Yet another limitation of the criminal justice perspective is its focus on the national trends, federal mass media, or the general public. It is important to remember that the early regulatory efforts happen at the local level. When scholars use the term “public” , they often refer to “national” in its scope, impact, or character . According to James Hunter, public debate should mean not national but local debate “among people who live and work in relative proximity to each other and who care about their common neighborhoods and communities, towns, cities, and regions; and within institutions that are prominent and integrated into the communities where these people live” . There is a vast territory of social life between national culture and individual meanings, which is often overlooked in the canonical socio-legal literature on drugs. The focus on local processes allow us to see that criminalization and legalization were happening at the same time; that the debate on the decriminalization of cannabis took place before the full-fledged war on drugs ; that African Americans supported cannabis legalization at the lower rates but eventually had higher rates of incarceration for cannabis arrests ; that the decriminalization efforts of the Kennedy, Johnson, and Ford administration were not temporary and incidental but had long lasting effects and eventually resulted in cannabis legalization; that many legislative proposals failed and did not become “events” but affected the future legislations; that 2/3 of California cities supported cannabis legalization, but only 1/3 of them allowed legal cannabis businesses . In this section, I focus on the history of cannabis legalization in California. In particular, I describe the role of social movements in legalizing medical and recreational cannabis, their failures and victories, tactical repertoires,vertical grow shelf political threats, and discursive opportunities.

As I discussed above, cannabis prohibition and cannabis legalization are not separate processes; these are two dialectically united phenomena that interact, contradict, negate, and reaffirm each other. Socio-legal scholars, who are interested in cannabis as a criminal justice issue, often overlook the fact that control does not exist without resistance and that criminalization and legalization are two sides of the same coin. It is impossible to understand lawmaking processes without considering the work of mobilized groups of citizens challenging the unfair laws and shifting agendas of resourceful players. As I show below, defining the “drug problem” is not a prerogative of mighty actors or institutions. Some less powerful actors can create and promote alternative narratives about drugs and drug users and ultimately succeed in changing the governing norms and public opinion. The ongoing cannabis legalization in California offers a clear illustration of how social movements can become a local source of power and foster ideational change. California has been a pioneer in both criminalizing and decriminalizing cannabis. It was the first state to prohibit recreational use of cannabis in 1913 and the first to allow its medical use in 1996. Pro-cannabis social movements emerged in response to the Controlled Substance Act that classified cannabis as a Schedule I drug . According to Andreas Glaeser , change becomes possible when the state fails to positively validate people’s understandings of the social world. Understandings contribute significantly to the stabilization of political institutions, but for this to happen, they need to be continuously validated. There are three modes of understanding based on: interpretations, emotions, and senses. In the case of cannabis, the de-fetishization of the prohibitionist policies started in the 1960s, when new scientific evidence, dissatisfaction with authorities, and people’s own experience challenged the domain of unquestioned background assumptions about cannabis and its users.

The first objection to the prohibitionist assumptions came from the scientific community, which provided a new interpretation of cannabis. Although Nixon disowned the Shafer Commission’s report , which called for the decriminalization of cannabis possession, its results were spreading in society, along with the La Guardia Report of 1944. From the 1970s, scientific evidence proving the medical benefits of cannabis and demystifying its deleterious effects was multiplying, but the government continued to ignore it. The scientific community was calling for thorough research of the chemical properties, pharmacological qualities, and therapeutic applications of cannabis . More and more studies had shown the possible benefits of cannabis use. However, the scientific evidence was constantly downplayed by the federal authorities and the National Institute of Drug Abuse, who continued to fixate on presumed adverse effects of cannabis . For instance, the Reagan administration ignored the National Academy of Science’s report published in 1982,40 which questioned the effectiveness of full prohibition and recommended removal of criminal sanctions. Under the democratic Clinton presidency, a study co-authored by Harvard Medical School and Yale University showed the efficacy of cannabis for a wide range of ailments.Yet, once again, scientific findings did not change the anti-cannabis course of the political establishment; on the contrary, the drug-war budget doubled, and the record number of Americans were arrested on cannabis charges in those years . The second challenge to the prohibitionist status quo was a growing dissatisfaction with the US drug policy and the defiance of state authority. Cannabis use became a form of protest, a central symbol of the counterculture, and a ritual that demonstrated the willingness of young Americans to run risks with their peers.The government responded with harsher enforcement of drug laws: cannabis-related arrests rose from 18,000 in 1965 to 220,000 in 1970. That inevitably amplified protest movements. According to Patrick Anderson, the legalization movement began on August 16, 1964, when a young man walked into a police station in San Francisco, lit a cannabis joint and asked to be arrested.

Later that year, his lawyer launched the Legalize Marijuana organization , which sponsored the first pro-cannabis demonstration in America. In sum, the legalization movement was developing in response to political threats, confronting the mythology of “reefer madness” and persuading Americans that the time had come to change political priorities and put an end to the incarceration of young people for using a mild intoxicant . The third challenge to the prohibitionist discourse arose at the level of individual senses. An increasing number of people who used cannabis realized that it was no more dangerous than alcohol. The fact that cannabis was classified as the most dangerous drug, causing more damage than cocaine, opium, or methadone, sounded preposterous to those who had experienced cannabis effects. Thus, less and less people believed in the myths propagated during the anti-cannabis campaign. In 1975, psychiatrist and social activist Tod Hiro Mikuriya wrote: “Marijuana use in America is reminiscent of the era of Prohibition, in that almost 30 million people have smoked pot and the police of the 180 million other Americans are trying to prevent them from doing so. Despite vigorous efforts of society to regulate by deterrent legal sanctions, they have obviously failed. The use continues to escalate. In fact, marijuana has become a permanent part of American society. Since those who try and continue to use pot find it enjoyable, and many more people are trying it all the time, marijuana use is clearly here to stay. The time has passed when prohibition against personal use and possession should have been repealed”.All three factors—scientific evidence, dissatisfaction with authorities, and personal experience—made Americans more susceptible to the proclaimed dangers of cannabis. And this, in turn, raised political dissidence. In the 1970s, many social activists felt that the decriminalization and legalization of cannabis were just “around the corner.” Not only scientists and activists but also some state actors favored the depenalization of cannabis. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws became the main voice of the pro-cannabis movement. Founded in 1970 by Georgetown law graduate Keith Stroup, the organization brought together a group of young lawyers, scientists, civic leaders, and even politicians to fight for cannabis reform .43 From the very beginning, NORML was a public-interest lobby that represented the interests of cannabis users, focusing on individual rights and the social harm caused by incarceration for minor drug offenses. Although its ultimate goal was the complete legalization of cannabis, in the 1970s, NORML focused mainly on the depenalization of cannabis and its removal from the list of Schedule I controlled substances. A catalyst of the national pro-cannabis movement, NORML scored its first victory in 1973 when Oregon has ended criminal penalties for smoking cannabis. Over the decade, several more states—including California—have followed suit. In 1976, California approved the Moscone Act,44 which made possession of small amounts of cannabis a civil instead of a criminal offense. That was the beginning of cannabis decriminalization in California: felony arrests for cannabis decreased fourfold—from 99,587 in 1974 to 19,284 in 1976 .

In subsequent years, both the number of organizations working on pro-cannabis issues and the pressure imposed on the federal government increased. In 1977, President Carter asked Congress to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of cannabis grow indoor at the federal level . But his plan never came to life due to the scandal discrediting his drug advisor Peter Bourne and the emergence of the grassroots parents’ organizations, which were building strong opposition to cannabis decriminalization. In 1986, the Drug Enforcement Administration finally agreed to review a petition filed by NORML and the American Public Health Association that asked to recognize the medical value of cannabis and remove it from Schedule I classification . After careful investigation, the DEA’s chief administrative law judge Francis L. Young stated that cannabis “has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people […] and it would be unreasonable […] for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance.”The judge permitted the transfer of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule II so that cannabis could be legally available for patients. However, the DEA director ignored such recommendations . Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the federal government and the media launched the largest anti-drug and anti-cannabis campaign. In this cultural context, the pro-cannabis movements did not have any political or discursive opportunities to bring about legal change. To a great degree, the success of social movements depends on their ability to “offer frames that tap into a hegemonic discourse” . Cannabis activists had nothing to offer; their claims did not resonate with ideas widely accepted in the broader society. The situation has changed with the AIDS epidemic, which provided discursive opportunities for politically effective framing.Robert Randall, a young college professor from Washington, D.C., was the Rosa Parks of the medical cannabis movement . In 1976, he sued the federal government for the right to use cannabis to treat his glaucoma. His doctor testified that the use of cannabis significantly decreased eye pressure, one of the primary symptoms of glaucoma, which kept Randall from going blind . In 1978, D.C. Superior Court established an important legal precedent: Randall won his case and became the first legal cannabis smoker since cannabis prohibition in 1937. However, Randall’s victory did not solve the problem of obtaining cannabis legally. He was not allowed to grow cannabis for himself and filed a petition demanding that the government provides him enough cannabis from the federal experimental farm at the University of Mississippi . His victory forced the Food and Drug Administration to establish the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program, which provided government-grown cannabis for seriously ill patients. However, the program was limited to a small number of patients since many people who had received medical approval were rejected by the program . By 1991, only 15 patients were enrolled in the program. Randall’s legal precedent was a landmark victory, and social movements continued to exploit the medical discourse in the following years. Pro-cannabis activists crafted the image of cannabis as a compassionate palliative for seriously ill people and the image of cannabis users as patients, not criminals . However, such a medical frame was not very successful until the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, which made medical cannabis an urgent issue and provided first discursive and later political opportunities for the movement. Many AIDS patients experienced wasting syndrome, and cannabis helped them stimulate appetite, retain weight, and prolong lives. As Cyrus Dioun argues, “the death and devastation of the AIDS epidemic made it necessary to discuss previously unmentionable topics” . From 1980 to 1995, over 500,000 AIDS cases and over 300,000 AIDS deaths have been reported in the US. San Francisco was at the forefront of both the AIDS crisis and the medical cannabis movement.