Cannabis and the State

Drugs, alcohol, and other recreational substances are central to everyday social life and form a significant, contested and repressed sector of the global economy. Importantly, it is a market that states seek to disband or regulate through domestic and international political institutions. 

Through their encounter with state institutions, substances become a central political issue at all levels of policymaking: from youth policy to the fight against organised crime, from local neighbourhood councils to international security forums, from small artisanal production to global agricultural supply chains. 

In this episode, we focus specifically on the political economy of grassroots cannabis production and its interaction with the state to understand how morality, values, and (il)legality shape the political economy of recreational substances.

Concepts discussed: state, legality, illegality, regulation, moral political economy, racial capitalism.

Recommended Reading:

• Andreas, P. (2011). Illicit globalization: Myths, misconceptions, and historical lessons. Political Science Quarterly, 126(3), 403–425 
• Baird A, Bishop ML & Kerrigan D (2021) “Breaking bad”? Gangs, masculinities, and murder in Trinidad. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 24(4), 632-657 
• Baird A, Bishop ML & Kerrigan D (2023) Differentiating the local impact of global drugs and weapons trafficking: How do gangs mediate ‘residual violence’ to sustain Trinidad’s homicide boom?. Political Geography, 106
• Bishop, M. L. (2016). Negotiating flexibility at UNGASS 2016: Solving the “world drug problem”? SPERI Global Political Economy Brief No. 5, Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), University of Sheffield
• Botoeva, G. (2014). Hashish as cash in a post-Soviet Kyrgyz village. International Journal of Drug Policy, 25(6), 1227-1234
• Botoeva, G. (2015). The monetization of social celebrations in rural Kyrgyzstan: on the uses of hashish money. Central Asian Survey, 34(4), 531–548
• Botoeva, G. (2021). Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality: The case of small-scale hashish harvesting in Kyrgyzstan. Theoretical Criminology
• Chouvy, P. A. (2016). The myth of the narco-state. Space and Polity, 20(1), 26–38
• DeVillaer M. R. (2024). Buzz kill: The Corporatization of Cannabis. Black Rose Books
• Dillis, C., Biber, E., Bodwitch, H., Butsic, V., Carah, J., Parker-Shames, P., Polson, M. & Grantham, T. 2021. Shifting geographies of legal cannabis production in California. Land Use Policy, 105, 105369
• Seddon, T. (2016), Inventing Drugs: A Genealogy of a Regulatory Concept. Journal of Law and Society, 43: 393-415