“A Friend With Weed Is a Friend Indeed”

• Author: Christian Alexander Vaccaro,Vendula Belackova
• Date: 01 July 2013
• DOI: 10.1177/0022042613475589
• Published date: 01 July 2013
• Subject Matter: Articles

Journal of Drug Issues

43(3) 289 –313

© The Author(s) 2013

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042613475589

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Article

475589JODXXX10.1177/0022042613475589Journal of

Drug IssuesBelackova and Vaccaro

1Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA

2Department of Addictology, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, and General Faculty Hospital in

Prague, Czech Republic

3Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA

Corresponding Author:

Vendula Belackova, Department of Addictology, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague, and General

Faculty Hospital in Prague, Apolinarska 4, Prague 2 - 120 00, Czech Republic.

Email: belackova@adiktologie.cz

“A Friend With Weed Is a Friend

Indeed”: Understanding the

Relationship Between Friendship

Identity and Market Relations

Among Marijuana Users

Vendula Belackova1, 2 and Christian Alexander Vaccaro3

Abstract

The importance of friendship networks and drug sharing is a well-documented feature of

marijuana use. Recent studies show an increased role of acquiring marijuana through friends,

especially in settings with rather punitive drug policy. This article aims at gaining insight into the

definitions and roles that marijuana users attribute to friendship. Forty-four marijuana users

and retailers recruited in North Central Florida were subjected to semistructured interviews,

with extensive probes on respondents’ “friends.” Data were analyzed with the use of inductive

analysis, and were framed in identity theory. Respondents’ definitions of friendship contained

expectations on marijuana sharing and reciprocation, purchases for friends, and introduction to

dealers—who were also referred as “friends.” The study findings suggest that marijuana users’

definitions of friendship include expectations for behavior that sustain the distribution chain.

Role-based expectations on “friendly” behavior ser ved as a social control tool that protected

marijuana users from illicit market risks.

Keywords

illicit marijuana market, drug policy, identity theory, social supply, friendship

Introduction

This article explores the role-based behavioral expectations that are attributed to the identity of

a “friend” among marijuana users, given the importance of drug acquisition among friendship

networks previously documented by findings in both quantitative and qualitative research on

marijuana markets (Caulkins & Reuter, 2006; Goode, 1970; Langer, 1977).

290 Journal of Drug Issues 43(3)

As documented by qualitative research, relationships have long been embedded in marijuana

use as accustomed rituals of sharing. Research finds that most users consider marijuana a social

drug, and the act of using marijuana as a group activity (Becker, 1966; Goode, 1970; Ministry of

Health [MOH], 2007; Miovský et al., 2008; Shukla, 2005; Zimmerman & Wieder, 1977).

Furthermore, its pharmacological effects are influenced by the social context or “setting” where

users seek to define them as pleasurable through shared meanings that comprise “social interpre-

tation of physical experience,” predominantly in the course of a group activity (Becker, 1966).

Despite some updates on Becker’s research showing that group definition tends to play a

smaller role in normalizing individualized marijuana use of nowadays (Hallstone, 2002;

Hathaway, 1997), groups still provide a strong normalizing function in marijuana use. For

instance, research documents the importance of “marijuana using friends” as a predictor or

co-occurring variable to one’s own marijuana use (Duan, Chou, Andreeva, & Pentz, 2009;

D. Kandel, 1974; Wister & Avison, 1982). Other studies have focused on friendship networks to

settle debate on whether these are important because of social selection or social influence on

marijuana use (Bohnert, Bradshaw, & Latkin, 2009), the latter being linked to a salient concept

in drug policy research—“peer-pressure,” describing influence of friend on one’s decision to use

drugs. Another example of individual’s drug use and relationship with his social environment has

been the “pusher” concept, meaning a dealer who is actively seducing individuals into drug

use—a concept that has been repeatedly disapproved by scholars (Coomber, 2003; Fletcher,

2007; Langer, 1977). Despite ambiguities surrounding the extent and the influence friendship has

on marijuana use, friendship networks are clearly a ubiquitous feature of marijuana use.

Friendship among users of other illicit drugs has long been depicted in drug-related research

as a “dope friendship,” where drug users tend to take advantage of their nearby networks of other

users (Bourgois, 1998; Bullington, 1977). Other research demonstrates that illicit drug users tend

to have a greater number of “friends” than the general population, suggesting importance for this

role in user networks (D. Kandel & Davies, 2006). Sharing other illicit drugs has been shown as

a common practice that helps overcome prohibitive constrains to supply, generally with elevated

risks to public health (Koester, Glanz, & Baròn, 2005), such as in case of shared syringes in

prison settings (Vescio et al., 2007; Zábranský, Mravcik, Korcisova, & Rehak, 2006).

Social Networks on Marijuana Market and the Role of Drug Policy

In comparison with other illicit drug markets, marijuana market has been described as a “benign

affaire” (Hamid, 1991). While other drug markets are rather depicted as violent (Johnson, Dunlap,

& Tourigny, 2004), friendship and family bonds serve to establish a gang structure there (Bardhi

et al., 2006). To this it can be added that marijuana users are generally middle class, socially

embedded individuals (Osborne & Fogel, 2008), and for the most part, so are both the retail and

broker markets serving them, at least if kept separated from other drugs. As Goode (1970) pointed

out with respect to marijuana market in the initial stages of his research, the dealer and the seller

“inhabit the same universe.” Marijuana itself is a drug with lower social and health risks than other

illicit substances, and with lower addiction potential. Recently, a distinct pattern of illicit marijuana

purchase has been described predominantly by the means of one’s social network (Coomber, 2010;

Coomber & Turnbull, 2007; Harrison, Erickson, Korf, Brochu, & Benschop, 2007). This might

especially be the case of a “closed” market, nevertheless, it remains unexplored what the relative

share of the closed market is, and what types of users participate in it (Johnson, Golub, Dunlap,

Sifaneck, & McCabe, 2010; Natarjan & Hough, 2004).

This article explores role-behaviors within these “social networks” that make marijuana users

define their market relationships as “friendships” to help counter the risks of enforcement. On

quantitative grounds, this pattern has been well observed at different locations throughout the