The History of why Marijuana of Illegal

What are the main issues with medical marijuana today? What or who is keeping this herb from the people whom want to use it? Well as voiced in the March 27, 2001 Congressional hearing on medical marijuana the main reasons holding back medical marijuana is the fact that marijuana is not an acceptable medicine in the U.S. and that it is illegal under federal law. (Senate, 1) Some also see legalizing marijuana for medical purposes as a “backdoor” attempt at flat out legalization. (Senate, 6) All of these points are true, but why are they true? Furthermore how does that affect the issue that the public is calling for medical marijuana? Should marijuana be legal for medicinal purposes?

Opponents are right marijuana is not currently listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and is therefore not a recognized medicine in the United States. Marijuana was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia from 1850 to 1942 under the name extractum cannabis. Why it was taken out brings us to a character named Harry J. Anslinger. Anslinger was the founder and head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from1932 thru1962 and was responsible for such propaganda as the film “Reefer Madness” and the articles “Marijuana: Assassin of Youth” and “Marijuana as a Developer of Criminals; Exposing the Marijuana Drug Evil in Swing Bands” that falsely portray the effects of marijuana on people. (Gerber, 4-5: Grinspoon, Anslinger had convinced Dr. Ernest Cook, the chairman of the Committee on Revision of the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, to remove marijuana from the list of recognized medicines in 1942. (Gerber, 4-14) Anslinger was also a key figure in the 1937 Tax Act in fact he made the following statement at the 1937 Tax Act hearing ; “Most marijuana smokers are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. There satanic music, jazz and swing result with marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes.” (Gerber, 9) Obviously this opinion has other motives than outlining why it should be taxed. It seems as though he might have had racist motivations for his response rather than just an anti-marijuana stance to express since his statement was very racially charged and targeted as well as designed to evoke a response of action by those who might be uncomfortable to see a white woman and a black man in social relations no matter how preposterous it is that use of marijuana would cause that. In response to the 1937 Tax Act, the mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, assembled a panel at the New York Academy of medicine to study marijuana in 1939.(Gerber, 13) When the New York Academy of Medicine released results of a study on marijuana stating that it was not dangerous at all Anslinger countered by publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association articles that made outrageous and unfounded psychological effects that were based off of sensationalized newspaper accounts.(Gerber, 13) Anslinger abused his power to create legislation that discriminated against certain ethnic groups through their smoking habits. He called in personal favors and ignored ancient and recent medical evidence to accomplish his agenda. As a result doctors that wanted to prescribe marijuana or study the effects of it were stunted by the rigorous paperwork involved. (Grinspoon, Marijuana was made illegal to sell without tax as an aid for discrimination not for the good of the nation or individual. The 1937 Tax Act combined with the unjust loss of its official medical status allowed marijuana to be easily defined as a Schedule 1 drug in the Federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970. (Gerber, 14) Today marijuana is not officially a government recognized medicine and is a federally controlled substance, but should it stay that way given the way and reasons it became non-medicinal and illegal? Do the people still have a say in this country or really have they ever on this issue?

Marijuana has been used in various methods for at least five thousand years, that was the first record of medicinal use, during the reign of Chinese emperor Chen Nung.(Grinspoon, 3) Over the years many peoples including the Chinese, Indian, and African have used marijuana as a treatment for such conditions as malaria, constipation, rheumatic pains, fevers, dysentery, loss of appetite, poor digestion, headaches, venereal disease, snake bites, and to quicken the mind, and to aid in child birth.(Grinspoon, 3) Marijuana has been used for so long by such a wide variety of people that if any severe long or short term adverse effects resulted from its use they would have been made apparent, let alone adverse effects that outweigh the benefits derived from its use. From ancient shaman observations to modern or fairly modern empirical research it is clear that marijuana contains at least some medicinal value and a lot of the conditions it was used to treat traditionally it is used to treat today. In the last two hundred years doctors have used marijuana to treat such conditions as “rabies, rheumatism, epilepsy, tetanus, neuralgia, dysmenorrheal, convulsion, asthma, postpartum psychosis, and gonorrhea” (Grinspoon, 4).

Today G.W. Pharmaceuticals outlines on its web page www.gwpharm.com their new marijuana based medicines that are in stage three clinical trials, these medicines treat pain and spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and cancer, as well as rheumatoid arthritis. Unlike natural marijuana derivatives of it’s active ingredients are allowed in medicines, however in the book Cannabis from pariah to prescription it is shown in a G.W. Pharmaceuticals clinical trial that natural marijuana is more effective than marijuana derived extracts based pharmaceuticals. (Russo, 19-25) This is due to the slew of cannabinoids in natural marijuana compared to a single isolated cannabinoid in the pharmaceutical and how the varieties of cannabinoids have a wider range of interaction with the body’s cannabinoid receptors that effect systems in the body causing a faster and more effective or complete reaction from the affected systems. (Russo, 25-37) Marijuana clearly has medicinal value if it works better than the existing medicines made from its extracts. In the aforementioned 2001 Congressional hearing Dr. Janet Joy, the senior program officer of the Division of Neuroscience of the Institute of Medicine, asks for more clinical trials since it appears promising as a medicine and nothing is proven about its negative physiological health effects. (Senate, 76-77) I believe that more clinical trials will be beneficial in demonstrating that the effectiveness of marijuana as medicine surpasses the risk of adverse effects from use.

Smoking anything is detrimental to your health and the dosage of the active ingredients cannot be regulated when smoking marijuana. Furthermore ingesting any intoxicating substance that adversely affects systems in body in still unknown ways is not safe. All of this is true, but everyday millions Americans smoke tobacco and drink alcohol and ingest intoxicating substances such as prescription pain killers that although these things may be legal they may affect the body in very detrimental ways. Many abuse prescription or over the counter drugs with disastrous results for instance last year “One in four — or 495,732 — drug-related emergency room visits involved pharmaceuticals: over-the-counter or prescription drugs”. (Leinwand, 10) Just using the at least 1.5 percent of the population or roughly three million Americans that habitually use marijuana as a sample to say that a lot of people use it every year, then the safety of its use is emphasized by the number of deaths attributed to it in the march 22, 2004 Time magazine list of Annual Causes of Death in the U.S. that follows:

Tobacco: 430,700

Poor Dieting and Overeating: 400,000

Alcohol: 110,640

Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs: 32,000

Suicide: 30,575

Homicide: 18,272

Anti-inflammatory Drugs (such as aspirin): 7,600

Marijuana: 0

(Gerber, 143) (BriefFacts: Headlines: Across the Nation: Chicago: Adults’ Use of Pot Growing, 1)

Drawing from this information it is attractive to jump to the conclusion that marijuana is safe to use since three million people used it and no one died from using it last year. The problem is that this number may be skewed because marijuana is illegal and people don’t want to admit use. However it is interesting to ponder that if marijuana was made legal or legal for medical use would deaths attributed to marijuana use surpass deaths attributed to prescription medicines? For that matter any of the other categories on Time magazine’s list? This will probably not be the case or we would see it listed as cause of death throughout history. So it may be that dosage does not need to be as closely regulated since it is possible that marijuana may not be lethal at all, and rather the patient would use it as recommended by a medical professional or at their own discretion judging by relief of symptoms.

There is a movement by some of these three million plus habitual marijuana users that want to use legalization of medical marijuana as turning point for a “backdoor” flat out legalization effort for marijuana. They try use sympathy for dying and suffering patients to further their agendas. The members of these groups that are voicing their opinions through such media as High Times magazine have been using marijuana even though it was illegal for them to do so and will most likely continue to use marijuana recreationally regardless of whether or not it remains illegal. They will continue to try to organize legalization efforts and use sick and dying people to bolster the argument of their alternative counter culture in their publications, but should that have an effect on whether or not sick people are denied a possibly safe and effective medicine? I do not feel that the agendas of groups pushing back door legalization should encroach on a proper and objective consideration of marijuana as a potential treatment.

Many states including Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Maine, Hawaii, Nevada, Colorado, and the District of Columbia have some sort of medical marijuana initiatives operating. (Gerber, 105-117) Unfortunately marijuana is still a controlled substance and is a federal offense to cultivate, posses, buy, or sell. While the public in the aforementioned states seem to embrace marijuana as an “alternative” treatment for people, since it is still not officially a medicine in the U.S. If people are willing to contradict federal law with state legislation in so many states then does it not stand to reason that the allowance of medical marijuana should be voted on at the national level?

In light of how marijuana unjustly became illegal and was stripped of its medical stature combined with its historical medicinal uses along with modern medicinal application discoveries I feel that marijuana should be reevaluated by the U.S. Pharmacopoeia regarding its medicinal status. If it were to be legalized for medicinal use it would be ideal to see it available with controls similar to pharmaceutical drugs made with any controlled substance, where an I.D. check and a doctor’s prescription are required. Suffering patients and the medical field as a whole stand to benefit from such legislation, and if people can be helped with little risk then why not give it a try? If it all goes horribly wrong we can always make it illegal and strip it of its medicinal status, again.

Works Cited

1. BriefFacts: Headlines: Across the Nation: Chicago: Adults’ Use of Pot Growing., A Matter of Fact, MOF00138592. The Pierian Press, 5 May 2004. Online. Internet. 14 May 2006 http://www.pierianpress.net/databases/cgi-bin/main.asp.

2. Gerber, Rudolph J. Legalizing marijuana : drug policy reform and prohibition politics. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2004.

3. Grinspoon, Lester, and James B. Bakalar. Marihuana, the forbidden medicine. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

4. Leinwand, Donna. ‘Study exposes prescription drug abuse.” USA Today. Desert News. Salt Lake City, Utah: 10 May 2006: pg. A.10

5. Research & Development/Clinical Trials Review. G.W. Pharmaceuticals. 1 May 2006 http://www.gwpharm.com/research_phase_iii.asp.

6. Russo, Ethan, ed. Cannabis: from pariah to prescription. Binghamton, New York: Haworth Herbal Press, 2003.

7. United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources. “Medical” marijuana, federal drug law, and the constitution’s supremacy clause : hearing before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources of the Committee on Government Reform, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, first session, March 27, 2001. Washington : U.S. G.P.O., 2001.