The purpose of this study was to examine single-issue voting in the youth population, specifically involving the upcoming medical marijuana ballot initiative to be voted on in Florida November, 2014. Single-issue voting is becoming a more prevalent trend in American politics. The young voter demographic has historically showed the lowest percentage of voter turnout thus giving it the highest potential to influence the outcome of an election if more voters showed up to the polls. This study sought to understand if a single issue such as medical marijuana could be that motivation to go vote. Data was gathered through conducting focus groups of students 18 to 24 years old. The content was analyzed and quotes were collected then compared against two existing mass communication theories. The qualitative nature of the work allowed the study to produce a picture of the essence of how some young voters thinks when an election is approaching. This information will be vital as the field of study begins to grow quantitatively as well. Though no definitive result was determined, young voters may be motivated to vote by a single issue but it is doubtful that issue will not be medical marijuana. This study aids an understanding of how a young voter is perceived as well as what issues were most important to those who participated. Organizations tasked with targeting this population could use these results to help cater a more effective message and reach a demographic that has so far been nearly unattainable.

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abstract: Although prior research has identified negative consequences from marijuana use, some states are legalizing marijuana for medical use due to its medical utility. In 2010, the State of Arizona passed medical marijuana legislation, yet, to date, little research has been published about the specific population characteristics of medical marijuana users or their criminal activity. The purpose of this study is to present the characteristics of medical marijuana users and examine the relationship between medical marijuana use and crime, including substance use, by comparing four groups which are medical marijuana users with authorized medical marijuana ID card (authorized medical marijuana users, AuMM users), medical marijuana users without authorized medical marijuana ID card (non-authorized medical marijuana users, NonAuMM users), illegal marijuana users without authorized medical marijuana ID card (non-authorized marijuana users, NonAuM users), and non-marijuana users (Non-users). Data were collected from a sample of recently booked arrestees in Maricopa County, Arizona through the Arizona Arrestee Reporting Information Network (AARIN) project. A total of 2,656 adult arrestees participated in the study. Findings show that authorized medical marijuana users were more likely to be male, younger, and high school graduates. Medical marijuana users, on average, were likely to acquire more marijuana and spend more money on obtaining marijuana compared to non-authorized marijuana users. Whereas the authorized medical marijuana users had a higher probability for DUI and drug selling/making than non-marijuana users, non-authorized medical marijuana users had a higher probability for involvement property crime, violent crime, DUI, and drug selling/making than non-marijuana users. Authorized medical marijuana users were less likely to use meth compared to non-authorized medical marijuana users and non-authorized marijuana users. This study suggests that it is important to recognize the non-authorized medical marijuana users under medical marijuana policy as well as the DUI regulations and medical insurance. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Criminology and Criminal Justice 2014

In 2014, the Child Protective Services received 3.6 million referrals alleging child abuse and neglect, of which, 702,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect and an estimated 1,580 children died due to maltreatment. In addition to this appalling toll, the welfare effects of child victimization are substantial. Evidence suggests that compared to demographically similar adults who were non-victims, adults with documented histories of maltreatment are more likely to engage in criminal behavior; have adverse mental and physical health problems such as depression, addiction and post-traumatic stress disorder; and have lower levels of education and earnings. These essays contribute toward the understanding of the consequences of two very distinctive policies – mandatory arrest and medical marijuana laws – and their impact on child maltreatment. An important and controversial question in criminal justice policy concerns whether aggressive sanctions, such as mandatory arrest policies, serve as effective deterrents to familial violence. Chapter 1 provides a theoretical framework that models child abuse in which I allow for a strategic interaction between the child and his or her abuser. The comparative statics yield clear predictions of the impact of sanctions on child maltreatment – as the cost and probability of external interventions rise, the probability of violence falls. I follow this theoretical analysis with an empirical investigation of the impact of mandatory arrest policies on child victimization. I find a statistically significant and positive relationship between states that have implemented mandatory arrest laws and reported child maltreatment rates. This may seem surprising; however there are two explanations for the results. The likely explanation is that reporting of maltreatment increased in states mandating arrest; alternatively, recidivism may have increased in these states. Evidence from the OLS estimates for the reporting of abuse and child fatality rates (a proxy for the true incidence of child abuse), demonstrates that the increase in maltreatment is not due to recidivism but, in fact, more people reporting abuse to the police and Child Protective Services. The most important result that emerges from the data, however, is that while reported abuse increases in states with mandatory arrest laws, the true incidence of maltreatment actually falls. The ultimate goal of this paper is to stimulate further theoretical and empirical research that focuses on child abuse and prevention, thus enhancing an understanding of how sanctions influence child victimization. The next chapter looks at one potential risk factor for child maltreatment –marijuana use and liberalization –using evidence from medical marijuana laws (MMLs). Chapter 2 begins by extending the current MML-crime literature by providing a comprehensive evaluation of the impact of MMLs implemented at the state level on reported child victimization rates. I show that specific modes of medical marijuana regulation differentially influence the magnitude of reported incidences of child abuse, a finding which sheds new light on the current literature. More specifically, using fixed effects analysis applied to data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Database System (NCANDS) and the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), I show that states that allow for home cultivation in addition to decriminalizing its use see a further increase in the magnitude of reported incidences of child maltreatment rates. Since completing my dissertation, I have continued to investigate into issues that have implications for both theory and practice in my field. To that extent, I plan to analyze the slowly developing public sphere –a platform where culture and social change rely on both media and conversation.

By exploring the history of cannabis in the French Empire, this dissertation builds on recent scholarly efforts to investigate the intersections of France’s national and imperial pasts. As scholar Gary Wilder argued in his seminal work, The French Imperial Nation-State (2005), “French historiography is traditionally guided by a national paradigm for which a correspondence between territory, population, and state is considered normal and the existence of colonies is treated as exceptional.” This fabricated barrier between France’s national and imperial pasts, he argues, conceals the reality that “the metropole and its overseas colonies exercised a reciprocal influence upon one another” and that both should be studied as one political and cultural unit, as what he terms the “imperial nation-state.” As this dissertation demonstrates, the history of drug use and prohibition in France is in large part a story of movement between colony and metropole. From the nation’s first imperial encounter with hashish during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 through the subsequent spread of cannabis use and cannabis-based medications in the French metropole during the middle 19th century to the creation of anti-cannabis laws in France and its North African colonies during the fin de siècle, the circulation of cannabis and ideas about cannabis use between colony and metropole drove the development of prohibition policies in France from the birth of the republic through the early 20th century / History

While neuropsychological deficits have been reported in healthy individuals who use cannabis, data in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are lacking. Given that MS is associated with cognitive deterioration, the aim of this study was to determine the cognitive effects of inhaled or ingested cannabis in this population. Fifty MS patients (25 cannabis users and 25 non-users) completed the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in MS battery of neuropsychological tests. Cannabis users had significantly poorer performance on measures of information processing speed, executive functions, and visuospatial perception, and were twice as likely to be classified as globally cognitively impaired. Similar results were found after controlling for potential confounding variables. This study provides evidence that prolonged cannabis use in MS patients is associated with poorer performance on cognitive domains commonly affected in this population. The therapeutic benefits patients may derive from using cannabis should be weighed against the associated cognitive side-effects.

While neuropsychological deficits have been reported in healthy individuals who use cannabis, data in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are lacking. Given that MS is associated with cognitive deterioration, the aim of this study was to determine the cognitive effects of inhaled or ingested cannabis in this population. Fifty MS patients (25 cannabis users and 25 non-users) completed the Minimal Assessment of Cognitive Function in MS battery of neuropsychological tests. Cannabis users had significantly poorer performance on measures of information processing speed, executive functions, and visuospatial perception, and were twice as likely to be classified as globally cognitively impaired. Similar results were found after controlling for potential confounding variables. This study provides evidence that prolonged cannabis use in MS patients is associated with poorer performance on cognitive domains commonly affected in this population. The therapeutic benefits patients may derive from using cannabis should be weighed against the associated cognitive side-effects.

Over the past two decades, a growing body of literature within health economics has provided evidence of the impact of fetal conditions on individual’s health and economic outcomes over the entire life course. This dissertation contributes to the field of health economics by investigating the effects of two distinct types of public policies, antimalarial interventions in sub-Saharan Africa and medical marijuana laws in the United States, on early-life health. Chapter 1 adds to the increased understanding of the impact of in utero exposure to large-scale interventions to combat endemic diseases by examining the effects of antimalarial interventions aimed at preventing and controlling malaria in pregnancy on birth outcomes. Since the year 2000, a coordinated international effort against malaria has led to a significant scale-up of intervention coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. One of the objectives of this undertaking was to improve maternal and early-life health. This chapter investigates the effect of access to malaria prevention and control measures, including insecticide-treated nets, intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy, indoor residual spraying, and artemisinin-based combination therapy, on birth weight. I exploit the geographic and time variation in the rollout of antimalarial interventions in sub-Saharan Africa across regions with different levels of initial malaria prevalence to analyze 277,245 live births in 22 countries from 2000 to 2013 in a continuous difference-in-differences estimation framework and find that the diffusion of intermittent preventive treatment among pregnant women contributed to the reduction of low birth weight incidence in sub-Saharan Africa. I do not find other antimalarial interventions to be associated with significant improvements in birth outcomes. Chapter 2 provides an investigation focused on examining the impact of medical marijuana laws in the United States on birth outcomes. As of June 2017, medical marijuana laws which liberalize the cultivation, possession, and use of cannabis for allowable medical purposes have been adopted by 29 states and the District of Columbia. The expansion of state-level legislation allowing for medical marijuana use has fueled an ongoing debate regarding drug policy. Despite a growing interest in investigating and quantifying both direct and indirect effects of marijuana liberalization policies, little is known about how they affect early-life health. Using data on the entire universe of births in the U.S. between 1990 and 2013 and a difference-in-differences research design, I find no evidence to support the hypothesis that medical marijuana laws have a negative impact on birth weight and gestation, however I also find that medical marijuana laws are associated with reductions in Apgar scores.

The District of Colombia poses a unique challenge to private employers because the passage of a local medical marijuana policy was instituted in a federalized district that is obligated to abide by federal Schedule 1 narcotic laws. Using punctuated equilibrium as the theoretical foundation, the purpose of this case study was to understand how managers maintain compliance and address the conflict between different levels of government. Data were collected from interviews with 8 private industry hiring personnel who operate within the District of Columbia. These interviews were transcribed, inductively coded using a 2 cycle coding procedure, and then subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Two primary themes emerged; cognizance of the policy, and fear and safety concerns related to enforcement. In the case of the theme of cognizance, punctuated equilibrium was confirmed in that unbalanced policy development had negative or positive interpretations that created a significant subsystem effect. The second theme of “fear” is also explained through punctuated equilibrium as marijuana legalization is perceived as an emotional policy issue in the establishment of new policy. Implications for positive social change stems from recommendations to policy makers to clarify remaining ambiguity about the requirements associated with the juxtaposition of federal and local policy and law. Reconciling the differences between policies may improve the capacity for hiring authorities to better understand and practice effective talent recruitment while at the same time be attentive to the social needs in the District of Columbia related to workplace medical marijuana policies.

Therapeutic benefits of medicinal cannabis are well documented in the treatment of a variety of medical conditions. There is not, however, a nationally consistent delivery system, which has prevented many patients from realizing these benefits. Using policy feedback theory as the foundation, the purpose of this general qualitative study was to better understand how state-level regulatory efforts in medicinal cannabis may provide guidance on formulating national public policies that are beneficial to patients. This study compared 3 core tenets of NORML, an authority in the cannabis industry, against the policies of 3 states with exemplary state medical cannabis programs. The tenets included access to whole-plant cannabis, wide latitude for doctors to decide treatment regimens, and the right to cultivation for personal use. Data collected from publicly available documents such as legislative archives, state government websites, cannabis coalition groups, and media coverage of medicinal cannabis legislation were deductively coded and subjected to a cross-case analysis procedure. Findings indicated a lack of full alignment with NORML's core tenets as well as significant gaps between research on the efficacy of medical cannabis and the regulatory systems governing delivery within the states. Future policy makers may consider these results in devising nationwide legislation to research and recognize the medicinal use of cannabis, thus addressing the identified need for a uniform delivery system in the US for patients in need of cannabis for medical purposes. This study may contribute to positive social change through recommendations to federal legislators for creating a national government model for patient access to medicinal cannabis.