Cannabis use in Amsterdam : Report of a survey among 216 experienced cannabis users in Amsterdam about career and functions of cannabis consumption

We knew from our repeated series of household surveys in the municipality of Amsterdam, that we would find a large number of experienced cannabis users in the population. Since social disapproval of cannabis use in the largest city of the Netherlands is declining for a fairly long time (since the beginning of the seventies) we would be in the position to tap information about cannabis use as it occurs in a context of non criminalisation or social marginalisation. We can not stress enough the importance of researching drug use outside the social context of marginalisation. If a society ostracises particular behaviour, like drug use or homosexuality, such behaviour will necessarily be constrained to hidden subcultures. Rules and regulations will develop that are for a part compensations for (and products of) the socially deviant status of that behaviour. [...]
Another reason why cannabis research in Amsterdam is important is, that through our series of household surveys, we would be able to reach a sample of experienced cannabis users that is just as representative for the whole population of experienced users, as the household survey sample is for the population of Amsterdam. By tapping the experienced cannabis users in the household sample, we would for the first time in the history of cannabis use create knowledge on a non biased sample. However careful one would make samples via other methods one would never be able to fully discard intuitions of uncertain representativity. The only other study we know, of users that live in a context of low to zero social taboo about cannabis use, is the Rubin and Comitas study of Jamaican consumers. Although this study is exemplary in its erudition and scope, it carries the disadvantage that the highly studied subjects live in a totally different culture than users living in the more industrialised parts of this world. Because so much of the policy debates about cannabis take place in western industrialised countries, this is an important disadvantage.
Therefore the three important advantages of studying cannabis users in Amsterdam via the household survey are:
1. sample representativity for experienced cannabis users,
2. the collection of data from users that developed their use over time in a non criminalizing context,
3. that is part of the western industrialised cosmopolitan culture and life style.
Experience with cannabis in Amsterdam is not higher than almost 30 percent of the adult population (12 years and older) of which only 43 percent has an experience of 25 times of use or over. This means that experienced use is constrained to twelve percent of the Amsterdam adult population, or about 72,000 people. Our cannabis survey was directed at this pool of experienced users. In chapter two we will return to the topic of sampling. [Extracts]