The search for pleasures: the case of cannabis in the testimonials heard before the Nolin’s Committee
The search for pleasures as a motive for cannabis use is widely expressed in users’ discourse. We could then foresee that this search would become an argument in the debate about the legal status of cannabis. This study aims to investigate the place and the meaning of pleasures in the testimonials heard before the Senate Special Committee on illegal drugs (Nolin’s Committee), whose mandate was to re-examine Canadian policy concerning cannabis. Although this search for pleasures constitutes one of the building blocks of the liberal subject, it doesn’t come up much in the hearings. When mentioned, pleasures are evoked at three distinct levels: in the motives, in the substance and in the contexts. These pleasures are systematically put in relation with the use of cannabis and are not thought of in a larger perspective of a relationship to pleasure. It is our contention that the uneasiness of speaking about pleasures is due in part to the difficulty to capture the notion of pleasure as well as the illegitimate side of searching for pleasure through cannabis use.