Substance Use & Misuse

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Motivated to Use Marijuana Recreationally: If you want to know why, then ask! Michael Montagne a a Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Online Publication Date: 01 February 2008 To cite this Article: Montagne, Michael (2008) 'Motivated to Use Marijuana Recreationally: If you want to know why, then ask!', Substance Use & Misuse, 43:3, 577 - 579 To link to this article: DOI: 10.1080/10826080701884887 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10826080701884887

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Substance Use & Misuse, 43:577–579 Copyright © 2008 Informa Healthcare USA, Inc. ISSN: 1082-6084 (print); 1532-2491 (online) DOI: 10.1080/10826080701884887

Dialogue Comments for a Dialogue

Motivated to Use Marijuana Recreationally: If you want to know why, then ask! MICHAEL MONTAGNE Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, Boston, Massachusetts, USA This Dialoge article represents another important example of user-focused or user-centered drug research. We often misunderstand drug-taking behaviors when we engage in research using research questions and methods that investigators prefer, but ignore the user’s side of the story, and thus data that are collected may not be valid (Montagne, 2002). A classic example that was told to me involved early research on the effects of the psychedelic drug LSD. After experiencing the effects of LSD, the research participant reported an amazing array of fascinating, wondrous effects: colors and sounds merged; time stood still and sped up simultaneously; his visual field was filled with geometric patterns that undulated; he felt at one with nature, the universe, and a higher being; he felt himself floating out of his body, looking down on himself while expanding into space. The research psychiatrist reported the effects for this subject as: disorientation and depersonalization with overt hallucinations; rambling and incoherent thoughts; characteristics of anxiety, panic attacks, toxic psychoses, and other psychopathologies; loss of a sense of reality. So much for comprehending this user’s experience with LSD. There actually has been over a 50-year history of research on marijuana that has focused on what the users themselves have to say about the drug and their experiences with it (Becker, 1953; Erickson, 1989; Hallstone, 2002; Hendin, Hass, Singer, Ellner, and Ulman, 1987; Hirsch, Conforti, and Graney, 1990; Tart, 1971). Other researchers have employed the usercentered approach to study opiate users’ perceptions of pharmacotherapy (Fischer, Chin, Kuo, Kirst, and Vlahov, 2002), Methylene dioxy methamphetamine (MDMA or Ectasy) users and their experiences with that drug (Beck and Rosenbaum, 1994), and what teenagers want and need in the way of drug education and prevention programs (Brown and Horowitz, 1993). What have we learned from this type of research? What can we gain from this approach? The sociologist, Howard Becker, was one of the early researchers who believed that the users can best describe and explain their reasons for using marijuana and the effects they Address correspondence to Michael Montagne, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, 179 Longwood Ave., Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: [email protected]

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experienced. Although a few other researchers continued with that user-centered approach to studying marijuana use and effects, most research from the 1960s to 1980s, and even today, all but ignores what the user has to say or how they say it. Becker’s conclusions and hypotheses from his research have been supported, modified, and extended by other researchers (Hallstone, 2002; Hirsch, Conforti, and Graney, 1990). What began as a usercentered study of marijuana in the early 1950s has been expanded and improved by others who followed the same approach, even in the face of controversy, outrage, or disbelief. I remember when Hendin and associates published their study of daily marijuana smokers in 1987. A great majority of “addictions” researchers, policymakers, public health workers, and others dismissed the results or attacked them as impossible. Yet, the users and a small number of researchers who listened to them knew better. Two (mis)beliefs drive the research process away from listening to users. The first is that use of certain drugs equals abuse that equals addiction. A corollary is that first time use will lead to lifelong addiction. These erroneous notions have been assaulted with data, but they continue to persist. The most recent data on nonmedical drug use in the United States continue to show that while some users do become dependent upon a drug, most do not, and many use on a regular basis without escalating use or becoming dependent: 42.3% of 12th graders have experimented with marijuana (lifetime use), 18.3% have engaged in occasional use (past 30 days), and 5% have engaged in daily use (Johnson, O’Malley, Bachman, and Schulenberg, 2007). So much for the “try it and you will be hooked” theory as an all-inclusive certainty for every user. The adolescent users and even adults of course could have told you that. “Yeah, I smoked in high school or college, but then I got a job, got married, had children. I gave it up years ago.” The second (mis)belief is that users have nothing of value to say; that in essence what they report is subjective and scientific research deals in objectivity, truth, and “real” evidence, whatever the word “real” means. And of course, it is an illegal behavior. Researchers certainly must use objective methods and measures in collecting data, and they must interpret their data in as an objective manner as possible. Anecdotal information, seemingly all the rage these days in driving policy decisions, can be interesting and lead to more rigorous studies of the questions they generate. Such information, however, is never conclusive of anything and certainly not generalized fact. For that we need experimentation. But again, this is the key issue: From whom are data collected; how are the data interpreted; and are there ideologies or political stances that obscure the interpretation process. This study, presented in this Dialogue, builds on the previous body of user-centered research on marijuana use and provides new enlightenments. In this study, the primary focus is on motivations for marijuana use by Canadian adults and the meanings that such use has for them. The findings of this study support the “rational choice” view of drug use. Decisions to use, contexts of use, motivations for use are all made rationally with a clear understanding of consequences. Benefits are seen as outweighing risks. Marijuana use is viewed as a value-enhanced behavior with positive outcomes. Why do it if you don’t get something good out of it? This “rational choice” viewpoint is radically different from views of marijuana use as resulting from addiction and loss of control, hedonism and liberalism, self-destructive behavior, disdain for authority and moral values, or any of the other “theories” of why people use marijuana. And heaven forbid, these adults use the drug “recreationally,” a loaded term when presenting information on nonmedical use. The latter notion is itself questionable, as Edward Khantzian’s (1997) Self-Medication hypothesis would suggest. But that is another story.


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This realization (though not novel to this study’s findings) that for most nondependent adults marijuana use is a “‘normal’ part of their day-to-day experience, a way of life” should have a profound impact on prevention and education programs, drug policy, and treatment approaches for those users who develop problems. It probably will not have a great impact at this time, as has been the case with similar research findings from previous studies. But it does represent another “nail in the coffin” of that old bugaboo “pharmacological determinism.”

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