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Marijuana Use, Social Discontent and Political Alienation: A Study of High School Youth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

James W. Clarke  and
E. Lester Levine
James W. Clarke
Affiliation:
Florida State University
E. Lester Levine
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Extract

This paper, based on a statewide survey of 907 Florida high school seniors, reveals that self-reported marijuana use, regardless of cause, has social and political implications, though not at the high level of association suggested by the stereotype of a pot-smoking, hippie, political radical. Demographically, the user is typically an urban white male from a wealthier and better educated family. Marijuana users are differentiated from non-users in their more negative views toward the most proximate authority structures and their desire for changes in laws regulating behaviors commonly associated with youth. Marijuana use was not associated with broader social concerns or political ideology, and was only tenuously associated with political alienation. The relationship between measures of social discontent and political alienation reveals a more homogeneous pattern among users than non-users, thus supporting Goode's “subcommunity” hypothesis.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 65 , Issue 1 , March 1971 , pp. 120 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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Footnotes

*

This research is part of a larger study supported, in part, by the Florida Youth Advisory Council and the Florida State University Political Research Institute. We are indebted to Joseph Egan, Research Assistant, and the Florida State University Computing Center for their assistance in processing these data.

References

1 A good summary of this literature through 1966 may be found in Lipset, Seymour M. and Altbach, Philip G., “Student Politics and Higher Education in the United States” in Lipset, S. M. (ed.) Student Politics (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 199–252 Google Scholar. Selected studies since that time are referred to in later footnotes.

2 See, for example, Libarle, Marc and Seligson, Tom (eds.), The High School Revolutionaries (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. xiii–xiv Google Scholar. The editors cite a survey conducted in the spring of 1969 by the National Association of Secondary School Principals, which found that 56 percent of the junior high schools participating in the survey had experienced protest activities and “many who note no protests as yet add they expect it in the near future.” Libarle and Seligson conclude that “A majority of young Americans are rejecting age-old American ideals and values; as they proceed through life they are forming new concepts about the meaning of being ‘American’ and what the ‘American way of life’ should be.” Also, see Birmingham, John (ed.), Our Time is Now: Notes from the High School Underground (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970)Google Scholar.

3 Goode, Erich, “Marijuana and the Politics of Reality,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 10 (06 1969), 92 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; also see U. S. Department of Justice, Community Relations Service, “Student Unrest Survey,” September, 1969, p. 3 Google Scholar, which indicates that in a survey of 17 states and 52 cities, including 101 secondary schools, administrators tended to blame student unrest on “outside agitators, drugs, overcrowdedness, and the need for Federal funds.” (our italics.)

4 Goode, Erich, “Multiple Drug Use Among Marijuana Smokers,” Social Problems, 17 (Summer 1969), 55 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Ibid., p. 54.

6 Festinger, Leon, “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes,” Human Relations, 7 (05 1954), 117–140 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Mauss, Armand L., “Anticipatory Socialization Toward College as a Factor in Adolescent Marijuana Use,” Social Problems, 16 (Winter 1969), 357–364 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Brotman, Richard, Silverman, Irving, and Suffet, Fred, “Drug Use Among Affluent High School Youth” in Goode, Erich (ed.), Marijuana (New York: Atherton Press, 1969), pp. 128–136 Google Scholar. Goode's book is a current and useful survey of various aspects of the marijuana issue.

9 Suchman, Edward A., “The ‘Hang-Loose’ Ethic and the Spirit of Drug Use,” Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 9 (06 1968), 146–155 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. The study considered various types of drug use, but marijuana was, by far, the most common and frequently used.

10 Ibid., p. 151.

11 Richard A. Bogg, Roy G. Smith, and Susan D. Russell, Drugs and Michigan High School Students. The Final Report of a Study Conducted for the Special Committee on Narcotics (Lansing: Michigan House of Representatives, 1968), p. 27.

12 Hadden, Jeffrey K., “The Private Generation,” Psychology Today, 3 (10 1969), 32 Google Scholar. At first glance this might appear to be contrary to one part of Suchman's conclusions cited above. However, it may be that this “privatism” is based more on confidence in self and commitment to a kind of individualism, rather than apathy.

13 See, “The Young are Captives of Each Other: A Conversation with David Riesman,” Psychology Today, 3 (10 1969), 28 Google Scholar.

14 Halleck, Seymour K., “You Can Go to Hell with Style,” Psychology Today, 3 (11 1969), 71 Google Scholar; and “Psychiatric Treatment for the Alienated College Student,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 124 (1967), 642–650 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

15 King, Francis W., “Users and Nonusers of Marijuana: Some Attitudinal and Behavioral Correlates,” College Health, 18 (02 1970), 213–217 Google Scholar.

16 Blum, Richard H. and Associates. Students and Drugs. Drugs II. College and High School Observations. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., 1969), pp. 69–71, 133–134 Google Scholar. Unfortunately for our purposes, these conclusions are limited to college students because of the design of the 1966–1967 survey. The Blum chapter discussing high school students is more anecdotal and impressionistic and restricted to summary information on usage patterns within selected Bay Area high schools.

17 This figure represents an adjusted sample. Our original sample included 1500 students, but some school boards refused to permit high schools under their jurisdiction to cooperate in the study. Excluding the 443 students who were denied the opportunity to participate in the study, the corrected sample size is 1057 students. Of this number, 907 (86 percent) returned the questionnaire. Some of these students did not answer all the questions and for this reason the total response on each question wDl vary marginally from the totals in the tables which follow.

18 Although estimating the extent of an illegal activity like marijuana use is highly probabilistic, 13 percent appears to be a reasonable figure. An earlier spring, 1968 survey of 1379 high school seniors in Michigan revealed that 10 percent of the students reported having smoked marijuana. Bogg, et al., op. cit., p. 41. The official national estimate at the Governor's Conference on Narcotics and Drugs was 16 percent of high school youth. This official estimate was made seven months after our survey. A Gallup Poll conducted during the same period revealed that almost one quarter of a nationwide sample of university students had smoked marijuana one or more times. See Goode, Erich, “The Marijuana Market,” Columbia Forum, 12 (Winter 1969), 4 Google Scholar.

19 We do not intend to dwell on this point In studying deviant or illegal behavior, the researcher has two choices (aside from participant observation): either he can rely on self-reported data, or official records. In using self-reported data, the researcher is relying on the candor of the respondent which, of course, involves some risks. However, the risks involved in using official arrest data are even greater in our view. The problem with official data is that we are relying on official practices which also involve some serious and well-documented risks. One study which compared self-reported “anonymous” responses to responses made during a follow up interview and polygraph examination reported 92.5 percent correspondence between the two answers on the question dealing with narcotic use. See, Clark, John P. and Tifft, Larry L., “Polygraph and Interview Validation of Self-Reported Deviant Behavior,” American Sociological Review, 31 (08 1966) 516–523 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For further discussion of this point, see Merton, Robert K. and Ashley-Montague, M. F., “Crime and the Anthropologist,” American Anthropologist, 42 (07-September 1940), 284–308 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erich Goode, “Multiple Drug Use Among Marijuana Smokers,” loc. cit.; and Gould, Leroy, “Who Defines Delinquency: A Comparison of Self-Reported and Officially Reported Indices of Delinquency for Three Racial Groups,” Social Problems, 16 (Winter 1969), 325–336 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Limited resources prevented us from using individual mailouts and returns. In many cases, this chore was turned over to guidance counselors. The administrator had no discretion as to which students were given questionnaires, since he was given names randomly selected from a statewide list of Florida twelfth graders.

21 It is impossible to predict the direction of this potential bias, given the fear of exposure on the one hand, and on the other, the reported social acceptability of marijuana use in some circles and desire of many young people to shock or impress their elders and peers; especially when this can be done with relative impunity. See footnote 18.

22 These items were adapted from Roback, Thomas, “Attitude Constraint Among Southern Professionals: The Relationship Between the International and Domestic Attitudes of Four Groups” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Government, Florida State University, 1969), 140–141 Google Scholar. The item-total correlations (gamma) on this index are .82, .94, .89, and .89.

23 Robinson, John P., Ruch, Jerrold G. and Head, Kendra B., Measures of Political Attitudes (Ann Arbor: Survey Research Center, 1969), pp. 519–523 Google Scholar. The item-total correlations (gamma) are: .90, .88, .86, and .89.

24 See, for example, Levin, Murray B., The Alienated Voter (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1960)Google Scholar; McDill, Edward L. and Ridley, Jeanne C., “Status, Anomia, Political Alienation, and Political Participation,” American Journal of Sociology, 68 (09 1962), 205–213 Google Scholar; Thompson, Wayne and Horton, John E., “Political Alienation as a Force in Political Action,” Social Forces, 38 (03 1960), 783–791 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Olsen, Marvin E., “Two Categories of Political Alienation,” Social Forces, 47 (03 1969), 288–299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gamson, William A., Power and Discontent (Homewood, Illinois: The Dorsey Press, 1968)Google Scholar; and Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York: Free Press, 1962), pp. 161–162 Google Scholar.

25 Lane, op. cit.

26 Gamson, op. cit., ch. 3.

27 Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), ch. 12Google Scholar. For an earlier comparable definition of the objects of political support, see Mitchell, William C., The American Polity (New York: The Free Press, 1962), p. 16 Google Scholar.

28 Particularly useful in our selection and development of items was a local SDS publication, Liberation.

29 One item from an original five item measure was discarded to achieve a Guttman reproducibility co-efficient of .894. The Minimal Marginal Reproducibility is .701. As a further check on the reliability of the measure, the original five items were combined in a summated score which correlated with the Guttman measure at .89. The discarded item was:

Many public officials are self-seeking opportunists who are insensitive to the problems of people.

30 This item was taken from Lane, op. cit., p. 162.

31 We are speaking here of views which represent departures from the status quo on laws regulating behavior often associated with youth, viz., marijuana, drugs, alcohol, abortion, sex education and voting requirements. Social alienation is reflected in more negative views of the institutions primarily associated with maintaining the status quo, viz., parents, schools, religion and the police.

32 Gamma refers to Goodman and Kruskal's coefficient of ordinal association. It is a symmetrical proportional-reductive-in-error statistic. See Goodman, Leo A. and Kruskal, William H., “Measures of Association for Cross Classifications” Journal of the American Statistical Association, 49 (12 1954), 732–764 Google Scholar. See also, Costner, Herbert L., “Criteria for Measures of Association,” American Sociological Review, 30 (06 1965), 341–353 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Freeman, Linton C., Elementary Applied Statistics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1965), ch. 8Google Scholar.

33 See, for example, Mauss, loc. cit; and Blum et al., op. cit., pp. 133–134, 336. In the analysis which follow, controls for background variables did not alter the subsequent relationships in any interpretable pattern.

34 Brotman, et at., loc. cit.; Mauss, loc. cit.; Suchman, loc. cit.; and Blum, et al., op. cit., pp. 71, 133–134, 228.

35 Suchman, op. cit., p. 151.

36 These differences are consistent with Suchman's findings and his description of a “hang loose” ethic among college students who smoke marijuana. See also Blum, et al., op. cit., p. 343.

37 There are numerous possible reasons why this apparent discrepancy exists in these responses. One possibility deserves some comment in the interest of further research in this area. It is possible that the responses to these questions vary with the frequency of use. That is, the 56 percent of the users who favor legalization of marijuana and the 53 percent who favor more lenient drug laws may be the most committed or frequent users. Unfortunately, we cannot examine this possibility with the data at hand.

38 Black students, regardless of other characteristics, think that insufficient progress has been made in both housing and jobs, and they are more inclined to view integration favorably.

39 Free and Cantril have observed a similar trend among adult Americans. They found that even most self-identified and ideologically defined conservatives have accepted most of the operationally defined liberal welfare programs of the federal government. See, Free, Lloyd A. and Cantril, Hadley, The Political Beliefs of Americans: A Study of Public Opinion (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1968), chs. 3–4Google Scholar.

40 Goode, “Multiple Drug Use …”, 55.

41 This is a variation of Festinger's “theory of cognitive dissonance” which argues that dissonance varies inversely with the magnitude of difference between two alternative choices. See, Festinger, Leon, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, Illinois: Row, Peterson, 1962)Google Scholar. In this study, we are assuming that it is the inconsistency between one's self-conception and the social definition of his act which will result in dissonance. For this view of dissonance reduction as a defense mechanism, see Deutsch, Morton, Krauss, R. M., and Rosenau, N., “Dissonance or Defensiveness?” Journal of Personality, 30 (03 1962), 16–28 Google Scholar; and Deutsch, Morton and Krauss, Robert M., Theories in Social Psychology (New York: Basic Books, 1965), p. 74 Google Scholar. For a first person account which appears to illustrate this phenomenon see Blum et al., op. cit., p. 343.

42 Schur, Edwin M., “Reactions to Deviance: A Critical Assessment,” American Journal of Sociology, 75 (11 1969), 317 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. This perspective is called the “labelling” or “social reactions” approach to deviant behavior. Representative of this view is Becker, Howard S., Outsiders (New York: Free Press, 1964), p. 9 Google Scholar. For similar definitions see, Edwin M. Leinert, Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), p. 23 Google Scholar; and Erikson, Kai T., “Notes on the Sociology of Deviance,” Social Problems, 9 (Spring 1962), 308 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cohen, Albert K., “The Sociology of the Deviant Act: Anomie Theory and Beyond,” American Sociological Review, 30 (02 1965), 13 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

43 Schur, loc. cit.

44 See, for example, Blum, et al., p. 340.

45 See, for example, Blum, et al., op. cit., pp. 341–342.

46 Lubell, Samuel, “That ‘Generation Gap’,” in Bell, Daniel and Kristol, Irving (eds.), Confrontation (New York: Basic Books, 1969), p. 64 Google Scholar.

47 Loc. cit.

48 Suchman, op. cit.

49 Martin Oppenheimer has raised this question in his study of The Urban Guerrilla (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1969), p. 23 Google ScholarPubMed.

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