Browsing by Subject "cannabis"

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    Cannabis Spaces, Relationships, and Relajos: Queer and Trans Chicanx Feminisms Grounding Cannabis Histories and Futures
    (2024) Ordonez, Magaly
    Cannabis Spaces, Relationships, and Relajos prioritizes the experiences of Chicanx and Latinx LGBTQ+ communities that have made current legal cannabis spaces possible. The dissertation examines historical and contemporary cannabis culture in Los Angeles (L.A.), California, to understand how queer of color cannabis histories, relations, and spaces refuse subversion to a capitalist cannabis industry by centering care, cannabis education, and political advocacy. It hypothesizes that Chicanx/Latinx communities across L.A. foster landscapes of political and cultural resistance within and beyond the limits of cannabis legality. By analyzing cannabis spaces and relationships through queer Chicanx feminist archival, ethnographic, and autoethnographic methodologies, my emphasis on gender and racial cultural cannabis histories in current discussions of cannabis legality reveal how cannabis policies are used to oppress racialized, gendered, and queer communities, even in states trying to repair the harm caused by the criminalization of cannabis. This dissertation addresses the historically ingrained racism and homophobia while also proposing alternative ways of imagining cannabis culture. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary approach contributes to the emerging field of Critical Cannabis Studies that has largely focused on privileged white heterosexual men. Joining Critical Cannabis Studies, Queer of Color Feminisms, and Chicanx Studies, my dissertation illustrates that 1) cannabis spaces are complex social, cultural, and political instances created by people who engage with cannabis, 2) LGBTQ+ cannabis relationships give insight to the ways legality and criminality impact everyday queer communities of color, and 3) racialized communities resist state oppression by creating alternative cannabis relationships and spaces, which can inform more equitable cannabis policies and urban futures.
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    Effects of Youth Cannabis Use on Young Adult Functioning
    (2016-08) Hamdi, Nayla
    Youth cannabis use is associated with psychiatric problems, cognitive impairment, educational underachievement, and unemployment. Individuals with genetic liabilities, such as carriers of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val allele, may be particularly sensitive to the effects of cannabis use, but evidence for gene-by-environment (GxE) interaction is inconclusive. It is also unclear if youth cannabis use causes negative outcomes, or if unmeasured factors are responsible for both cannabis use and functional problems. Two studies were conducted to elucidate the nature of the association between youth cannabis use and young adult functioning. Both studies were based on a prospective sample of 1512 twins from the Minnesota Twin Family Study who were assessed six times from age 11 to age 29. The first study examined whether adolescent-onset cannabis use interacts with genetic factors to increase psychotic traits and impair attention and memory at age 29. The results revealed that adolescent-onset cannabis use is associated with higher levels of psychotic traits and worse memory regardless of genotype, with no evidence for GxE interaction. The second study examined if twins discordant on youth cannabis use disorder (CUD) have different psychiatric, cognitive, educational, and occupational outcomes at ages 20, 24, and 29. This design controlled for genetic and other familial confounds shared between twins. Analyses showed that many associations between youth CUD and psychosocial problems were attributable to familial confounding. Still, there was residual evidence for a potential causal effect of youth CUD on the development of other illicit drug use disorders and on deficits in numerical reasoning, even after controlling for premorbid functioning.