IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001562081

Popular “Medicine”: Policymaking by Direct Democracy and the Medical Marijuana Movement of the 1990s (2004)

Ferraiolo, Kathleen Grammatico (Author)

University of Virginia
Ceaser, James
Publication date: 2004
Language: English

Publication Date: 2004
Edition Details: Advisor: Ceaser, James
Physical Details: 236 pp.

Outside Links

PubMed

Medicine and politics Public policy Narcotics and drugs Medicine, popular 20th century, late United States

The dissertation examines the features, functions, and implications of the ballot initiative as a policymaking institution by investigating the electoral success of the medical marijuana movement of the 1990s. Drawing on case studies of initiative campaigns in California and Maine, interviews with key actors, and document analysis, I explore the role that institutional control, issue framing, and policy entrepreneurs played in the success of statewide medical marijuana initiatives. I also develop a quantitative model that applies the state politics literature on policy adoption to the institutional context of direct democracy. By approaching direct democracy from the perspective of ballot petitioners, I demonstrate how the features of the initiative process---including the lack of cues typical in candidate campaigns and the public nature of initiative battles---benefit interests with particular skills and resources. While traditional policymaking institutions emphasize expertise and deliberation that often take place among an elite audience, initiative policymaking places tremendous importance on fundraising, advertising, and marketing of a policy idea. Well-funded initiative petitioners can benefit by identifying settings predisposed to support their ideas, mounting multi-state initiative campaigns that circumvent the representative process, and attempting to activate public opinion and other favorable conditions through effective policy marketing and advocacy. Many critics of direct democracy depict ballot initiative politics as a special interest-driven process in which wealthy backers can achieve policy success simply by applying their superior financial resources. I argue that abundant funding did not manufacture support for medical marijuana, but instead amplified the effects of existing grassroots and public support. Venue-shopping on the part of ballot petitioners can allow different, even contradictory policy images and subsystems to flourish at the state and federal levels. The final chapter evaluates the appropriateness of direct democracy in a representative system and its deliberative potential. I conclude that the medical marijuana story illustrates the usefulness of the ballot initiative as a policymaking device under certain conditions, but also illuminates some of its weaknesses. Ballot petitioners, representative officials, and the public interest alike could benefit from correcting the defects of the initiative process and forging stronger connections between initiative and legislative policymaking.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/04 (2004): 1520. UMI pub. no. 3131466.

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001562081

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Chapter Glenn, Jason E.; (2014)
Making Crack Babies: Race Discourse and the Biologization of Behavior (/p/isis/citation/CBB001553454/)

Thesis Glenn, Jason Edwin; (2005)
Medicalizing Addictions, Criminalizing Addicts: Race, Politics and Profit inNarratives of Addiction (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561587/)

Book Musto, David F.; Korsmeyer, Pamela; (2002)
The Quest for Drug Control: Politics and Federal Policy in a Period of Increasing Substance Abuse, 1963--1981 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000830638/)

Article Kingsberg, Miriam; (2013)
Methamphetamine Solution: Drugs and the Reconstruction of Nation in Postwar Japan (/p/isis/citation/CBB001214752/)

Article Tasleem J Padamsee; (2020)
Fighting an Epidemic in Political Context: Thirty-Five Years of HIV/AIDS Policy Making in the United States (/p/isis/citation/CBB175960205/)

Book Gordon, Colin; (2003)
Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth-Century America (/p/isis/citation/CBB000301631/)

Thesis Halfmann, Drew T.; (2001)
Interests in Contexts and Institutional Democracy: The Politics of Abortion Policy in Liberal Welfare States, 1950--2000 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562377/)

Thesis Price, Kimala Joy; (2003)
A Tale of Two Pills: Making Political Sense of Reproductive Technology through Policy Stories (/p/isis/citation/CBB001562341/)

Article Burek Pierce, Jennifer; (2008)
Science, Advocacy, and “The Sacred and Intimate Things of Life”: Representing Motherhood as a Progressive Era Cause in Women's Magazines (/p/isis/citation/CBB001032399/)

Article Kessel, Nils; (2009)
Umstrittene Expertise. Der Beirat “Arzneimittel-sicherheit” in der bundesdeutschen Arzneimittel-regulierung, +1968--1976 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001220573/)

Book Abraham, John; Sheppard, Julie; (1999)
The Therapeutic Nightmare: The Battle Over the World's Most Controversial Sleeping Pill (/p/isis/citation/CBB000640392/)

Book Campbell, Nancy D.; (2007)
Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research (/p/isis/citation/CBB000930475/)

Book Claire Clark; (2017)
The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States (/p/isis/citation/CBB386536529/)

Book David Herzberg; (2020)
White Market Drugs: Big Pharma and the Hidden History of Addiction in America (/p/isis/citation/CBB940797249/)

Thesis Hamer, John Faithful; (2005)
Turning Horror into Stories: Popular Health Reform and the Gospel of Prevention, 1970--1990 (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561824/)

Thesis Mullens, Lauri; (2004)
Leaky Bodies: Epidemic Disease in Contemporary American Television (/p/isis/citation/CBB001561812/)

Book Gostin, Lawrence O.; (2004)
The AIDS Pandemic: Complacency, Injustice, and Unfulfilled Expectations (/p/isis/citation/CBB000630184/)

Book Moreno, Jonathan D.; Berger, Sam; (2010)
Progress in Bioethics: Science, Policy, and Politics (/p/isis/citation/CBB001031401/)

Article Rudloff, Wilfried; (2010)
Expertenkommissionen, Masterpläne und Modellprogramme. Die bundesdeutsche Psychiatriereform als Paradefall “verwissenschaftlichter” Politik? (/p/isis/citation/CBB001023657/)

Article Naomi Rogers; (2022)
Radical Visions of American Medicine: Politics and Activism in the History of Medicine (/p/isis/citation/CBB887764641/)