Making Markets out of Vice: Gambling, Cannabis, and Processes of State Legitimation and Formation in Canada

Abstract

The legalization of gambling and cannabis and the transformation of these practices/substances into consumer markets are processes of state legitimation, naturalization, and (re)formation in Canada. This article examines the moral-cultural transformation of gambling and cannabis over the last 50 years and analyzes these transformations in terms of state-culture dynamics. Where lotteries were legalized in the context of the welfare state, the expansion of gambling beyond lotteries in the 1990s has occurred as the federal state ceded jurisdiction of gambling to the provinces. The consequence has been the direct role of the provinces in the creation of gambling markets. Notwithstanding the monopolization of cannabis by some provinces, the opening of cannabis to private industry (e.g., sales) has occurred relatively quickly. In its central role in market making, the state, paradoxically, appears to disappear. However, the legalization and expansion of gambling and cannabis represent an increased positioning of the state at the nexus of civic and consumer cultures. State formation around consumption of gambling and cannabis centers on state entrepreneurialism and depends on retaining, yet reinventing, notions of harm with a shift from a generalized morality of nation and national spirit to individual risk calculation.