Emerging from the Shadows: Cultivating Legitimacy for a Quasi-Legal Medical Cannabis Dispensary

• In Event: 106 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 02. Disruptive Social Movements

Abstract

How do organizations in violation of the law seek legitimacy? Furthermore, how do organizations contest the meaning of quasi-legal cultural products such as cannabis (a.k.a. marijuana)? While we know a great deal about legitimacy-seeking among legal or normative organizations (e.g. Meyer and Rowan 1977, Scott et al. 2000), we know rather little about how quasi-legal organizations in undeveloped (or grey-area markets) seek, maintain, and lose legitimacy (Webb et al. 2009). This is surprising considering quasi-legal organizations, or those legal in one jurisdiction and illegal in another, face increased challenges in gaining legitimacy as a result of their quasi-legal status. To address this gap, I use media data, and data from twelve semi-structured interviews with employees and affiliates of Missionview Wellness Center, a prominent medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. I find that Missionview sought legitimacy by: 1) Cultivating Local Governmental Support; 2) Creating Structures of Legitimation and; 3) Broadening the Frame of Cannabis Use. In seeking legitimacy for the organization, these efforts have secondary and tertiary effects for destigmatizing the plant and those who use it. These findings suggest that quasi-legal medical cannabis dispensaries seeking legitimacy broaden the meaning of cannabis and why it is used. In pursuing legitimacy for cannabis and the organization, Missionview Wellness Center also played a key role in cultivating a locally regulated cannabis market. These findings have implications for organizations, markets, social movements, legal change, social control, and the framing of contested cultural products.

Author

• Brandon Finlay, Indiana University, Bloomington