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Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the West and many other parts of the world. Surveys in Canada showed increasing use among youths in the 1990s and [...], Despite the cross-culturally persistent high prevalence of cannabis use in general adult populations, in-depth analyses of extended use careers are uncommon in the scientific literature. This paper reports on in-depth interviews conducted with 104 users living in Toronto, Canada. A pretested questionnaire developed for use in a larger, cross-national study guided data collection on use levels and frequency from the first year to most recent month of use. The data support a controlled drug use model, with aggregate intake eventually decreasing and becoming stable or more moderate over time. Four main career patterns are identified and compared on measures of dependence and levels of consumption in the year prior to the study. In comparison with those whose long-term use has varied, stable users report fewer cannabis-related problems, despite using more heavily and frequently. While dependency problems are highly subjective, transitions in use patterns more generally reflect personal contingencies of lifestyle. KEY WORDS: Cannabis, marijuana, career concept, dependence.

The article discusses a research study on the public opinion, evidence and enforcement of the decriminalization of marijuana in Canada. Data used in the analysis were through the Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) of 44 marijuana users from a Toronto sample. Conclusions indicated that marijuana users in Canadian social mainstreams function well in society, are not concealing their behavior, not apologetic and acting as if marijuana use is legal. It adds that the U.S. president Barack Obama administration might opt for a less war-like approach in the U.S.

This research focuses on the qualitatively descriptive accounts of drug-related violent incidents drawn from a treatment sample of 571 substance abuse clients in Ontario. Nearly half (n = 269) had experienced at least one violent incident in the past year, and 91% had used one or more substances prior to the most recent episode. The classification of the explicitly drug-related violent events (n = 176), based on Goldstein's tripartite model, is its first application in an adult drug treatment sample. Although respondents were not criminal offenders, and interpersonal violence related to psychopharmacological effects predominated, economic or systemic linkages related to drug scarcity and the drug market were implicated in one fifth of all occurrences. Alcohol and cocaine were the substances most implicated in all three aspects of the model. Since a drug treatment sample is a high-risk group for violence, interventions that raise awareness of potential for violence linked to not only intoxication but also scarcity conflicts and illicit drug market involvement are warranted. Since most violence occurs in the community, such initiatives may benefit those in treatment and serve as an important public health strategy.

The need to establish and maintain good rapport with interviewees is a methodological axiom supported by most social scientists. Some say we place unnecessary limits on data collection, however, when respondents' statements are simply accommodated. More innovative approaches are especially needed to account for varying roles and their narratives, as Goffman would have it, at different frontstage and backstage levels. Sociological focus on tolerable deviance—with emphasis on public deviance by those who promote wider tolerance through situated claims making—presents a research challenge of this nature. The interviews in this article with tattoo artists and drug reform advocates combine attention to rapport with more confrontational tactics, aiming to elicit from informants an array of interpretive standpoints. The authors term this technique “good cop, bad cop.”

Contrasting the official harm reduction aims of Canada's 10-year national drug strategy with the actual evolution of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the authors find little evidence of harm reduction, and much of sustained and punitive prohibition. The example of the criminal sanctions currently being applied to cannabis possession offences serves to illustrate the limits of what can be achieved in reducing the impact of criminalization when the fundamental ban on personal use and access is retained. Theoretically informed by constructionist analyses of the styles and strategies of social problems discourse, a moral basis of drug use entitlement is expounded from which rational reform might be more fruitfully argued. Despite its official mandate in Canada to develop more pragmatic drug policy alternatives, the harm reduction movement, posing public health solutions based on empirical analysis, is nonetheless needful of a rhetorical foundation by which to denounce prohibition as a morally objectionable intervention in the private lives of individuals.