Abstract
This article examines to what extent and how cannabis users in different countries, with different cannabis legislation and policies practice normalization and self-regulation of cannabis use in everyday life. Data were collected in a survey among a convenience sample of 1,225 last-year cannabis users aged 18–40 from seven European countries, with cannabis policies ranging from relatively liberal to more punitive. Participants were recruited in or in the vicinity of Dutch coffeeshops. We assessed whether cannabis users experience and interpret formal control and informal social norms differently across countries with different cannabis policies. The findings suggest that many cannabis users set boundaries to control their use. Irrespective of national cannabis policy, using cannabis in private settings and setting risk avoidance rules were equally predominant in all countries. This illustrates that many cannabis users are concerned with responsible use, demonstrating the importance that they attach to discretion. Overall, self-regulation was highest in the most liberal country (the Netherlands). This indicates that liberalization does not automatically lead to chaotic or otherwise problematic use as critics of the policy have predicted, as the diminishing of formal control (law enforcement) is accompanied by increased importance of informal norms and stronger self-regulation. In understanding risk-management, societal tolerance of cannabis use seems more important than cross-national differences in cannabis policy. The setting of cannabis use and self-regulation rules were strongly associated with frequency of use. Daily users were less selective in choosing settings of use and less strict in self-regulation rules. Further differences in age, gender, and household status underline the relevance of a differentiated, more nuanced understanding of cannabis normalization.
Highlights
Toward the end of the 20th century, British sociologists and criminologists launched the normalization thesis, a groundbreaking theoretical framework to analyze and explain developments and patterns in contemporary drug use (Measham et al, 1994)
In cross-national comparison, French respondents were least often living with their parents, and most often were daily cannabis users; Greeks were most often living alone, and least often living with a partner or housemates; Germans were somewhat younger, most likely to live with their parents, be a student, and a non-daily cannabis user; and United Kingdom (UK) participants were most often employed
These results indicate that many cannabis users set boundaries to regulate their use and ensure that it takes place in a way that does not interfere with other aspects of their daily lives
Summary
Toward the end of the 20th century, British sociologists and criminologists launched the normalization thesis, a groundbreaking theoretical framework to analyze and explain developments and patterns in contemporary drug use (Measham et al, 1994). In Europe, in the past decade the number of people aged 15–64 who had used cannabis at least once in their life grew from 74 million to 91 million (or by 22.5%–27.4%), and last year prevalence among young adults (aged 15–34) from 12.5% to 14.4% (EMCDDA, 2009, 2019a) These ascending trends are in accordance with the normalization thesis, the figures demonstrate that the population that had never used cannabis outnumbers lifetime and recent users—an observation that early critics already highlighted to argue that the normalization thesis was empirically incorrect (Ramsay & Partridge, 1999). Normalization is not the same as statistical “normality” or “normalcy,” i.e. the normalization thesis does not presume that cannabis users constitute more than half of the population (Parker, 2005)
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