ABSTRACT
Chapter 5: Medical Cannabis Use in Everyday Life turns from the doctor’s office to how patients manage daily life, detailing how patients institute medicalized behaviors with cannabis. This chapter is the first of three based on the classic theory on drug use and extra-drug factors, “drug, set, and setting,” which proposes that a substance’s effects are due to not only the drug itself but also to the individual’s mental and physical state (“set”) and the environment (“setting”) in which the drug is taken. Using this theory, we argue that when cannabis is transformed from a recreational substance to a medicine, all three aspects—drug, set, and setting—undergo transformation. This chapter focuses on the transformation of the first aspect—cannabis the drug, considering how its form, variety, and method of intake have undergone change as it has entered into the legal market for medicinal cannabis. Upon analysis, we consider the importance of behavior in creating a medicine and argue that all substances can be used in a way that conforms to medical behavior. The distinction between licit and illicit drugs is not one of safety or efficacy.
