Cultural stigmatization and police corruption : cannabis, gender, and legalization in Mexico
Fondevila, Gustavo (Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (México))
Agoff, Carolina (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)
Sandberg, Sveinung (University of Oslo)

Date:	2022
Description:	9 pàg.
Abstract:	Mexico may well be the largest country in the world to legalize cannabis. Nevertheless, it is culturally conservative and a certain discrepancy exists between liberalization reforms and popular opinion regarding cannabis. Based on qualitative interviews with 100 cannabis users in Mexico City, we describe the gendered differences in perceptions and experiences of cannabis use. While the young women in the study stated that they used cannabis to deal with family issues, to be less shy with friends, and to feel more attractive, the young men emphasized pressure from school or work, aggressiveness, and integration into their peer group when accounting for their use. Furthermore, men reported police corruption and legal issues as the main problems associated with their use of cannabis, while women's use was strongly conditioned by a fear of becoming less respectable in their families' eyes and the stigma of being seen as a 'lost' or 'bad' woman. We argue that the consequences of cannabis decriminalization in Mexico are likely to be highly gendered: While men who use cannabis may experience fewer legal problems and encounters with the police, women who use cannabis are likely to continue to be culturally and socially stigmatized.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Cannabis culture ; Gender ; Legalization ; Mexico ; Stigmatization
Published in:	Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, Vol. 29 Núm. 4 (2022) , p. 373-381, ISSN 1465-3370

DOI: 10.1080/09687637.2021.2004089

10 p, 1.4 MB

The record appears in these collections:
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles