The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience
By Michelle Newhart (PhDSoc’13) and William Dolphin
(Routledge, 280 pages; 2018)
Michelle Newhart (PhDSoc’13) and her husband’s book, titled The Medicalization of Marijuana: Legitimacy, Stigma, and the Patient Experience, takes a comprehensive look at how patients negotiate incomplete medicalization and what their experiences reveal about human's relationship with marijuana as it is incorporated into biomedicine. Drawing on interviews with midlife patients in Colorado, a state at the forefront of medical cannabis implementation, this book explores the practical decisions individuals confront about medical use, including whether cannabis will work for them, the risks of registering in a state program and how to handle questions of supply, dosage, and routines of use. By positioning cannabis use within sociological models of medical behavior, Newhart and Dolphin provide a wide-reaching, theoretically informed analysis of the issue that expands established concepts and provides new insight on medical cannabis and how state programs work. Michelle currently teaches sociology and works as an instructional designer at Mt. San Antonio College in California.