Negotiating Ambiguous Substance Use: UK newspaper representations of self-prescribing medicinal cannabis use in the 1990s

• Author: Craig Morris
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220426221090177
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Drug Issues

2023, Vol. 53(1) 129–144

© The Author(s) 2022

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220426221090177

journals.sagepub.com/home/jod

Negotiating Ambiguous

Substance Use: UK newspaper

representations of

self-prescribing medicinal

cannabis use in the 1990s

Craig Morris

1



Abstract

This paper examined representations of medicinal cannabis users in UK newspapers, 1990–1998.

It is important to understand the signif‌icance of these newspaper articles during this early stage of

the growing cultural normalisation of medicinal cannabis use, in the UK, which is not documented

in the existing literature. This is a very different period in relation to access to information for

members of the public because it was before the widespread use of the internet. The signif‌icance

of these dates is also that I started interviewing medicinal cannabis user s in 1998, which led to

Coomber et al. (2003). Very signif‌icantly, almost half of the participants in that article indicated

that newspapers were the source of the idea that cannabis was medicinally useful and that this

accounted for why they began to use it medicinally. What was in those newspaper articles that

encouraged this view? In the current article, I examined 60 newspaper articles about medicinal

cannabis use, using a thematic analysis which also draws on aspects of critical discourse analysis. I

report on the process of symbolic boundary work which negotiates the ambiguity of individuals

portrayed as social insiders but who used cannabis. The representations within the articles

emphasized the social insider characteristics of medicinal cannabis users, emphasized their

genuine illnesses/impairments, but interestingly also articulated misunderstandings by the jour-

nalists which contributed to a positive portrayal.

Keywords

Drugs, media, cannabis, newspapers, symbolic boundaries

Introduction

In recent years,the social, cultural, politicaland economic terrain aroundmedicinal cannabis use has

changed greatly in many parts of the world (though far less so in the United Kingdom). When I

1

Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Greenwich, London, SE, UK

Corresponding Author:

Craig Morris, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Greenwich, Maritime Campus, Park Row, London, SE, UK.

Email: mc75@gre.ac.uk

began researching this issue, in the late 1990s, we (Coomber et al., 2003) had to advertise for

research participants in printed newsletters and magazines. Interested individuals telephoned my

off‌ice, often seeking to ascertain that I was not a police off‌icer trying to trick them before they

considered takingpart in our research. Whilst theHouse of Lords Select Committee on Science and

Technology’s report (HoL, 1998) didnot attempt to estimate the overall numberof self-prescribing

medicinal cannabis users in the UK at that time, it drew on numerous sources that collectively

indicated prevalence to be a fraction of more recent estimates. A 2019 poll conducted in the UK by

YouGov estimated the number of medicinal users of ‘street cannabis’in the UK (a slightly

problematic term,as it also says that around 10% may well be growing it themselves)to be perhaps

as high as 1.4 millionpeople (Pressat, 2019) out of a populationof approximately 67 million people.

In the current paper, I examine representations of medicinal cannabis users in the UK national

press, between 1990 and 1998. It is important to understand the signif‌icance of newspaper articles

during this early stage of the growing cultural normalisation of medicinal cannabis use, in the UK,

which is not documented in the existing literature. Though it may not seem that long ago to some

of us, this is a very different period in relation to access to information for members of the public,

because it was just before the widespread use of the internet. The signif‌icance of these dates is also

that I started interviewing medicinal cannabis users in 1998, which led to Coomber et al. (2003).

Of the 32 participants that we reported on in that paper, 14 mentioned the media (primarily

newspapers) when accounting for how they came to think about cannabis as potentially being

medicinally useful and came to use it in such a way. It is reasonable to presume, therefore, that

newspaper articles were a big inf‌luence on many other people coming to use medicinal cannabis

too, during this time. The aim of this paper is to investigate what was in those articles that

inf‌luenced some of these users to understand cannabis, and use it, in medicinal ways? This is an

important gap in the academic literature, as I believe that these newspaper articles contributed

signif‌icantly to the growth of self-prescribing among medicinal cannabis users at that time and

contributed to the growing normalisation of medicinal cannabis use, in the UK.

Medicinal Cannabis Use: A Brief Overview

Whilsta fullerhistorical overviewof the history of medicinalcannabis use is beyond the scopeof this

article, I will provide the reader with a brief overview (though I also recommend Abel (1980) and

Booth (2003) for those interested in knowing more). Evidence suggeststhat cannabis has been used

for thousands of years, perhaps dating back to 4000 BC in China (Abel, 1980). Dioscorides’s

Materia Medica described its medicinal use in 60 AD, remaining inf‌luential in Europe until early

modernwork, such as that of Gerard (1597) and Culpeper(1653) (House of LordsSelect Committee,

1998,citedinBlackman, 2004). Cannabis tincture (an alcohol-based suspension of cannabis) was

popular in Western medicinal practice between 1840 and 1900, though its use was already in

signif‌icant decline by 1890 due to the availability of more powerful painkillers (such as opiates)

which could be more accurately standardised, but also applied locally by way of the hypodermic

needle (Grinspoon, 1994). By the middle of the 20th century, cannabis had becomeunderstood as a

‘drug’without the rapeutic valu e (Blackman, 2004), increasingly becoming more associated with

deviance and the ‘counter-culture’than as a medical substance. It was only in 1964 that cannabis’s

chemical structure was elucidated and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) was isolated (Mechoulam and

Lander, 1980). It is interesting to consider that had this breakthrough occurred 20–30 years earlier,

we could now be living in a very different landscape regarding cannabis and medicine.

During the 1960s and 1970s, cannabis was often understood through ‘an ideology of healing as

a force for change in society’(Blackman, 2004: 180) with this legacy giving rise to the self-

medication of cannabis. Booth (2003) discussed how by the 1970s and 1980s ordinary people,

often by chance (i.e. they had previously used it recreationally and after acquiring chronic illness

130 Journal of Drug Issues 53(1)