when supply channels were limited and when users were perceived by non-users as morally crippled beings. As marihuana use infiltrated the privileged groups, as a raging controversy ensued, as research data minimizing the dangers of marihuana was disseminated to the general population, and as the overall number of potential arrestees reached unmanageable proportions, the police and other formal means of control came to be the only non-users seriously feared by many users of marihuana. The use of marihuana remained a sociogenic activity, but it was so in the way that most recreational pastimes are sociogenic, rather than in the way that marginal subcultural groups secretively, self-consciously insulate their activities from all outside observation.
Traditionally, marihuana use was also controlled by conventional notions of morality. While the limitation of supply sources and the fear of sanctions controlled the potential user by means of conditions imposed externally conventional notions of morality functioned successfully to the degree that such notions were incorporated into the consciousnesses of individuals, thereby serving as an inner-directed control mechanism. The strength of this control rested on two sets of assumptions intimately related to the potential user's self-concept. The first set of assumptions concerned the type of person who was believed likely to use the drug. The second set of assumptions pertained to the nature of the drug's effects on the individual user.
As stated earlier, the association between marihuana use and many lower-class and marginal groups (i.e., sailors, Mexican-Americans, Negroes, jazz musicians, "beats") was largely responsible for its disrepute in this country. Cultural differences and disproportionately high rates of arrest for illegal behaviors within such groups reinforced the stereotype of the "immoral outsider," a stereotype that was generalized to all users of marihuana. During the Sixties, the movement toward increased tolerance of cultural differences, as well as qualitative changes in the marihuana-using population, made contacts between users and non-users more frequent than ever before. Consequently, traditional stereotypes underwent drastic revision. Further, since this "deviant activity" was no longer confined to groups of "deviant individuals," there were models in all segments of society with whom the potential user could identify. The use of marihuana in and of itself was not a defining trait.
Also, during the Sixties, as in all periods of rapid social change, individuals experienced a heightened exposure to conflicting social standards. This exposure, as well as an emphasis on toleration and understanding ("getting to the root causes"), served to take many such conflicts out of the moral realm of analysis.
To many non-users, the marihuana user was a good person who had strayed onto the "wrong track." To others, marihuana use was a sickness, or a symptom of an emotional illness, which required treatment rather than punishment. To some, the user was merely exercising his right of free choice - a right having little, if anything, to do with morality. And to others still, the law was seen as the enforcer of private preferences, a role that was traditionally sanctioned only in cases directly related to the general public welfare. Dogmatic determinations of right or wrong in this matter were further deflated by the controversy surrounding the entire issue. These developments, along with the dissemination of the findings of scientific research into the nature of the drug and its users, the expansion of public drug education programs, and the legal and legislative struggles within the establishment, acted to take this issue outside the moral realm even for a proportion of the non-using public. In this regard, public knowledge of the widespread use of marihuana by military personnel in Southeast Asia was a most important factor in compounding and confusing the relationship between marihuana use and "moral degeneracy" even more.
While the general population was divided concerning the moral relevance of marihuana, it was also recognized that those most likely to use the drug were least likely to take "traditional notions of morality" seriously. Since the young were overrepresented among the user population, and "traditional notions of morality" are those ideas that the generation in power chooses to select from all past historical experiences, it is no surprise that those who had the least to say about selecting these "traditional notions" also had the least invested in them. Further, as Goode points out, individuals with a relativistic and flexible notion of right and wrong were far more likely to use marihuana.193 Thus, society's prohibition, "Don't smoke pot," was least likely to dissuade those most prone to investigate such matters for themselves.
The view of marihuana use as a "habit from which there is no escape"194 was also refuted by all available evidence. Reviewing the literature on the subject of physical dependence, Nowlis found "general agreement that repeated use of the less potent forms of cannabis, as in the smoking of marihuana, leads rarely, if ever, to physical dependence or craving for the drug."195 Concerning tolerance, while a few researchers suggested that marihuana "may produce slight tolerance," 196 others found that "repeated exposure to marihuana has been said to cause an individual to need lesser amounts of the drug to receive the same degree of intoxication,"197 " a process that has been referred to as "reverse tolerance." Since "we know of no drug without tolerance that is addicting,"198 and scientifically acceptable documentation of "marihuana withdrawal" had yet to be presented, the stereotype of the "marihuana addict" as presented by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics during the Fifties199 was debunked and abandoned during the Sixties.
As Kaplan observed, former Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, in an interview intended to explain the Operation Intercept policy to the public, showed that he had also abandoned those assumptions upon which the traditional moral position was based. When asked whether he believed that the enforced shortage would cause marihuana users to turn to street crime in order to purchase the suddenly more expensive drug, he answered: "Since marihuana is not addictive, we don't think that our students and young people will resort to crime in order to get it."200
By so stating, he concurred with the pharmacologically accurate view concerning marihuana's non-addicting character. Further, he implied that the user, a person who had probably committed several crimes in the past (those related to the use and possession of marihuana), was neither a "lawless" nor "immoral" type of person generally. Quite abruptly, even official spokesmen were speaking of marihuana users as "criminals" in only the technical sense, thereby qualitatively differentiating marihuana use from other criminal-moral problems.201
In sum, the traditional means of controlling marihuana use were ineffective in light of the sociocultural realities of the late Sixties. It is not being suggested that each of the three traditional control mechanisms was equally ineffective among all types of marihuana users. While the middle-aged professional who used marihuana often relied entirely on a handful of contacts for his supply, the college student frequently reported that he could obtain the drug from any number of his peers even on very short notice.
Further, among different types of users, the traditional controls functioned in different ways. For instance, while the high school student was unlikely to be sanctioned by his peers, he often could not indulge in the comfort of his home for fear of his parents' disapproval and reprisals. In contrast, the employed user often felt constrained to keep this activity beyond the knowledge of his employer, while using the drug at home with spouse and/or friends without fear of sanctions. Of course, there were also a growing number of others, fully insulated from the non-using public, for whom all three traditional means of control exerted minimal pressure.
While these distinctions deserve attention, particularly as they affected individual and group reactions to the government-enforced shortage, the key development of the Sixties was the overriding fact that such control mechanisms were fully effective in a declining number of cases and totally ineffective in an increasing number of cases. The aforementioned trends witnessed during the Sixties served both as indicators of this decreasing effectiveness and as conditions within which the probability of continued ineffectiveness was practically insured.
From a strictly subcultural affair, marihuana use was developing into a situation of "large-scale patterned evasion." The dominant norm was being publicly affirmed, but officials admitted that widespread violation and evasion were occurring at an ever-increasing rate. Although normative consensus was "insufficient to prevent this demand from arising or to deter considerable numbers of individuals from catering to it", 202 consensus was "great enough to prevent a public repudiation of the norm itself" (since the norm was believed to be functionally important to the social structure and to the main value systems of the society).203 Normative violation had reached the "tolerance limit." 204
In fact, as normative consensus dwindled, official public reaffirmation of 'the norm became more frequent and more vocal. Using Turk's distinction between "social norms" and "cultural norms," it may be said that while the prohibition against the use of marihuana had lost much of its power as a social norm ("a generalization from many instances of similar or complementary behavior205 - the existence of a social norm being inferred from social scientific observations of sanctioning"206), its expression as a cultural norm seemed to increase ("a symbolic expression, a set of terms"207 the existence of a cultural norm being inferred from the "normative statements by authorities" ).208
Although the conflict between the social and the cultural norm was evident, it was overshadowed by the conflict between the non-legal and the legal norms pertaining to the marihuana issue. This latter conflict was equally intense but more widespread, since many supporters of the cultural norm (the symbolic opposition to marihuana and perhaps to other intoxicants as well) disputed its legal formulation. Goode summarized the conflict as follows:
In fact, aside from employees of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, as well as other law enforcement agencies, the present legal structure has the support of very few. Many of the drug's toughest critics such as Donald B. Louria, advocate a considerable reduction in penalties on use and possession ("so that a minor crime is punished by a minor penalty"), an absolute elimination of the penalties for being in a place where marijuana is smoked, but a retention of the existing penalties for sale and importation. (Louria calls his suggestions "the middle road.") And in a recent government publication, the appropriateness of the federal penalties on marijuana and the basic antimarijuana arguments were seriously called into question; this federal scrutiny of marijuana was made specifically because "the law has come under attack on all counts."209
Relevant to this type of situation, Turk points out "four kinds of indicators with empirical value for determining whether a conflict over legal norms exists":
Thus, a normative-legal conflict is indicated where the statement of a cultural legal norm has changed frequently or markedly; legislators, judges, administrators, and other authorities are devoting time and energy to the issues of whether and in what ways a legal norm needs to be revised, abolished, or supplemented; enforcers, particularly first-level enforcers, report that there are violations or potential violations of a legal norm, and that they are concerned with detecting and preventing violations; and persons are being assigned criminal status as violators of a legal norm. 210
When in a situation under investigation several of the aforementioned types of indicators are in disagreement, such discrepancies should be resolved in favor of those indicators that reflect what the authorities do (i.e., arrest rates) rather than what they say. Thus, "in defining the existence of a conflict . . . the essential element is the behavior of the authorities."211 Based on the application of Turk's four types of indicators, with a special emphasis on the actions of the authorities (i.e., the abandonment of the stepping-stone theory and the "marihuana addict" image, the revision of state laws, the ambivalence inferred from judicial-sentencing behaviors, the increase in the population of violators, increased arrest rates, increased expenditure of resources on the problem), by the late Sixties, an undeniable normative-legal conflict existed within the society.
Formerly perceived as a distinct subcultural deviation, the marihuana issue came to be recognized as a situation that was producing large-scale patterned evasion and acute normative-legal conflict. Probably the most important factor in this transformation was the qualitative change in the population of norm violators.
Prior to the Sixties, the small number of violators as well as their general inability to influence decisions allowed the authorities to deny the existence of an opposing viewpoint. Those who had the power to decide which behaviors were to be ascribed criminal status and those who legislated sanctions for such violations opposed the use of marihuana and incorporated this opposition into the criminal statutes. Those who used it and those who approved of this activity were generally from groups characterized by extremely limited input concerning such decisions. While this dichotomy continued to characterize the marihuana issue during the Sixties, the balance of power started to shift. This shift culminated in the official recognition of an opposition viewpoint, "the acceptance of the 'right' of an adversary to participate in a social relationship, albeit one of conflict,"212 thereby conferring a degree of legitimacy upon those who opposed the legal norms.
While the qualitative change in the population of norm violators was directly responsible for the trend toward leniency and the legitimation of opposing viewpoints, it was equally responsible for the public clamor that "something be done" about the drug problem. Narcotics agent Callahan, testifying before the Select Committee on Crime, offered this analysis:
When the drug problem was a Negro problem, everyone went to jail. When it moved out into white communities, we have seen a different standard of justice being applied. I am not saying that we should not reassess our handling of social problems; we should. We have drastically reassessed to this one, because it is at the stage now where it is probably one of the fastest growing social problems in this country.213
Similarly, Geller and Boas commented:
The injustice of the severe penalties for pot violations were never publicly articulated until the white middle class took up the habit; but the minority groups who were the early users of marijuana believed the drug to be relatively harmless while being uncomfortably aware of the disproportionate penalties involved if they were caught indulging the habit. 214
According to the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse:
With the adoption of marihuana use by middle and upper class college youth in the mid-sixties, the exaggerated notion of the drug's dangers and the social tension so widespread during this period combined to reopen the question of the impact of marihuana use. 215
As stated in an article in The New York Times, ghetto residents were particularly attuned to the racial bias implicit in all this reevaluation and attention:
People in the ghetto who have lived with this kind of thing all their lives are puzzled, annoyed, even resentful over the sudden public commotion. They attribute it to the fact it is no longer just the poor blacks and Puerto Ricans who are affected, but that middle and upper-class children are becoming victims, too. To a certain extent, this is true. 216
Similarly, a black community relations officer working for the New York City Police Department stated: "You know what the people up here are saying? Now that white people's kids are involved, the politicians are worried."217 Skeptics felt that their most cynical analyses were confirmed when President Nixon commented on the drug problem: "In other words, it gives a lie to the idea that this is something that simply happens to the poor. It is moving to the upper-middle class as well."218
Thus, several trends and pressures were bearing down on the federal government and the policy makers were indeed "worried." To all concerned, it was evident that the traditional, informal means of control were not working. Further, formal control mechanisms, represented by the punitive-legalistic approach to the problem, embodied in a history of increasingly harsh penal statutes, were equally ineffective. Although more felons were being arrested on marihuana charges than for any other felony, probably a lower proportion of such felons and felonies were being detected and arrested than for any other type of felony.219 While the law continued to deter many, Goode noted that "the deterrence function is breaking down yearly."220 Further, it was generally agreed that the rising arrest rates, particularly among the young, were serving neither the individual violator nor the society-at-large. At the same time, state legislatures and judges were adopting more lenient policies and opposing views were given recognition, legitimacy, and mass media exposure. Pressure was mounting on the President to adopt a new approach, one that would deal decisively with that which he had labeled, "a rising sickness in our land."221
In the second half of 1969, the President initiated a two-pronged program. The first of these was represented by legislative proposals sent to Congress (eventually amended and incorporated into the "Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970" H.R. 18583). The President had stated that drug abuse is not "a law enforcement problem alone."222 The new bill was expected to reflect a "rationalized and liberalized overview of the drug situation."223 It was expected to incorporate pharmacological reality, thereby reclassifying illicit drugs into their proper categories. It was expected to place a heavy emphasis (financial as well as verbal) on education, research, and rehabilitation. It was expected to move the nation a step closer to the resolution of the divisive and dysfunctional normative-legal conflict.
In fact, the proposals did none of these. They represented minimal change, a reaffirmation of existing law, and of the traditional law enforcement approach to the problem. Noting that the harshness of existing law had made it unenforceable, that there was "still no conclusive proof that the drug is harmful," that prohibition gives "the drug the appeal of forbidden fruit," and that the "imposition of penalties for possession, or even use, makes criminals of ordinary young people," Time concluded that medical and legal authorities were disappointed with the new proposals.
Life suggested that "Congress should amend Nixon's proposals to give the nation's drug laws both more enlightenment and greater effectiveness," since the bill sent to Congress "takes the simplistic law enforcement approach."225
Geoffrey Stokes, Director of Program Development for the Addiction Services Agency of New York City, in an article published by The Nation, called the President's proposals "anti-student" not "anti-drug," since "its provisions are aimed at the occasional drug user, rather than at the system which supplies him."226 He went on to note that "the penalties for simple possession of marijuana, despite the growing body of information indicating its relative harmlessness, remain unchanged; those for sale are raised."227 Stokes concluded that the President's message was "a throwback to the era of Harry Anslinger; the bill which was sent to Congress one day later is, if anything, even worse."228
The only progressive change incorporated into the proposal was a special provision allowing judicial discretion in some cases involving first offenders. While this "loophole" has had and will continue to have wider ramifications (although similar provisions had already been included in most state laws and are far more applicable on the state level), when seen within the context of the total proposal (including a "no-knock" provision), it did little to satisfy the growing number of authorities who were calling for a new approach. In essence, the President's proposals reaffirmed the traditional official position. Aside from its symbolic value as a rededication to the "war on drugs," it was clear that the enactment of these proposals would have little, if any, effect on the rampant violation of law or on the raging normative-legal conflict and would do little to close the "generation gap." Such recognition, even within the federal administration and the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, can be inferred from the fact that as the President's message was being released (July 14, 1969) the second prong of the attack was being planned.
While it was probable that enactment of the President's proposals would mean that offenders who impressed judges as "curable" would now receive more lenient treatment,"229 and that a few convicted sellers would be "off the streets" for a long while (it was proposed that the convicted seller of marihuana receive a five to twenty-year prison sentence for a first offense - the federal law previously mandated a two to ten-year sentence), it was evident that these changes would have little impact on the general trend toward increased illicit drug use. If the trend continued, so would rising arrest rates. If arrest rates continued to rise, so would the legislative controversy, the mass media criticism, the vehemence of the opposition, and, bringing us full circle, the number of new experimenters. Further, the public outcry that "something be done" would continue.
In retrospect, it seems that officials believed that an effective strategy would have to cut down on the arrest rate, thereby deflecting the controversy, criticism, and attention surrounding the issue while still upholding the traditional moral-legal position. Operation Intercept was believed to be just such a strategy. If the supply of marihuana could be prevented from entering the country, if the problem could be attacked "at its source," it was felt that the aforementioned trends and pressures could be reversed. In a sense, it was a last resort. The strategy represented a way of bypassing the essential questions concerning why people feel a need to use illicit drugs, questions concerning why marihuana was illicit, and questions concerning fundamental constitutional liberties. According to official statements, it was reasoned that by making marihuana unavailable, or prohibitively expensive, the marihuana-drug abuse problem and its manifold reverberations throughout society would all simply disappear.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE DIFFERENTIAL EFFECTS OF OPERATION INTERCEPT
In terms of the immediate and intermediate objectives of the Operation Intercept policy, curtailing importation, affecting price increases, and reducing street-level availability, the policy was successful. Although the degree of success varied for different groups and individuals, the price of marihuana was generally higher, while supplies were generally lower. However, reduced illegal drug usage, particularly by the young, represented the ultimate goal of the Operation Intercept policy.
Ideally, the realization of immediate and intermediate policy goals contributes directly, by creating the necessary conditions, to the realization of a policy's intended and anticipated purposes. For a substantial proportion of certain types of marihuana users, the Operation Intercept policy worked successfully, thereby defining conditions that led to a reduction in illegal drug use.
The first type of user to experience this reduction (thus reacting as was intended and anticipated) corresponds to the National Commission's definition of the "experimental user" (at least one trial to once a month),230 whose pattern of use was described by Becker (the occasional user) as "sporadic and dependent on chance factors."231 For some occasional users, the decreased availability of marihuana was the "chance factor" that seemed to make the significant difference. However, it must be noted that, based on past patterns of use, many of these might have gone several months without using marihuana even if the shortage had never materialized.
The second type of user to experience a decline in total illicit drug consumption during this period was not distinguishable in terms of "frequency of use." Rather, anticipated reactions were reported among intermittent (two to ten times monthly )232 and moderate (eleven times monthly to once daily )233 users of marihuana, who were distinguished from the general drug-using population by certain objective and subjective characteristics. These users were middle-and upper-middle-class men and women, ages ranging from the mid-twenties to the mid-fifties, who had serious involvements in and commitments to conventional social institutions and little if any identification with a drug subculture or the counterculture movement. Prior to the shortage, they had never experimented with any illicitly obtained drug other than marihuana or hashish, and they generally had only a few contacts from whom these drugs were purchased.
By the late Sixties, a growing number of these "respectable types" were using marihuana regularly. The findings of this study indicate that a majority of these decreased their illegal drug use during the shortage. While the deterrent function of the law, the "need for secrecy," and "conventional notions of morality" continued to prove ineffective, use was contained by severely limited access to supply sources.
According to Rose, there is a tendency in American law to make the accessories for carrying on problem behavior high priced, which has little deterrent value for those with high incomes.234 However, in the case under study, although the price of marihuana rose, those most able to meet the demand for higher prices did not find themselves to be in a privileged position vis-a-vis the marihuana supply. Access to supply channels rather than ability to pay continued to function as the primary factor in determining one's ability to obtain marihuana. As stated by one middle-aged upper-middle-class user: "It was not a matter of price, but a matter of availability, period!" Although these users expended more time and energy pursuing the weed than ever before (Mayer quoted a middle-class user as saying: "Getting pot is a great sport today. . . .
Everybody thinks he's got the last ounce in America"), 235 as a group, they were less successful than at any time in their "turned on" history.
This finding underlines the highly unusual nature of the marihuana market. Unlike most other commodities, both licit and illicit, the marihuana market does not cater to the highest bidder. Whether or
not one agrees that the typical marihuana transaction entails no profit, as Goode suggests,236 it is evident that the drug exists in a different economic, sociological, and psychological sphere than other commodities, a sphere "where the rules of the game were different."237
In this time of crisis, the rules seemed to dictate that those with the most financial resources often had the least power to determine their own recreational indulgences. Ironically, the young ghetto user, with very limited resources, was also unable to find marihuana. Although both groups adapted in quite a different way, this convergence of experiences underlines the uniquely irrational economic reality of the marihuana market.
Most experts agree that a major effect of marihuana use is a decrease in the user's consumption of alcohol. It appears that this process is not irreversible. Most of these "respectable users" reverted to a previous pattern, thereby increasing their intake of alcohol. However, these experiences and adaptations were only temporary, lasting no longer than the marihuana shortage.
Although most studies of deviant or illegal behavior focus on the increasing involvement (the "career") of the norm violator, particularly in response to restrictive public policies, Operation Intercept afforded us the opportunity to examine one process by which some individuals decrease or abandon such involvements, even if only temporarily. The irony in this development is that those who reacted as anticipated were not those for whom the policy was designed. They were not prone to progression or multiple drug experimentation; they were not unadjusted to the demands of society; they posed no threat to the nation's basic values or conventional beliefs; they did not flaunt their nonconformity; they accounted for a very small proportion of the escalating arrest rate.
According to former Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst (subsequently appointed to the post of Attorney General), the policy was specifically aimed at forcing "our students and young people"239 ... "an estimated 30 million young Americans ... to forsake the weed for lack of funds."240 It was in these groups, specifically among persons of high school and college age as well as some older users involved in nonconformist subcultures, that Operation Intercept led to a wide range of unintended and unanticipated reactions. It was specifically in these groups, where drug use was seen as posing problems of personal adjustment as well as threats to the social order, in which "the various steps or actions that make up the total program" failed to "comprise a continuous series of events ... each of which may be the result of the successful achievement of the preceding goal and, in turn, a precondition to the next higher goals."241 For most users of marihuana, particularly among the young, the conditions created by the accomplishment of Operation Intercept's immediate and intermediate objectives led to reactions that were in direct contradiction to the ultimate goals of the policy.
Although these younger users also found marihuana to be less available and more expensive, several conditions served to distinguish these younger users and to influence their responses to the government-enforced shortage. All of the unintended consequences of the Operation Intercept policy can be seen as a manifestation of the desire to continue an activity, already defined as pleasurable and acceptable ("getting high"), while marihuana was expensive and in scarce supply.
While those who decreased or abstained from drug use during the shortage described their attempts to continue purchasing and using marihuana, most of the younger users emphasized the desire to continue "getting high." In this regard, the remarks of several respondents are instructive:
a. People I know would still want to get high and they would do whatever they could get. Drinking might be one thing but from what I've seen it tends more toward other kinds of drugs.
b. Everybody wanted to get high. They really didn't care how. They preferred to stick with pot but it wasn't around so they would use something else. There were many more people dealing amphetamines and LSD and many more people willing to try. Before, they were pretty uptight about using acid because of all the mass media stuff that came down about it but then, you know, like you gotta get high, so you go ahead.
c. A lot of kids who had become accustomed to walking around with a high half the day decided that the way to keep that high was to use whatever was available at the time, and that was heroin.
In light of the shortage, many adaptations occurred within the marihuana market. For some, the desire to "get high" in spite of existing conditions led to the "grow-it-yourself" movement. For others, it led to the use of domestic cannabis products. For many of those who were able to obtain marihuana, it led to involvement in marihuana sales and distribution, since anyone who possessed practically any quantity of this scarce commodity was able to sell it for a substantial price without any difficulty. While these developments were easily foreseeable, the vastly expanded use of other illicit drugs, particularly by the young, is more problematic.
It was found that the use of hashish was noticeably accelerated by the marihuana shortage in both urban and suburban, middle-class and affluent communities. As almost all of the marihuana-using respondents had used hashish at some previous time, the switch to greater reliance on hashish was a rather simple sort of process directly related to market factors. Since its mode of consumption is generally the same as is used for marihuana (smoking), its effects quite similar to those of marihuana, and it was equally acceptable within the peer culture, users did not regard this to be a "switch" at all. In fact, even most drug use surveys have failed to distinguish between marihuana and hashish, as the two are pharmacologically similar and have come to be regarded as interchangeable. If there is any significance in this consideration (the psychopharmacological. experience does not appear to be very significant as most respondents reported that their hashish experiences were not necessarily any stronger, or any different, than their marihuana experiences), it lies in the fact that many marihuana users had already learned, or were in the process of learning, that they could receive enjoyment without any noticeably different physiological effects or social sanctions from a drug other than marihuana (at least in name).
The greatly expanded use of the barbiturates, the amphetamines, the psychedelic drugs, and heroin requires a different level of analysis, since each of those drugs was perceived, even within the various drug use subcultures, as qualitatively different types of substances.
It has often been noted that drug adventurism is related to thrill-seeking, hedonism, risk-taking, a desire to test limits, and a lack of constraining social responsibilities and obligations characteristic of many adolescent subcultures o all socioeconomic strata. However, these youthful dispositions in and of themselves do not explain multiple drug experimentation, since these same proclivities have been used to explain many forms of disapproved behavior from goldfish swallowing to the teenage gang hot-rod syndrome. Rather, an understanding of the greatly expanded use of the barbiturates, the amphetamines, the psychedelic drugs, and heroin during this period requires an examination of the various drug use subcultures, peer influences, antecedent events, and drug use trends that allowed many users to discount the risks associated with these heavier involvements.
Unlike the growth in the marihuana-using population, which was officially recognized only after it had assumed massive proportions, the trend toward multiple drug experimentation was quickly and widely acknowledged. As with the marihuana problem, such attention was directly related to the involvement of white middle-class youth. As stated by Tom Buckley in an article in The New York Times: "What the public is worried about is the apparent spread of hard narcotics to the previously immune white middle-class sections of the city and the suburbs, and drug use by ever younger children in the black and Puerto Rican ghettos." "' Consequently, a great deal of publicity was addressed to the "dangerous drug" and heroin problem. This publicity consisted of warnings, often presented in a factual and straightforward manner, designed to discourage young people from experimenting with these drugs. In assessing the apparent failure of this campaign, several factors must be kept in mind.
The first factor to be considered relates to the credibility of the anti-drug forces. Since many of these same young people had been exposed to a great deal of inaccurate anti-marihuana propaganda previously, they had little reason to assume that official sources could suddenly be trusted.
Weil's analysis of the actual intent of traditional "drug education" was shared by most users: "Drug education in the United States means thinly disguised attempts to scare children away from drugs." 243 These attempts often took the form of "fact campaigns," such as in an article published by The Washington Post during the summer of 1969, entitled "Parents Need Facts on pot.,"244 As in other such articles intended to equip parents with convincing if not irrefutable arguments, this one was short on facts and long on propaganda.
Sometimes these attempts assumed the guise of objective scientific research. When asked about the purpose of his research into the physiological effects of marihuana, Dr. Vincent de Paul Lynch, Chairman of the Pharmacology Department of St. John's College of Pharmacy, commented: "Our purpose is to establish scientific proof of marihuana's ill effects."245 Statements such as this one did more to discredit scientific research than to discredit marihuana. They were also in direct contradiction to messages carried in those media most relevant to the younger population of potential users. Underground publications, the lyrics of rock songs, even mass media publications carried messages more in line with the experiences and perceptions of users and potential users alike. A young Colony member, interviewed by Carey, referred to an article published by Playboy in 1963:
More people read Playboy than anything else. And Playboy says grass is all right. . . . Artists and people have been at it for a long time, authors, etc. And they've come out and said it's all right. And people have listened. ... And if Norman Mailer says grass isn't, you know, it ain't bad for you, it hangs up a little bit, but it's all right. A lot of people listen to it, because Norman Mailer hasn't by and large done any lying to the public. If President Johnson says grass is bad for you, he's done a lot of lying to the public, and ... you don't quite listen to this sort of thing. 246
Kaplan points out the logical implications inherent in this "credibility gap":
This lack of belief in the harmfulness of marijuana also hurts efforts at drug education: since young people do not believe marijuana is dangerous, they tend to conclude that other drugs subject to similar or less serious prohibitions are also not dangerous. In the case of heroin, amphetamines, and LSD, this conclusion is unfortunately false, and hence dangerous.247
Due to the sometimes exaggerated, sometimes patently false messages disseminated by the anti-drug forces (most notably the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), marihuana users were unlikely to trust such sources even when, and if, they were telling the truth. This disbelief of official sources helped drug users to discount the risks associated with the use of other illicit drugs, as those same sources had undermined their own credibility in the anti-marihuana campaigns. At the same time, several other factors exerted pressures on the young drug user that channeled the desire to get high and the discounting of official warnings into certain, differentially distributed types of drug involvements.
As previously documented, by the summer of 1969, a trend toward multiple drug experimentation was already underway within the various peer groups that identified with the drug scene. Although some young drug users had used only marihuana and hashish, the opportunity to experiment with other illicit drugs already existed, since, within each local neighborhood, individual drug users were found to be at different stages of involvement in terms of experiences with these other substances. Thus, other illicit drugs had been defined as "acceptable and pleasurable" (Goode) and as having something to "contribute" (Fiddle) by trusted intimates within the peer culture.
Unlike the middle-aged "respectable pot smoker," the young user was exposed to models of "harder" drug use, with whom he could identify. As with marihuana, all of the respondents reported that they were first introduced to other drugs, and were initiated into the use of these other drugs, in the company of friends. This availability of models (in the case of LSD these models included nationally famous personalities as well as other locals) and of familiar surroundings within which one could initiate use, combined with a well-publicized trend toward "dangerous drug" use and the readymade rationalization that such indulgence was of a temporary nature (since Operation Intercept was officially presented as a temporary measure), plus the increased availability of other drugs at a time when marihuana was both expensive and hard to find, all functioned to facilitate the use of drugs other than marihuana and hashish. As stated by the respondents, people still wanted to "get high." For those who had found these drugs, to be personally acceptable and pleasurable. at an earlier time, the transition to greater involvement was even more prevalent, as would be expected.
The fact that different drugs had established, or were in the process of establishing, different "traditions of use" in the various neighborhoods throughout the city and that different "progression opportunities" were available within different drug use subcultures accounts for the differential acceptance of the various illicit drugs within the various drug-using peer groups. These traditions of use also implied a readily available supply, since others within the local peer culture, more heavily involved in multiple drug experimentation, were obtaining and using them regularly.
Once accepted within the subculture, the availability of sufficient supplies appears to be much less problematic, far more constant, than it is with marihuana. When asked which drugs were causing the most trouble among high school youngsters, former Commissioner Goddard replied: "The ones that are easiest to get: amphetamines and barbiturates."248 With over 100,000 pounds of amphetamine and methamphetamine products available in the United States every year ("enough to supply 250 milligrams of these stimulants - or 25 to 50 doses - to every person in this country")249 and the "annual production of barbiturate derivatives estimated to be in excess of 1,000,000 pounds or the equivalent of some 24, 11/2-grain doses for every person in the United States,"250 Goddard's'statement should have surprised no one. With these kinds of production statistics, illicit manufacture was practically unnecessary.
According to Ingersoll, "92 percent of the amphetamines and barbiturates that are found in the illicit traffic are diverted from legitimate business channels."251 Further, it has been estimated that half of the barbiturates and amphetamines manufactured by American industry are diverted to the illicit market,252 and of those sedatives and tranquilizers that are legally prescribed, Louria has estimated that one-half are prescribed unnecessarily.253
Along with those drugs that were stolen from manufacturers, distributors, pharmacists, hospitals and physicians, those that were sent to Mexican pharmacies (sometimes fictitious) or otherwise strayed into Mexico and returned via the black market, those that entered the "street" by way of falsified inventories or forged prescriptions, and those that were prescribed for medical purposes and used otherwise (i.e., overweight youngsters became a channel for "ups" while feigned diarrhea became a route to paregoric), the family medicine chest was likely to contain all kinds of "goodies." As of 1969, 30 percent of the nation's adult population were using one or more of the tranquilizers, sedatives, and stimulants regularly. 254
Similarly, an "LSD famine" is as yet an unheard-of phenomenon. This colorless, odorless, soluble powder, powerful in minute quantities, and fairly easy to manufacture,255 has always been readily available. And, newspaper accounts aside ("the recurrent arrests of allegedly important narcotic dealers and the confiscation of huge quantities of heroin"256 ), except for a few periods of "panic," heroin users have continued to get their drugs. As stated by Wald and Hutt: "Border seizures of heroin amounted to less than 5 percent of the estimated imports in 1970. Indeed, the price of heroin has been falling steadily and the quality increasing, which indicates a failure to stem the supply."257 In this regard, Fiddle points out that although inflationary trends were a key concern in the world of business during 1968-69, "during that same period, the illegal market decreased the price of a bag of heroin in the ghetto. "258 Further, "the bag, which had sold for as much as three to six dollars earlier, increasingly was sold for two dollars and not necessarily with radically fewer grains."259
Thus, once defined as acceptable and pleasurable, access to supplies posed few difficulties. Whites involved in drug use subcultures usually adapted to the marihuana shortage through increased involvement with the barbiturates, the amphetamines, and the psychedelics, as well as hashish. In the absence of a well-established local tradition, the "pill popper" syndrome arose, with use often dependent on chance factors until individual and group preferences became solidified. As described previously, this expanded market led some youths to become involved in the sale of these substances. In contrast, young ghetto drug users usually moved on to the traditional drug of choice, heroin. (While hashish might have offered an intermediate option, it simply was not available.)
Thus, as these drugs became more available than marihuana, they also became more appealing (competitive prices comprising part of the appeal), causing increased demand and black market distribution, greater acceptability, the involvement of more young people in sales, etc.
As Fiddle observed, when the social and psychological conditions facilitate "risk-discounting," The negative publicity surrounding a particular drug is likely to be disregarded. When these conditions are absent, the young drug user is likely to accept the messages carried in the mass media.260 Thus, with a few exceptions, ghetto users avoided the risks associated with LSD and "speed," while white drug users avoided heavy involvement with heroin.
In ghetto neighborhoods, the exceptions to this generalization could usually be explained by "differential association." 261 It was found that those black and Puerto Rican drug users who experimented with LSD or "speed" had experienced much more contact with white drug users than their peers. Thus, the use of these drugs among ghetto youth was far more common for those who were attending college and/or integrated social activities.
In white middle-class and affluent communities, it was found that the exceptions to the "no heroin" rule generally occurred within the even younger groups of drug users (usually between the ages of 16 and 20), who were heavily involved in a drug-oriented lifestyle. In explaining the behavior of these youngsters, the differential association theory is not very helpful. They generally had fewer interracial contacts than the older users, such as the college students, who were far less likely to take on a heavy involvement with heroin, even temporarily. Further, older models of heroin use were generally absent from these communities. The move to heroin must be explained by other factors.
It should be pointed out that although a trend toward increased drug experimentation was underway in the white communities, unlike the ghetto, no long-standing tradition of use had been established by any one particular drug. The only established rule seemed to be that even if one wished to experiment with a great variety of drugs, involvement with heroin was to be avoided. This rule can be readily inferred from the special emphasis placed on the switch to heroin in the statements of many of the respondents. As previously noted, younger drug users were more likely to disregard this rule than the older users.
Geller and Boas have suggested that the use of heroin among younger drug users may be partially explained by a "casual and apparently fearless attitude toward drugs"262 displayed by some teenaged users. Similarly, several respondents stated that these younger users were less "level-headed" and more "carried away" with the drug scene. Perhaps one reason for this difference in attitudes derives from adolescent identity crises and/or the lack of serious and time-consuming involvements with college or employment. While age-related personality factors probably played an essential role, it is believed that other factors may have also been important.
For younger drug users, the progression from Marihuana use to multiple drug experimentation occurred at a much faster rate. By 1969, the employed or college user had generally been using marihuana for several years, while this was rarely true among the high school users. As it takes a while for the young drug user to acquire a knowledge of the finer distinctions between drugs, as well as a knowledge of the "tradition of avoidance" within his locale, it may be argued that some of these younger users just didn't have enough time to develop this discrimination. The reason why they didn't have enough time is that as they were learning to appreciate "getting high" from marihuana, the marihuana supply started to dry up and other drugs poured into the neighborhood. Since no boundaries had been established in the peer group, the young user consumed whatever he could get. For some, that included heroin.
Also, the more experienced users had been previously exposed to the "stepping-stone" theory. For most, a disbelief in this theory had been solidified prior to marihuana initiation. Although the theory was held to be false, most users internalized the dictum that heroin should be avoided at all costs. Thus, these users were confident that marihuana would not lead them to defy the heroin-avoidance tradition. In contrast, the youngest users were often exposed to antiheroin publicity after they had started using marihuana. If a strong distinction was drawn at all, it was after the user had developed a positive attitude toward drug use in general. Further, such exposure occurred while he was more or less under the continuous influence of other drugs, which helped him to discount the risks associated with heroin even more.
It has been suggested that the avoidance of heroin by white middle-class students and others in nonconformist subcultures (as opposed to teenagers and ghetto youth), is based on their knowledge of the "properties of the various drugs, especially the perils of heroin." 2 6 3 The findings of this study indicate that drug use decisions, even within these more educated groups, are often less rational than such statements would lead us to believe.
Many respondents were aware that barbiturate and alcohol withdrawal is more physically traumatic than heroin withdrawal, that reactions to the amphetamines and psychedelics are more unpredictable, that cocaine habituation can be more expensive than heroin addiction. They still chose these other drugs rather than heroin. Others were completely unaware of the possible dangers associated with the use of the "dangerous drugs." These users also avoided heroin. The use or avoidance of heroin was more closely related to the presence or absence of risk-discounting factors (especially the exposure to negative publicity while influenced by either a tradition of use or a tradition of avoidance) than to any objective appraisal of the "properties of the various drugs."
The same respondents who emphasized a vehement disapproval of heroin use expressed a universal willingness to use "opiated hash." Most had used it (or believed they had) in the past. Although an opiate-inclusive drug, its dangers were discounted due to a quickly established tradition of hashish use and the availability and acceptability of the drug within the peer culture, combined with the absence of negative publicity. Here again, Fiddle's risk-discounting perspective appears to be particularly relevant.
Thus, during the summer of 1969, an array of risk-discounting factors, combined with the government-enforced marihuana shortage and the increased availability of other illicit drugs, functioned to define conditions within which the desire to "get high" was manifested in various types of behaviors that were unintended and unanticipated by the policy makers.
1 - Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921), p. 52, cited by Robert K. Merton, "The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action," American Sociological Review, Vol. 1, No. 6 (December 1936), p. 895.
2. Robert K. Merton and Patricia L. Kendall, "The Focused Interview," in The Language of Social Research, ed. by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Morris Rosenberg (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 476.
3 - Ibid., p. 477.
4 - Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-94, Ch. XIII, pp. 263-264, para. 552.
5 - Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1893-94 (reprinted, Silver Springs, Md.: Thomas Jefferson Publishing Co., 1969), p. 287, cited by John Kaplan, Marijuana- The New Prohibition (New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970), p. 216 and Michael R. Aldrich, A Brief Legal
· History ofMarihuana (Phoenix: Do It Now Foundation).
6 - Alfred R. Lindesmith, "Introduction," in The Marihuana Papers, ed. by David Solomon. Copyright 1966, by David Solomon, reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.
7 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 216.
8 - "Great Dope Purge of 1969," from Rolling Stone, October 18, 1969, p. 16. Q 1969 by Straight Arrow Publishers Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
9 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 217.
10 - "Operation Showboat," The Nation, October 13, 1969, p. 365. Reprinted by permission.
11 - Barry Farrell, "The Marijuana Famine," Life, August 22, 1969, p. 20B.
12 -"Scarcity, Higher Prices, 'Crooks': Effects of Crackdown on Drug Trade," U.S. News & World Report, October 13, 1969, p. 48.
13 - Ibid., p. 49.
14 - ibid.
15 - Edwin Diamond, "The Drug Scene in East Egg," New York Times Magazine, May 3, 1970, p. 90. 1970 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
16 - "Pop Drugs: The High as a Way of Life," Time, September 26, 1969, p. 69.
17 - "Pot: Year of the Famine," Newsweek, September 22, 1969, p. 37.
18 - Patricia M. Wald and Peter Barton Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project: Summary of Findings, Conclusions, and Recommendations." From Dealing with Drug Abuse: A Report to the Ford Foundation, by the Drug Abuse Survey Project. 1972 by The Ford Foundation. Excerpted and reprinted by permission of Praeger Publishers, Inc., New York.
19 - "Great Dope Purge of 1969," p. 10.
20 -John da Swede, "Dope News and Other Fantasies," East Village Other, Vol. 4, No. 48, October 29, 1969, p. 9.
21 - "Pot: Year of the Famine," p. 37.
22 -First Report by the Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, House Report No. 91-978, 91st Cong., 2nd Sess. (April 6, 1970), pp. 69-71.
23 - da Swede, "Dope News," p. 9.
24 - "Great Dope Purge of 1969," p. 10.
25 - "Ginsberg," Good Times, Vol. 111, No. 16, April 16, 1970, p. I 1.
26 - Jay Levin, "Children on Heroin," New York Post, February 28, 1970, p. 2 1. Reprinted by permission of New York Post. 1970, New York Post Corporation.
27 - Ibid.
28 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 256.
29 - Seymour Fiddle, "Some Speculations on Risk Discounting Among Young Ghetto Heroin Users," paper presented to the National Leadership Conference of the American Social Health Association, New York, N.Y., November 1, 1969, pp. 17-18. (Mimeographed.) Reprinted by permission of The American Social Health Association.
30 - "A necessary condition is one that must occur if the phenomenon of which it is a 'cause' is to occur." Claire Selltiz et al., Research Methods in Social Relations (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 81.
31 - "A sufficient condition is one that is always followed by the phenomenon of which it is a 'cause.' " Ibid.
32 - Ibid., p. 80.
33 - Ibid., p. 81.
34 - Ibid., p. 80.
35 - Ibid., p. 82.
36 - Ibid.
37 - Ibid.
38 - Harold Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan, Power and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950), p. xvii.
39 - Raymond Bauer, "The Study of Policy Formation: An Introduction," in The Study of Policy Formation, ed. by Raymond Bauer and Kenneth Gergen (New York: The Free Press, 1968), p. 17.
40 - Edward A. Suchman, Evaluative Research (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1967), p. 85.
41 - Lasswell and Kaplan, Power and Society, p. xvii.
42 - Merton, "Unanticipated Consequences," p. 894.
43 - Edwin M. Schur, Crimes Without Victims (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1965), p. v.
44 -Howard S. Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," in The Marihuana Papers, ed. by David Solomon (New York: The New American Library, 1966), pp. 80-81.
45 -Ibid., pp. 81, 84, 85, 89, 90.
46 - Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats and Others (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).
47- Charles Winick, "The Use of Drugs by Jazz Musicians," Social Problems, Vol. 7 (1959), pp. 240-253.
48 - Harold Finestone, "Cats, Kicks, and Color," Social Problems, Vol. 5 (1957), pp. 3-13.
49 - "Pot: Safer than Alcohol?" Time, April 19, 1968, p. 52.
50 - James L. Goddard, "Should it be Legalized," Life, October 31, 1969, p. 34.
51 - "Marijuana: The Law vs. 12 Million People," Life, October 31, 1969, pp. 27-33.
52 - Lester Grinspoon, "Marihuana," Scientific American, Vol. 221, No. 6 (December 1969), p. 25.
53 - "Pop Drugs," p. 68.
54 - ibid.
55 - Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, p. 3.
56 - James T. Carey, The College Drug Scene (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1968), p. 173.
57 - Donald B. Louria, "Drug Abuse: A Current Assessment," American Family PhysicianIGP, Vol. 1, No. 6 (June 1970), p. 74.
58 - Erich Goode, The Marijuana Smokers (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 4. Excerpts reprinted by permission.
59 - "The Drug Scene: A Growing Number of America's Elite Are Quietly Turning On," The New York Times, Jaunary 10, 1968, p. 26. 1968 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
60 - "The Drug Scene: Many Students Now Regard Marijuana as a Part of Growing Up," The New York Times, January 11, 1968, p. 18. @ 1968 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
61 - ibid.
62 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," pp. 7-8.
63 - Ibid., p. 7.
64 - Helen H. Nowlis, Drugs on the College Campus, with an Introduction by Kenneth Keniston (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. xi.
65 - The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse, Marihuana, with a Foreword by Raymond P. Shafer, Chairman (New York: The New American Library, 1972), p. 39.
66 - Ibid., P. 123.
67 - "Pot Problem: College Students' Use of Marijuana," Time, March 12, 1965, p.49; "Fiedler Affair: Buffalo University Group Aims to Legalize Marijuana," Newsweek, June 12, 1967, p. 29; A. Rosenfeld, "Marijuana: Millions of Turned-on Users," Life, July 7, 1967, pp. 16-23; cited by Armand L. Mauss, "Anticipatory Socialization Toward College as a Factor in Adolescent Marijuana Use," Social Problems, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter 1969), pp. 357-364.
68 - Kaplan, Marijuana, pp. 221-222.
69 - Mauss, "Anticipatory Socialization," p. 363.
70 - Dana L '. Farnsworth, "Drugs - Do They Produce Open or Closed Minds?" Medical Insight, Vol. 2, No. 7 (July 1970), p. 43.
71 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, p. 199.
72 - Richard D. Lyons, "That Was The Week That Was," The New York Times, February 1, 1970, p. 6; "Fathers and Sons," Newsweek, February 9, 1970, pp. 24, 29.
73 - "Pot: Safer than Alcohol?" p. 52.
74 - "Growing Number Turning On," p. 26.
75 - "Marijuana: The Law vs. 12 Million People," p. 28.
76 - Nancy Mayer, "How the Middle Class Turns On," New York Magazine, October 20, 1969, p. 42. Reprinted with permission.
77 - Allen Geller and Maxwell Boas, The Drug Beat (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), pp. xi, 64. Used with permission of McGraw-Hill Book Company.
78 - Ibid., p. xiii.
79 - David Solomon, "Editor's Foreword: The Marihuana Myths," in The Marihuana Papers, p. xxi.
80 - Geller and Boas, The Drug Beat, p. 31.
81 - Jerry Mandel, "Who Says Marijuana Use Leads to Heroin Addiction?" Journal of Secondary Education, Vol. 43 (May 1968).
82 - For examples of such arguments, see Harry J. Anslinger and W.G. Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1953); Editorial, "Marihuana Problems," J.A.M.A. Vol. CXXVII, No. 17 (1945), pp. 1, 129; F.R. Gomila, "Present Status of the Marihuana Vice in the United States," in Marihuana, America's New Drug Problem (New York: Lippincott, 1938); Pablo 0. Wolff, Marijuana in Latin America: The Threat it Constitutes (Washington: The Linacre Press, 1949); C.G. Gardikas, "Hashish and Crime," Enkephalos, Vols. 2-3 (1950); J. Bouquet, "Marihuana Intoxication," J.A.M.A., CXXIV (April 1, 1944).
83 - Henry Giordano, The Dangers of Marijuana, Facts You Should Know (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968); Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Living Death: The Truth About Drug Addiction (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1965); Henry L. Giordano, "Mari-
huana: A Calling Card to Narcotic Addiction," FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. I I (November 1968); M.L. Harney and J.C. Cross, The Narcotic Officer's Handbook (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 196 1); Committee on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Council on Mental Health, Drug Dependence: The Crutch That Cripples (Chicago: American Medical Association, 1967).
84 - The basic text on pharmacology, Goodman and Gilman, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics (Macmillan, 1966) states quite explicitly that marihuana habituation does not lead to the use of heroin," in Crime in a Free Society: Selections From the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, ed. by Robert W. Winslow (Belmont, Calif.: Dickenson, 1968), p. 241. See also Edwin M. Schur, Narcotic Addiction in Britain and America: The Impact of Public Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), p. 3; Henry Brill, "Why Not Pot Now? Some Questions and Answers," Psychiatric Opinion, Vol. 5, No. 5 (October 1968), p. 18.
85 - Narcotics, Marihuana and Dangerous Drugs Task Force, Report of Special Presidential Task Force Relating to Narcotics, Marihuana and Dangerous Drugs (June 6, 1969), p. 18. (Mimeographed.)
86 - N.B. Eddy, Halbach, Isbell, and Seevers, "Drug Dependence: Its Significance and Characteristics," Bulletin of World Health Organization, Vol. 32 (1966), p. 729, cited in Crime in a Free Society, ed. by Winslow, p. 24 1.
87 - Lois B. DeFleur, John C. Ball, and Richard W. Snarr, "The Long-Term Social Correlates of Opiate Addiction," Social Problems, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Fall 1969), p. 233.
88 - John C. Ball, Carl D. Chambers, and Marion J. Ball, "The Association of Marihuana Smoking with Opiate Addiction in the United States," Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science, Vol. 59, No. 2 (1968), pp. 181-182. Used with permission.
89 - Ibid., p. 181.
90 - Ibid., p. 182.
91 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 193.
92 - For important works in this area, which have not been previously cited, see Isadore Chein et al., The Road to H (New York: Basic Books, 1964); Bingham Dai, Opium Addiction in Chicago (Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1937); Alfred R. Lindesmith, Opiate Addiction (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1947); Seymour Fiddle, Portraits From a Shooting Gallery (New York: Harper and Row, 1967); Alfred R. Lindesmith, The Addict and the Law (New York: Random House, 1965), Ch. 4; Herbert Blumer et al., The World of Youthful Drug Use (Berkeley: University of California, School of Criminology, 1967); Joel Fort, "Heroin Addiction Among Young Men," Psychiatry, Vol. 17 (1954), pp. 251-259; Edward Preble and John J. Casey, "Taking Care of Business - The Heroin User's Life on the Street," International Journal of the Addictions, Vol. 4 (March 1969); John C. Ball, William M. Bates, and John A. O'Donnell, "Characteristics of Hospitalized Narcotic Addicts," in Indicators (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, March, 1966), pp. 17-26; David Ausubel, Drug Addiction: Physiological, Psychological, and Sociological Aspects (New York: Random House., 1958); Bernard Barber, Drugs and Society (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1967); Edward Preble, "Social and Cultural Factors Related to Narcotic Use Among Puerto Ricans in New York City," International Journal of the Addictions, Vol. I (January 1966), pp. 30-41; Harvey W. Feldman, "Ideological Supports to Becoming a Heroin Addict," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 1968), pp. 131-139; Isadore Chein and Eva Rosenfeld, "Juvenile Narcotics Use," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 22 (I 957), pp. 52-69; Harold Finestone, "Narcotics and Criminality," Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 22 (1957); John C. Ball, "The Onset of Heroin Addiction in a Juvenile Population: Implications for Theories of Deviancy" (Lexington, Ky.: Addiction Research Center, N.I.M.H., July 29, 1966); Michael J. Pescor, "A Statistical Analysis of the Clinical Records of Hospitalized Drug Addicts," Public Health Reports, Supplement No. 143 (1938).
93 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 2 59.
94 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 58.
95 - Drugs Task Force, Report, p. 17.
96 - Ibid., pp. 18-19.
97 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," p. 5. In this regard, Louria stated: "By 1968, even six to eight injections a day did not always create physical dependence." However, such frequent use over a significant period of time would certainly imply a strong psychological dependence. Louria, "Drug Abuse: A Current Assessment," p. 75.
98 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," p. 9.
99 - Ibid.
100 - Daniel Glaser, James A. Inciardi, and Dean V. Babst, "Later Heroin Use by Marijuana-Using, Heroin-Using, and Non-Drug-Using Adolescent Offenders in New York City," International Journal of the Addictions, Vol. 4 (June 1969), cited by Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 19 1.
101 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, p. 188.
102 -Erich Goode, "Multiple Drug Use Among Marijuana Smokers," Social Problems Vol. 17 (Summer 1969), p. 58. Excerpts reprinted by permission of The Society for the Study of Social Problems.
103 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, pp. 184-185.
104 - Ibid., p. 185.
105 - J.F.E. Schick, D.E. Smith, and F.H. Meyers, "Marijuana Practices in the Haight-Ashbury Subculture," Journal of Psychedelic Drugs, Vol. 11, Issue I (Fall 1968), pp. 19-24.
106 - Richard H. Blum, Students and Drugs (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1969), pp. 102-103; see also R.H. Blum, Nature and Extent of the Problem (NASPA Drug Education Background Papers, 1966), p. 5.
107 - Blum, Students and Drugs, pp. 102-103, cited by Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 204.
108 - Goode, "Multiple Drug Use," p. 52.
109 - Ibid., pp. 52-53.
110 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 184.
111 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," pp. 7-8.
112 - Ibid., p. 6.
113 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, pp. 68-71; Goode, "Multiple Drug Use," pp. 57-58.
114 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 57.
115 - Drugs Task Force, Report, p. 19.
116 - J.F.E. Schick, D.E. Smith, and F.H. Meyers, "Marijuana Practices in the Haight-Ashbury Subculture,"; F. Davis and L. Munoz, "Heads and Freaks: Patterns and Meanings of Drug Use Among Hippies," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 1968).
117 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 57.
118 - Ibid., p. 42.
119 - Jordan Scher, "Patterns and Profiles of Addiction and Drug Abuse," The International Journal of the Addictions, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Fall 1967), pp. 171-190, cited by Goode, "Multiple Drug Use," p. 58.
120 - Goode, "Multiple Drug Use," p. 58.
121 - ibid.
122 - Sidney Cohen, The Drug Dilemma (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. S3.
123 - Ibid., pp. 53, 59.
124 - Richard R. Lingeman, Drugs From A to Z: A Dictionary (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 133.
125 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 58.
126 - Ibid., pp. 58-S9.
127 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, p. 43.
128 - See James T. Carey and Jerry Mandel, "A San Francisco Bay Area 'Speed' Scene," Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 9, No. 2 (June 1968), pp. 164-174; Gail Sheehy, "The Amphetamine Explosion," New York Magazine, July 21, 1969, pp. 26-42.
129 - Davis and Munoz, "Heads and Freaks," p. 160.
130 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 57.
131 - Ibid., p. 58.
132 - Cohen, The Drug Dilemma, pp. 86-87.
133 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, p. 43.
134 - Fiddle, "Risk Discounting," p. 28.
135 - ibid.
136 - Goode, Marijuana Smokers, p. 197.
137 - Fiddle, "Risk Discounting," pp. 24, 26.
138 - See Fiddle, "Risk Discounting."
139 - Ibid., pp. S, 15, 16.
140 - Ibid., p. 26.
141 - Ibid., p. 5.
142 - Claude Brown, Manchild in the Promised Land (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 264. See also Roslyn Lacks, "You're Only a Man if You Mainline," Village Voice, December 18, 1969, pp. 1, 31; Finestone, "Cats, Kicks, and Color," pp. 3-13.
143 - Proceedings of the White House Conference on Narcotic and Drug Abuse (State'Department Auditorium, Washington, D.C., September 27-28, 1962), p. 286.
144 - J.F. Silver et al., "Marihuana Smoking in Panama," The Military Surgeon (November 1933); Mayor LaGuardia's Committee on Marihuana, The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York (Lancaster, Pa.: Jaques Cattell Press, 1944).
145 - Geller and Boas, The Drug Beat, p. 121.
146 - Winslow, Crime in a Free Society, p. 241.
147 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 133.
148 - Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, pp. 93-94.
149 - Linda Charlton, "27 States Relax Marijuana Laws," The New York Times, May 11, 1970, pp. 1, 70.
150 - "New Awareness Points Toward Softer Marijuana Laws," Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, Vol. XXVII, No. 51 (December 19, 1969), p. 2651.
151 - Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, pp. 95-96.
152 - Geller and Boas, The Drug Beat, p. 125.
153 - Ibid., p. 32.
154 - Stanford Daily, February 6, 1969, p. 2, cited by Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 33.
155 - "The Legalization of Marihuana: A Realistic Approach, Part I,- Vanderbilt Law Review, Vol. 2 1, No. 4 (May 1968), p. 517; "Substantive Due Process and Felony Treatment of Pot Smokers: The Current Conflict," Georgia Law Review, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Winter 1968), p. 247; "Marihuana Laws: A Need for Reform," Arkansas Law Review, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Summer 1968), p. 359; "Criminal Law - Marijuana - Conviction for Possession for Personal Use Held Not Violative of Substantive Due Process," New York Law Forum, Vol. 14, No. I (Spring 1968), p. 182; Weiss and Wizner, "Pot, Prayer, Politics, and Privacy: The Right to Cut Your Own Throat in Your Own Way," Iowa Law Review, Vol. 54 (1969), p. 709; cited by Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 33. See also Michael A. Town, "The California Marijuana Possession Statute: An Infringement on the Right of Privacy or Other Peripheral Constitutional Rights?" The Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 19 (March 1968), pp. 758-782.
156 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," p. 7.
157 - "New Awareness," Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, p. 265 1.
158 - Ibid., p. 2654.
159 - "A tiny fraction of marijuana crimes, probably less than one-hundredth of 1 percent, are detected with the violator arrested." Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 27 1.
160 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 1.
161 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 3.
162 - Robin M. Williams, American Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1965), pp. 374, 377. Excerpts reprinted by permission.
163 - James V. Bennett, "Criminality and Social Change," in Critical Issues in the Study of Crime, ed. by Simon Dinitz and Walter Reckless (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1968), p. 17.
164 - Peter B. Goldberg and James V. DeLong, "Federal Expenditures on Drug Abuse Control," in Dealing With Drug Abuse, pp. 308-309.
165 - Ibid., p. 309.
166 - Kaplan, Marijuana, pp. 7-8.
167 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 7.
168 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 222.
169 - Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 81.
170 -See Carey, The College Drug Scene, pp. 68-93; Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, pp. 33-34, 251-257, 261-262; Kaplan, Marijuana, pp. 226-227, 317-319, 327, 329-330; National Commission, Marihuana, p. 57; Jerry Mandel, "Myths and Realities of Marijuana Pushing," in Marijuana Myths and Realities, ed. by J.L. Simmons (North Hollywood: Brandon House, 1967), pp. 78-84; Erich Goode, "The Marijuana Market," Columbia Forum Vol. XII, No. 4 (Winter 1969), pp. 4-8; Marshall B. Clinard, Sociology of Deviant Behavior (Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1968). v. 325.
171 - Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 8 1.
172 - Kenneth Keniston, "A Second Look at the Uncommitted," p. 10. (Mimeographed.)
173 - Kenneth Keniston, "Heads and Seekers: Drugs on Campus, Countercultures and American Society," The American Scholar, Vol. 38, No. I (Winter 1968-69), cited by Gerald M. Schaflander, Passion, Pot and Politics (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 197 1), p. 49.
174 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 120.
175 - Ibid., pp. 117-118.
176 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 15.
177 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. II 8.
178 - Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 85.
179 - Ibid, p. 86.
180 - Ibid., p. 85.
181 - Goode, "Multiple Drug Use," pp. 53-54.
182 - Ibid., p. 54.
183 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 26.
184 - Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. by George Simpson (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1960), pp. 96-110.
185 - Williams, American Society, p. 379.
186 - Ibid., p. 390.
187 - Robin Nelson, "Dragon Slayers on an Ominous Crusade," Marketing Communications (September 1970), p. 20, cited by Patricia M. Wald and Annette Abrams, "Drug Education," in Dealing With Drug Abuse, p. 150.
188 - Norman E. Zinberg, "Why Now?: Drug Use as a Response to Social and Technological Change" (lecture, Aspen, Colorado, August 29, 1970), cited by Wald and Abrams, "Drug Education," p. 150.
189 - See Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1957), Ch.11: "The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy."
190 - Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, p. 78.
191 - Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action," in Readings in Social Psychology, ed. by Guy E. Swanson et al. (New York: Holt, 1952), p. 77. Originally published by Harper and Row, 1948. Reprinted with permission.
192 - Ibid., p. 85; see also Herbert H. Hyman and Paul B. Sheatsley, "Some Reasons Why Information Campaigns Fail," in Readings in Social Psychology, pp. 89-91.
193 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 47.
194 - Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 90.
195 - Nowlis, Drugs on the College Campus, p. 99.
196 - Jerome H. Jaffe, "Drug Addiction and Drug Abuse," in The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics, p. 296, cited by Nowlis, Drugs on the College Campus, p. 100.
197 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 64.
198 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 160.
199 - Anslinger and Tompkins, The Traffic in Narcotics, pp. 21-22, cited by Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 90.
200 - San Francisco Examiner, September 14, 1969, p. 1, cited by Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 162.
201 - According to Goode: "The legal process is successful to the extent that it either (1) compels the individual to accept society's version of himself as in fact criminal, i.e. criminal in more than a technical sense, a person deserving of society's scorn and punishment, or (2) discredits the individual in important areas of his life, impugning his trustworthiness, moral rectitude, and integrity for many members of society;" Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 28 1.
202 - Williams, American Society, p. 38 1.
203 - ibid.
204 - "Each norm can be thought of as having a tolerance limit, that is, the ratio between violations of the norm and a society's willingness to tolerate it or suppress it." Clinard, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, p. 22. See also Courtland C. Van Vechten, "The Tolerance Quotient as a Device for Defining Certain Social Concepts," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46 (1940),pp.35-44.
205 - Austin T. Turk, Criminality and Legal Order (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), p. 42. @ 1969 by Rand McNally and Company, Chicago. Reprinted by permission of Rand McNally College Publishing Company.
2 06 - Ibid., p. 51.
207 - Ibid, p. 42.
208 - Ibid., p. 51.
209 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 286.
210 - Turk, Criminality and Legal Order, p. 9 1.
211 - Ibid., p. 92.
212 - ibid
213 - Select Committee on Crime, Marihuana, p. 63.
214 - Geller and Boas, The Drug Beat, p. 123.
215 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 132.
216 - Charlayne Hunter, "Why Children Become Drug Addicts," The New York Times, March 15, 1970, p. 18. @ 1970 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
217 - "Kids and Heroin: The Adolescent Epidemic," Time, March 16, 1970, p. 25.
218 - Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Vol. 5, No. 43 (October 27, 1969),p.1466.
219 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 159.
220 - Ibid, p. 288.
221 - "Nixon Drug Law: A Crucial Fault," Life, September 5, 1969, p. 32.
222 - ibid.
223 - Geoffrey C. Stokes, "Nixon's Drug Bill," The Nation, September 22, 1969, p.271.
224 - "Penalties and Programs," Time, July 25, 1969, p. 64.
225 - "Nixon Drug Law: A Crucial Fault," p. 32.
226 - Stokes, "Nixon's Drug Bill," p. 271.
227 - ibid.
228 - ibid
229 - For a discussion of "how to" impress the probation officer and the judge, see Marvin Cahn, "The User and the Law" in Marijuana: Myths and Realities, ed. by J.L. Simmons (No. Hollywood: Brandon House, 1967).
230 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 42.
231 - Becker, "Marihuana: A Sociological Overview," p. 8 1.
232 - National Commission, Marihuana, p. 42.
233 - ibid.
234 - Arnold M. Rose, "Law and the Causation of Social Problems," Social Problems, Vol. 16, No. I (Summer 1968), p. 39.
235 - Mayer, "How the Middle Class Turns On," p. 42.
236 - Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 259.
237 - Goode, "The Marijuana Market," p. 6.
238 - Eugene Schoenfeld, "Hip-pocrates," East Village Other, August 9, 1968, p. 6; Seymour L. Halleck, "Marijuana and LSD on the Campus" (Madison: Health Services, University of Wisconsin, 1968), cited by Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 292; Norman E. Zinberg and Andrew T. Weil, "A Comparison of Marijuana Users and Non-users," Nature, Vol. 226 (April I 1, 1970), p. 123; see also, references in Kaplan, Marijuana, pp. 293-295.
239 - San Francisco Examiner, September 14, 1969, p. 1.
240 - "Operation Showboat," p. 365.
241 - Suchman, Evaluative Research, v. 51.
242 - Tom Buckley, "The Fight Against Drugs is in a Mess," The New York Times, March 22, 1970, p. 10. @ 1970 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.
243 - Andrew T. Weil, "Altered States of Consciousness," in Dealing with Drug Abuse, p. 343.
244 - Myra Mac Pherson, "Parents Need Facts on Pot," The Washington Post, July 10, 1969, p. K3, cited by Goode, The Marijuana Smokers, p. 178.
245 - "Marijuana Research Project," Long Island Press, April 21, 1970, p. 1.
246 - Carey, The College Drug Scene, p. 173. The respondent was referring to the following article: D. Wakefield, M. Harrington, and A. Huxley, "The Pros and Cons, History and Future Possibilities of Vision Inducing Psychochemicals," Playboy Magazine, Vol. I 1, No. 10 (November 1963), p. 10.
247 - Kaplan, Marijuana, p. 48.
248 - Erich Goode,Marijuana (New York: Atherton Press, 1970), p. 123.
249 - Benjamin Sheppard, "Alan-ning Increase in Number of 'Speed' Abusers," U.S. News & World Report, December 29, 1969, p. 25; "The 1968 edition of 'The Physicians' Desk Reference' lists a total of 51 amphetamine preparations, either singularly or in combination with sedatives or tranquilizers or even vitamins, produced by 29 companies. In some cases the amphetamine is the company's only product." See George R. Edison, "No Other Drug Has This Wide a Group of Hazards," U.S. News & World Report, December 29, 1969, p. 24.
250 - Carl D. Chambers, Leon Brill, and James A. Inciardi, "Toward Understanding and Managing Nonnarcotic Drug Abusers," Federal Probation (March 1972), p. 50.
251 - "Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs: News Briefing by John E. Ingersoll, Director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs," Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Vol. 5, No. 43 (October 27, 1969), p. 1478.
252 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," p. 10.
253 - Donald B. Louria, Nightmare Drugs (New York: Pocket Books, 1966), pp. 76-77.
254 - Chambers, Brill and Inciardi, "Nonnarcotic Drug Abusers," p. 50.
255 - Lingeman, Drugs From A to Z, p. 135.
256 - Fiddle, "Risk Discounting," p. 17.
257 - Wald and Hutt, "The Drug Abuse Survey Project," p. 28.
258 - Fiddle, "Risk Discounting," p. 17.
259 - ibid.
260 - Ibid, p. 26.
261 - For a summarization of Edwin H. Sutherland's theory of differential association, see Edwin H. Sutherland and Donald R. Cressey, Principles of Criminology, 6th ed. (Chicago: J.B. Lippincott, 1960), p. 78.
262 - Geller and Boas, The Drug Beat, p. 92.
263 - ibid.