The (de)stigmatization of cannabis in movies produced in the United States in 1990 to 2020

Abstract

Social representations, social imaginaries, stereotypes, and stigmas are communicated through different processes and forms of communication. These messages generate biases, prejudices, and attitudes towards, such as the ones this chapter we analyze related to the stigma surrounding cannabis. Over the course of the past few decades, as part of the propaganda to support the War on Drugs, the message communicated by the United States film industry about the production, sale, and consumption of cannabis stigmatizes its users and bolster the draconian system of laws that punishes its use. In the last decade there has been a significant transformation of certain states’ approaches to cannabis policy. Since 2010, one dimension of this transformation involves a growing trend of destigmatization of cannabis in the US film industry. We organize and categorize films that have been produced in the period 1990 to 2020, and select three movies involving the consumption, sale, or use of marijuana to analyze through three different lenses the construction of characters, the frequency of use, and the frequency of violence. We argue that the films that truly contribute to the destigmatization of cannabis in the US movie industry produced in this period are few and far between and the majority of the films continue to perpetuate stigmas tied to race, class, gender, sexuality, and social roles.