Surveillance, Social Control, and Managing Semi-Legality in U.S. Commercial Cannabis

This article presents a case study of commercial cannabis in the United States. Drawing on 56 interviews with cannabis stakeholders collected between 2018–2020, I examine how different governmentalities of surveillance became distorted by the contradiction between state and federal cannabis laws. As in other regulated markets, these governmentalities informed state-sponsored surveillance initiatives to stop, contain, or support certain forms of deviance by commercial cannabis businesses. Due to fragmented governance, the efficacy of these initiatives depended in part upon the actions of the regulated cannabis industry. Commercial cannabis businesses looked to how surveillance was configured to develop strategies that could help them overcome challenges stemming from their semi-legality. These strategies included incorporating practices that were not required by law, partnering with the state in surveillance efforts, and engaging in activities to combat the black market. I argue that the embedded relationship between governmentalities, surveillance initiatives, and commercial cannabis activities transformed these strategies into mechanisms through which structure emerged in this nascent market. This paper introduces a set of surveillance categories, proposes new directions for research on social control and markets, and offers a novel study of commercial cannabis that can help to explain the trajectory of this market.