Author Meets Critic

Tomorrow I’ll be the “critic” to Michelle Newhart’s and William Dolphin’s new book Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience at the Pacific Sociological Association Conference. Luckily, it’s a well-crafted book that delves into the perspectives and insights of medical marijuana patients, showing us not only the peculiarities and lessons learned from medical marijuana but what challenges it poses to the broader practice of medicine in contemporary society. Check out the description of the conference session here.

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"Marijuana" vs. "Cannabis”

Why it can be okay to call it ‘marijuana’ instead of ‘cannabis’

The only thing I’d add to this discussion is that the term “cannabis” can accomplish a kind of science-washing and virtue-signaling that allows actors to rhetorically distance themselves from the political, racial, and social history of the plant and reuse it in sanitized, scientific-sounding claims for respectability.