Marijuana

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Historically used as a renewable resource and a treatment for both minor and terminal illnesses, cannabis (variously called marihuana, marijuana, or hemp) was the harbinger of a contradictory attitude in the United States toward controlled substances. This pervasive weed can be smoked or eaten as a mild intoxicant, and has become the third most popular recreational drug after alcohol and tobacco. Marijuana was once an integral part of early American agrarian society, but advances in synthetic manufacturing eliminated its industrial applications and threatened its highly-debated medicinal use as well. Modern physicians are intrigued by marijuana's efficacy, but a wave of drug hysteria that started in the 1930s effectively negated the drug's positive reputation. Despite their checkered history, hemp and marijuana remain important aspects of American popular culture.

Cannabis generally grows in two forms: hemp and marijuana, the former producing more oil and fiber, the latter producing more of the intoxicating resin whose active ingredient (among 460 other compounds) is tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. One of the oldestpsychoactive plants on earth, cannabis is native to central Asia and was first cultivated some 10,000 years ago. Many cultures have used hemp to make paper and rope, and some revered marijuana as a sacrament. As early as 2737 B.C.E. in China, written accounts have extolled the use of marijuana as a treatment for malaria, rheumatism, fever, dysentery, depression, or as an appetite stimulant, or to induce sleep. The classical and Hellenistic eras also noted marijuana as a common remedy, and by the 1700s it had become a popular folk cure-all throughout eastern Europe.

Hemp cultivation in the United States dates back to the colonial crops in Virginia in 1611, when hemp was an important resource for sails, rope, paper, and clothing. King James I ordered colonists to cultivate the plant as an industrial commodity, and some historians contend that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson advocated a hemp-based economy as well. Western doctors first discovered marijuana in 1839, when W. B. O'Shaughnessey published the results of his experiments with humans and cannabis, lauding marijuana as an effective analgesic.

Soon doctors began studying the drug in earnest and found numerous practical applications, especially in its capacity to subdue restlessness and anxiety in terminal illness. But marijuana use declined in 1850 after the invention of the syringe, which allowed water-soluble drugs such as morphine to be injected intravenously. Also, marijuana preparations were too variable, and other synthetic drugs such as aspirin, chloral hydrate, and barbiturates were far more stable and reliable.

In the 1920s and 1930s, marijuana was increasingly viewed as a catalyst for anti-social behavior, especially among minorities. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics launched a campaign to rid America of "Marihuana, the Devil's Weed," and spread exaggerated and unsubstantiated reports of violent crime, addiction, and psychosis induced by smoking marijuana. The Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 undermined scientific examination of cannabis by heavily taxing and regulating all transactions (medicinal, industrial, and recreational) and linking all forms of the plant with recreational drug use.

Some independent experts tried to dispel the myths but were shouted down by government agencies and the research institutions they supported. While its purpose was to discourage recreational marijuana smoking, the tax merely made it difficult or prohibitively expensive to procure the drug legally. Thus, manufacturers eventually switched from hemp to synthetic materials due to financial concerns and the stigma attached to cannabis.

By the 1960s anecdotes of the utility of hemp and marijuana began appearing in popular publications such as Playboy and National Geographic. These reports originated from a counterculture that equated drug use with social defiance and considered cannabis prohibition a violation of one's civil rights. Such attitudes only spurred harsher legislation, though, and in 1970 marijuana possession and cultivation were made illegal by the Controlled Substances Act, which categorized all psychoactive drugs into five schedules. Cannabis was placed on Schedule I (the most restrictive) which prohibited medicinal marijuana use even under a doctor's supervision due to high potential for addiction and abuse.

But in 1972 the National Organization for the Reform of Marihuana Laws (NORML) petitioned government agencies to reconsider the industrial applications of hemp and to reclassify marijuana as Schedule II, allowing its use in a medical setting. Finally in 1980 synthetic THC was placed on Schedule II while marijuana itself remained on Schedule I. But marijuana advocates criticized the fact that certain other drugs with documented histories of overdose, death, and addiction were given more lenient categorization. In 1986 hundreds of witnesses and medical experts testified before the Drug Enforcement Agency and produced thousands of pages of documentation supporting marijuana's merits, but the DEA issued its final rejection of reclassification in 1992.

State governments responded to public outcry, however. New Mexico was the first state to legislate in favor of the medicinal use of marijuana in 1978, and by 1992 thirty-four states were lobbying for a form of legalization. Only 17 states were permitted by the federal government to supply patients—mostly those suffering from glaucoma or undergoing chemotherapy to treat cancer—with marijuana. But many states discontinued their programs due to the mountain of paperwork involved and the glacial pace at which the bureaucracy moved.

A deluge of AIDS cases in the early 1990s created high demand for medicinal marijuana to combat nausea and appetite loss, and patients were often forced to procure marijuana by illicit means, since the application process for a legal supply could take 6-8 months. Moreover, government supplies of the drug were often abandoned by patients who felt "illegal" marijuana was more potent and effective.Regardless, the U.S. government discontinued all medicinal marijuana distribution programs in 1992. While some imported hemp products are available, mass production using hemp remains a legal sticking point for most manufacturers in the United States.

A large number of specialized, sanctioned, and regulated drugs are available legally to the general public. Thus, it is difficult to rationalize the illegality of marijuana, let alone deny the far-reaching applications of hemp as a renewable resource. Nevertheless, while public opinion waffles on its view of cannabis as a controlled substance, the historically documented medical applications of marijuana are as real as the suffering it relieves.

Grinspoon, Lester, and James B. Bakalar. Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1993

Herer, Jack. The Emperor Wears No Clothes: The Authoritative Historical Record of Cannabis and the Conspiracy against Marijuana, 11th Edition. California, Publishers' Group West, 1998.

Jaffe, Jerome H., M.D. Encyclopedia of Drug and Alcohol, Vol. 2. New York, McMillan, 1995.

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