Cannabis engagement in Riga, Latvia: Voices from impacted communities

Global research into cannabis is dominated by ten, mostly high income, countries. To provide a more heterogenous account of cannabis use and settings, a PhD study set out with the objective to investigate socio-cultural practices of cannabis users in underreported, post-Soviet European Riga, Latvia. The study investigated whether socio-cultural practices that are described in classic cannabis studies in Anglophone research are also present in the sample in Latvia. Semi-structured interviews with 27 cannabis users (aged 19-53) and 7 treatment specialists were conducted. Cannabis users lived in Riga and occupied varied socio-economic positions. Participants were recruited with advertisement self-selection and convenience sampling. The sole researcher’s analysis used the Listening Technique.

Participants in Riga draw on Anglophone cannabis culture and liberal narratives to justify their illicit behaviour. Stigmatisation of cannabis engagement is resisted by constructing the dominant cannabis-abstaining population in Latvia as the Homo Sovieticus. Homo Sovieticus is positioned as the agency-stripped victim of the Soviet Union. This allows the participants to delegitimise dominant societal claims about cannabis.

As policymakers and researchers in countries that dominate the field of cannabis increasingly pursue harm-reduction and evidence-based policies, it is important to recognise that progressive steps forward in this contested area may lead to polarisation and segregation in less involved countries. This may be most pronounced in post-Soviet countries, such as Latvia, where cannabis stigmatisation is explained to be the legacy of Soviet Union stripping its citizens of agency. In turn, cannabis use represents the existence of individual agency and membership to liberal Western ideologies. Therefore, discussions of cannabis policy must take account the meanings which people attach to cannabis (dis)engagement in constructing their identities. Change of entrenched cannabis narratives must be supported with education institutions for all; users and abstainers.