Cannabis Use in an English Community: Acceptance, Anxieties, and the Liminality of Drug Prohibition

摘要

Cannabis occupies an ambiguous social, cultural, economic, and legal position, meaning that the way communities construct, interact with, and interpret drug markets is a complicated and uncertain process. This article seeks to explain these ambiguities by investigating the place of cannabis use in a UK borough, drawing on qualitative empirical data collated from a sample (N = 68) of practitioners, local residents, cannabis users, and their families. In doing so, the article employs the concept of liminality (whereby individuals and spaces occupy a position at both ends of a threshold) to explore how community behaviors and norms relate to issues of space, harm, and drug policy. The article con-textualizes the position of cannabis use within the fieldwork site, exploring a series of competing contradictions that divided participants between the rhetoric and reality of drug prohibition. Drug prohibition suggests cannabis use to be dangerous, which prompted concern.