Cannabis: From Ancient Medicine to Devil’s Lettuce and Back Again

Cannabis’ harms have been proven scientifically.

Cannabis has no medicinal value.

Cannabis is a gateway drug.

Cannabis offenses are not severely punished.

Cannabis policy in the Netherlands is a failure.

Cannabis kills brain cells.

Cannabis causes an amotivational syndrome.

Cannabis impairs memory and cognition.

Cannabis can cause permanent mental illness.

Cannabis causes crime.

Cannabis interferes with male & female sex hormones.

Cannabis use during pregnancy damages the fetus.

Cannabis use impairs the immune system.

Cannabis is more damaging to the lungs than tobacco.

Cannabis' active ingredient, THC, gets trapped in body fat.

Cannabis use is a major cause of highway accidents.

Cannabis-related hospital emergencies are increasing, particularly among youth.

Cannabis use can be prevented.

Cannabis has been a medicine since at least 2800 BCE where it is mentioned in the medical compendium Pen Ts’ao by the legendary Chinese emperor Shen-Nung, known as the Father of Chinese Medicine. He determined that the female plant, being a very high source of yin, contained the most potent medicine, and prescribed chu-ma (female hemp, as opposed to ma, male hemp) for the treatment of absentmindedness, constipation, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and menstrual problems. He was so thoroughly impressed with the benefits that he deemed it one of the Superior Elixirs of Immortality.

The below pictured remains of a ritual object that contained charred hemp seeds, dating back at least 5000 years, have been excavated in Romania.

The Yanghai Tombs near Turpan, China were excavated to reveal the 2700 year old grave of a Caucasoid shaman whose accoutrements included a large cache of cannabis, superbly preserved by climatic & burial conditions. The cannabis, female plants only, was presumably employed by this culture as a medicinal or psychoactive agent, or an aid to divination. The earliest known hemp-based textiles, woven fabrics dating back to 7000 BCE, were discovered in northern China. In India, evidence for cannabis use dates to between 1400 and 2000 BCE; and in Egypt remnants of a cannabis plant were found on the mummified Ramses II, circa 1200 BCE. In the millennium before Christ, hemp was our planet’s largest agricultural crop – a major industry providing fabric for clothing, sails, rope, paper, canvases, medicine, lamp oil and food. Until the 1940s it was listed in America’s pharmacopeia, where it belongs!

 

Yanghai tomb of shaman with large supply of cannabis buried alongside.

 

It's 1893 in India – cannabis is ground into fine pieces, sorting out seeds & stems. It's then combined with water and spices working it into a paste, then rolled into balls called bhang. The bhang is rubbed with fruit, yogurt & spices over a sieve and water is filtered through the mix which creates a drink – this is made in the honor of Shiva.

Some followers dedicate their lives to Shiva and are called Sadhus. They will also smoke cannabis in pipes called chillums. They renounce all Earthly possessions and are respected & revered by the public there.

It's in this year of 1893 that The Indian Hemp Drug Commission meets about the “hemp issue”. Sadhus line the streets -- their smoking creating “noxious odors”. Incorrect rumors made it to the Commission about bhang causing insanity. Instead of causing aggression from the public for moving against the revered Sadhus, the Commission decides to do a study thinking if it proves the cannabis is driving Sadhus mad that the public wont disagree with scientific facts. 1,100 people are questioned in a survey. They asked many questions like “Does it make you lazy? Deaden the intellect?” etc. Doctors who were questioned said it had no negative effects – physical, mental or moral. It does not cause insanity, even in heavy users or even bronchitis. They forced a monkey to smoke cannabis daily for over eight months then killed and dissected it only to find no adverse effects of any kind. They visited twenty-four insane asylums only to find no causal effect between cannabis and insanity. Because their methods were sound during the study, the final report proved no ill effects and they were forced to accept its findings & suggest no arrests for cultivation or sale – and most importantly had the ethical grounds to tax it since it wouldn’t harm anyone. This is the way it should have gone in the US.

 

Cannabis in the US must first start with Mexico. In 1518 Cortes invaded Mexico to claim it for Spain and brought with him hemp seeds, of course, as it was a major cash crop of the time. Over the next few centuries cultivators bred the hemp to have larger flowers or buds and less fibrous stems, for consumption. They had already discovered psilocybin mushrooms and peyote so it was inevitable they’d find this use of hemp and breed for it. The 1^st written account in Mexico is 1760 in a catholic church where someone complained about an herb that allowed people access to the spirit world. Despite the church’s disdain of something that is obviously from Satan, it’s use spread throughout Mexico and by the 1850s had been catalogued as cannabis sativa. At this time patent medicines described as cure-alls became popular in the US like cocaine-filled chewables, so cannabis became an active ingredient in many like Stello’s Asthma Cure. The culture of using it recreationally hadn’t been imported to the US yet. Not until the Mexican Revolution – people started fleeing north with cannabis culture in tow.

 

The US in the 1800s was a time of great experimentation in all branches of medicine. Colleges and schools focusing on herbs and other aspects of medicine popped up. The Flexner Report brought all that to an end. It was a book-length study written by the professional educator Abraham Flexner and published in 1910 under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. The report was partially conceived by Charles Eliot and Simon Flexner, both of the Rockefeller Foundation & Institute, and Simon having suggested his brother as author. One of the recommendations of the report was that those who gave money to medical schools stop sponsoring the herbal schools because they didn’t have the proper “laboratories & texts”. Three years after the Flexner Report is published, Abraham goes on to work for the Rockefeller Institute, implementing the recommendations in his report over the next two decades. This influential report contributed greatly to the decline of alternative medicine, including herbology. Even more interesting, in 1900 Rockefeller began putting money into eugenics – a “science” based on genetics created to justify racism.

 

1914 – El Paso, TX. A fight breaks out between white Texans & Mexican immigrants. Cops found cannabis on the Mexicans and associated their “violent behavior” with the cannabis. Racist (& false) rumors start to spread. A Texas state senator claimed on record “All Mexicans are crazy & this 'stuff' makes them that way.” An ordinance was passed in El Paso, the first against cannabis, designed allegedly to control it, the law succeeded only in providing a weapon the local government could beat Mexicans with. Under this new law police had a reason to harass Mexican immigrants. If they found cannabis on them they’d be jailed or deported.

 

1915 – William Randolph Hearst, newspaper tycoon, has a million-acre ranch in Mexico called Babicora that is taken over by Pancho Villa’s men. He then drops the words cannabis and hemp from his newspapers and replaces it with marijuana. This new name gives a negative and racist meaning to the previously innocent plant. And gives him a very sore spot when it comes to Mexicans.

 

1920 - Cannabis use spreads to New Orleans – vice districts are some of the places use took hold, mainly in the speakeasies and especially among black musicians creating this new music called Jazz. Cannabis use becomes part of jazz culture and where jazz goes, so does cannabis. Dr. Oscar Dowley, President of the Louisiana Board of Health, hears a story about a musician from a “nice white family” so “hooked on the stuff” that he forges a doctor’s signature, a felony. Dr. Dowley has the ear of Louisiana Governor Parker and tells him this story and how it’s a "powerful narcotic that used to just be used by Mexicans and blacks but this guy was white"! Gov. Parker writes to Prohibition Commissioner John F. Kramer about the dangers of marijuana & how it’s taking over in New Orleans. "It should be illegal as it makes men crazy & wild." Kramer responds that he’s too busy with alcohol prohibition to bother. Anti-cannabis sentiment spreads through New Orleans’ medical & legal communities. “It’s a sexual stimulant that makes crimes like rape increase.” “It’s a psychological stimulant so they get all jacked up & need a thrill & next they’re robbing & assaulting people.”

 

By the time the Great Depression hits in 1929 cannabis use has popped up in many cities where Mexican immigrants had found work & settled. They made up most of the Agricultural Labor Force. At this point White Americans want jobs that were undesirable in the past. “Mexicans came here w/ their marijuana and took our jobs.” “They smoke reefer & do crimes. Americans don’t do that!”

 

1930 – Harry Anslinger is chosen to be the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics by his wife’s uncle, Andrew Mellon. He will become Cannabis’ Greatest Enemy #1. Originally cannabis wasn’t in Anslinger’s sights. The goal was to deal with heroin and he had support of drug companies who, under these new laws, would be the only ones who could make heroin, for “those who really need it like war veterans & cripples”. Primarily the concern is too many people making it, untaxed & unregulated. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics is empowered by the US Treasury so their main goal is financial. New Orleans police officers and other officials start to deluge Anslinger with calls about marijuana being tied to crimes sexual in nature, causing citizens to lose their civilized inhibitions. He sends out a survey about “Indian Hemp” asking what are the medicinal uses, value etc and any info people were willing to share. Of the 30 respondents there was only one cautionary tale of a soldier who used it during WWI to calm his nerves but when he returned home he considered himself an addict. He checked into a sanitorium and was given treatment for morphine addiction (since they didn’t have cannabis treatment). This included electrotherapy and other harmful techniques. It took him months to return to normal. Cannabis use was likely therapeutic in the field and in dealing with his PTSD. He diagnosed himself and was mistreated in the sanitorum. Anslinger will be focusing on this one story, eventually using it as ammo against cannabis. But Anslinger at this time is still not convinced.

 

Dr. Fossier, a New Orleans doctor, reads his paper “Marihuana Menace” to the Louisiana Medical Society. Falsehoods he states include:

• Marijuana has a history mired in cruel & fanatical murder.The Hashishans who terrorized Asia and parts of Europe would consume weed before killing their victims. (This is a myth that grew from the similarity of the names.)
• 1 of every 4 people arrested in New Orleans is on weed.
• Most murderers smoke marijuana.
• Marijuana causes a moral failing.
• When compared to alcohol it’s the greater of evils because whites are the dominant race and those countries that consume it have deteriorated.

These theories are well received and often cited in future scholarship. Misinformation spreads quickly. By this time Anslinger wants to create a Uniform Drug Policy to regulate and tax narcotics, and wanted this bill to create revenue (remember, the FBN is backed by the US Treasury). The states would not agree to the Uniform Drug Act. His career was on the line. He’d have to rewrite it and sell it by hijacking public opinion. Alcohol prohibition was gone so he had to keep his reputation intact. He had no choice but to target cannabis.

 

The FBN rewrites the Uniform Drug Act. This new version has 14 pages dedicated to cannabis where the previous version had just one. Anslinger takes this new bill on tour, aided by his friends in high places. During a speech to the House Appropriations Committee he revealed a new focus on cannabis. How it used to be confined to Mexicans & Blacks, but poor white college students find themselves at a party where there are some colored students. These colored students use marijuana on white girls, while telling them their sob stories about race for sympathy. The next thing you know they are pregnant! He travels the nation speaking anywhere that will let him, spreading these awful stories.

Anslinger’s own racist feelings & ideas also played a role in the attacks on cannabis. He would commonly use the words “boy” or the N word while referring to his black coworkers. When they complained, he would have them fired. There was some pushback, Senator Guffey from Pennsylvania pushed for him to be fired for using the N word in a government memo, but it went nowhere.

He had it out for jazz musicians in particular as it was this scary music popularized by blacks whom he saw as inferior. Louis Armstrong was caught with some outside a club, was allowed to finish his show then was taken to jail for 9 days. Anslinger was obsessed with Billie Holiday, planting drugs on her, harassing her, dragging her through legal battles and stripping her of her cabaret license – among other things – eventually arresting her for narcotics possession while she died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Fictitious headlines and wild stories begin to pop up in newspapers (thanks to Hearst and his racism) like “Mexican Family Goes Insane” in the NY Times on July 6, 1927. The story states that a Mexican widow, broke and starving, finds some marijuana growing in her garden & out of ideas she feeds it to her children. The neighbor notices violent laughter and by the time the police arrive the entire family is in hysterics having gone insane beyond recovery. This is a win-win for Hearst and Anslinger – Hearst sells papers and Anslinger gains momentum on his fight against cannabis and the support he needed for his new drug laws. These crazy stories in newspapers became known as the Gore Files.

One other such example is Victor Licata who killed his entire family thanks to early dementia & psychotic episodes. Anslinger changes one minor detail, that he was in a state of delirium induced by marijuana use. That he was a normal boy but changed into a killer after smoking marijuana.

The medical community did push back a little against false claims. Dr Walter Bromberg did a study that, while flawed, did contradict Anslinger’s. This study gained a lot of notoriety, So he finds his own scholar who would “play ball” – Dr. Munch, Professor of Pharmacology at Princeton. He believed things like the entire plant including seeds & stems is psychoactive, and that if birds ate only hemp seeds they would cease to sing. In the weeks leading up to the Marijuana Tax Act Hearings, Anslinger ramps up his rhetoric and enlisted help anywhere he could. The women’s group movement was in full effect and he made sure that they had the relevant talking points for their meetings.

1937 – By now no herbalism schools exist, no alternative medicine schools of any kind, left to provide a champion to speak on behalf of cannabis when the Marijuana Tax Act is being debated. And the supposedly left-wing President Roosevelt was no help because FDR (who signed the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act into law) had been on J.D. Rockefeller Jr’s payroll since his first days in politics. Rockefeller – America’s first billionaire and owner of Standard Oil, the largest oil company in the US – had successfully eliminated or bought out any potential opponent to the oil industry’s attempts at outlawing their natural competitor, hemp. His attack on herbalism schools with the Flexner Report of 1910 made Andrew Mellon’s attacks in the ‘20s and ‘30s possible. Andrew Mellon owned Alcoa, Gulf Oil and the Mellon Bank. In the 20s Mellon financed DuPont’s takeover of General Motors and Dupont owned chemicals used by Hearts’s paper-making factories. Hearst, along with Congressman Robert Doughton and Senator Prentiss Brown (both Dupont allies) combined their strength and passed the Marijuana Tax Act with little opposition. The DuPont 1937 Annual Report stated “The revenue raising power of government may be converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reorganization.”  The “revenue raising” they were talking abut was a tax act that was designed to avoid handing out any tax stamps – a prohibition pretending to be a tax. With hemp rope gone, DuPont’s new invention, nylon, would be one of the synthetic “sudden new ideas” accepted by North American citizens. The hemp-free paper made in Hearst’s factories from trees using DuPont’s chemicals would be another. The same went for fuel. The cost of hemp fuel would dramatically differ from ethanol fuel. According to one researcher, with today’s enzyme technology, hemp ethanol could be produced for $1.37 per gallon plus the cost of raw material, with technological improvements and tax credits reducing the price by another dollar or so per gallon. The cost of raw material would then decrease as hemp was grown for more products, providing (nearly) free hemp stalks as a “waste product”. Rockefeller and Mellon could envision this and preferred their vision of dirty-fuel monopolies for Standard Oil and Gulf Oil rather than clean-fuel farms for prosperous farmers. It was crucial to their business model that hemp became illegal and stayed illegal.

 

April 27, 1937 – Congressional Hearings on the Marihuana Tax Act – Anslinger and Munch talk about how it corrupts public health and morals and proposes a tax so exorbitant that it would be prohibitively expensive. They trotted out all their best arguments, including quoting major newspapers (published by his buddy Hearst). Despite the misinformation congressmen were mostly unaware of cannabis and why they should care about it. He shares his Gore files and all of that is enough. The bill is sent to the House and is passed in October 1937. Anslinger made sure the moment the law passed there were agents in place to start busting people. Before they even knew the law existed they were being arrested. They made as many busts as they could right away to prove the law necessary.

Anti-prohibitionist Mayor of New York Fiorello La Guardia was skeptical. He commissioned his own scientific study. It revealed that cannabis had no effect on the morality of subjects. The only exception being that while under the influence the subject was more likely to tolerate use by others. It had no effect on legislation. Under this new legislation 3-4,000 cannabis sellers and users would be arrested. Sentencing was largely dependent on the judges discretion, the average being 18 months in jail. It’s during this time Anslinger comes up with the most repeated and debunked cannabis myth of all time – The Gateway Drug Theory.

1948 – the UN begins updating its international drug policy. Anslinger’s bad idea was about to spread across the world. He is interviewed by the UN in conjunction with the release of his new book “Traffic in Narcotics”. He declares his previous actions a success by claiming overdoses were down; while at the same time saying marijuana use remained very dangerous, especially to the youth. The UN spent years developing a single drug policy. Most countries were fine with banning cannabis, despite a few arguments, like India. They said it wasn’t right to limit a country of its natural resources and even tried to get special language where bhang is exempt. Instead they were given 25 years to make changes but had to sign as the rest of the world was signing. The single convention on narcotic drugs for the UN is signed in 1961 and required signatories to have strict regulations on cannabis & other drugs and created the first drug scheduling system.

1952 – At Anslinger’s urging, Rep. Bogg of Louisiana sponsored a bill that would punish users further by creating minimum sentences. Dr. Harris Isbell of the US Addiction Research Center testified against the act saying it doesn’t lead to death nor violence of any kind. That tobacco use is actually much worse for you. Nevertheless the bill passed & President Truman signed it into law. All drugs would be treated equally, cannabis the same as heroin. It created mandatory minimum sentences of 2-5 years in prison for drug offenses.

 

 

1960s – Despite the laws, cannabis use would increase. Timothy Leary, psychologist, writer and advocate for the potential therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs was arrested when cannabis was found in his car. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The law at the time required someone, if they wish to possess marijuana, to announce that intent to the government. Which would immediately make them a member of a group inherently suspected of criminal activity, violating the 5^th amendment – a person can’t be forced to incriminate themselves. Leary won the case – Congress repealed the Marijuana Tax Act. And immediately replaced it with a harsher set of laws, changing the way the Federal Government would respond to cannabis.

1970 – Nixon commissions a report on cannabis to help inform the Controlled Substances Act. Former Governor of Pennsylvania Raymond Shafer was appointed to lead the commission. Nixon told him that no matter what the findings were that he was not for legalization. Shafer’s commission did an incredibly thorough job surveying the many ways in which cannabis intersects with society. They offered extremely sensible suggestions on policy, saying that cannabis is not physically addictive, its not a gateway drug, it’s not harmful to anyone and should be descheduled & declassified. Nixon trashed the report. Instead he had Sen. James “Segregration Not Discrimination” Eastland hold hearings, which would present a different view using their own “experts” that completely disregarded the Shafer report and have hours of provably false testimony by people out to demonize cannabis. That same year Nixon signs the Controlled Substances Act. The new bill provides 300 new DEA agents. It implements the plan set up by the UN’s single convention on narcotics. It places cannabis in the Schedule I section labeling it as one of the most dangerous substances in the world with absolutely no therapeutic value. A Nixon aide later admitted Nixon wanted the law focused on "blacks and hippies", whom he considered his enemies.

1976 – Bob Randall, glaucoma sufferer, was arrested for cannabis possession but was acquitted due to a medical-necessity defense. In 1978 he brought a civil suit against the government for access to his medicine for the rest of his life. They considered it an Investigational New Drug (IND) and created a pretense that they would study this “new drug” with one research subject, Randall.

The Compassionate Use IND Program, at its height in 1991, supplied 13 patients. But when Randall explained to AIDS advocacy groups how to apply for compassionate use, and forty applications flooded the program, it was shut down in 1992. When Louis Sullivan was the secretary of Health and Human Services, he made a statement that, because of the AIDS patients, we can’t have this program. “There’ll be rampant sex if they get hold of this cannabis.” Those 13 patients were Grandfathered in and as the years went by the patients died, fewer remained in the program. Today there are four. The ironic part is that even though our government is dispensing medication to those four people, it still refuses to think of cannabis as a medication with any accepted medical use.

 Meanwhile at the same time, India is running out of time on the ratification deadline for the UN’s single treaty on narcotics. They had to outlaw cannabis to remain in the UN, so September 1985 India passes the Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances Act. They worded it to allow the bhang preparation made in religious ceremonies. Indian Sadhus continue to smoke cannabis regularly in public in defiance of the law. They are so respected, though, that the practice is accepted by the general public.

At this time AIDS is an epidemic, and patients get massive relief from cannabis for nausea, pain, fear, appetite and more. Buyers clubs pop up and people like Dennis Peron (his lover Jonathan needed it to treat his symptoms and he used it himself to treat his alcoholism) are arrested for opening these clubs. At San Francisco General Hospital a volunteer named Mary Jane Rathbun is arrested for serving cannabis brownies to the patients, becoming known as “Brownie Mary”. She was arrested three times for it, each time gaining greater attention for medical cannabis.

The effort to make herbal cannabis available as a prescription drug was initiated in 1972 by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).  In 1986 John Lawn, the administrator for the DEA, finally announced that he would hold the public hearings ordered by the courts SEVEN years before. Those hearings lasted two years and involved many witnesses, both patients and doctors, and thousands of pages of documentation. The DEA’s own administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, reviewed the evidence and rendered his decision in 1988. He concluded that it met the currently accepted medical use in treatment in the US established by the Controlled Substances Act, and added that “cannabis in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man…One must reasonably conclude that there is accepted safety for use of marijuana under medical supervision. To conclude otherwise, on the record, would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious.” He went on to recommend that it be moved from Schedule I to Schedule II. The DEA disregarded the opinion of its own administrative law judge and refused to reschedule marijuana.

A group called Patients Out of Time was started in 1990 by Mary Lynn Mathre, a nurse, and Lieutenant Commander Al Byrne, both NORML board directors. Mary Lynn got together the first 5 Compassionate IND patients for a conference and debate that was carried by CSPAN which ran the whole thing live and then ran it over and over after. In 1995 they incorporated in Virginia as a 501(c )(3) nonprofit and now operate as an educational charity. They made an 18-minute video called “Marijuana as Medicine” with those 5 IND patients. It won awards all over the world and became a sort of icon. They began to show the video to health care professionals, starting with the Virginia Nurses Association which had unanimous positive results. A resolution was drafted and presented to the American Medical Association at the open forum meeting in San Diego in 1995 and the assembled delegates voted to support the use of medical cannabis. Mary Lynn then went on to convince the American Nurses Association and the American College of Physicians. A coalition of members led by Dr Jon Gettman submitted The Petition to Reschedule Cannabis in October 2002 to the DEA. They submitted references that accompany 50,000 pages of documentation from around the world. The DEA had 3 years to make their decision. They took 3 years to the day and their decision was to pass it to the DHHS. The time period for their decision passed Summer 2008. When told that they had not met the requirements of the law, DHHS responded saying that “The response to the petition has to be signed by the surgeon general and we don’t have one right now. When we get one we’ll get back to you.” In March 2010 they sent their recommendations back to the DEA and that decision was denied by the DEA in 2011. The amount of time the DEA takes is insane when the FDA makes their decisions in 30 days. The 2006 and 2008 conferences put on by Patients Out of Time are now available through the UCSF School of Medicine’s continuing medical education website where doctors and nurses from anywhere in the US can view them online, take an exam, pay a fee and receive online accreditation for Clinical Cannabis Therapeutics. All these conferences including the 2010 Rhode Island conference can be accessed at www.medicalcannabis.com

 

The National Institute on Drug Addiction (NIDA), the scientific body meant to study cannabis and other substances, has put up roadblocks every step of the way, making it nearly impossible for scientists and physicians to examine the therapeutic worth of smoked cannabis. Simply put, NIDA will fund only studies looking at risks, not benefits. Ironically NIDA which funds most of the world’s drug studies, is also the institution putting up the most roadblocks in pursuit of this data. Endorsements and pleas from the National Academy of Medicine, the Institute of Medicine, and even the American Medical Association to reconsider marijuana as a medicine haven’t yet swayed the DEA to reschedule. Since 1968 NIDA has been growing a supply of cannabis for research purposes under contract with the University of Mississippi’s pharmacy school. They have a monopoly on the supply that can be used for FDA-approved research. This is the key factor obstructing the development of cannabis into a legal medicine. The FDA is definitely not the problem, they have acted courageously when it comes to medical marijuana research.

 

1992 – Rick Doblin (founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies – MAPS) sends a message to the director of research of the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital after Mary Rathbun aka Brownie Mary was arrested, suggesting that a clinical trial should come from that institution. The letter made its way to Donald Abrams, MD. Professor of Medicine @ University of California, San Francisco since he did community-based trials. He communicated with Rick about creating the clinical trials for comparing three different dosages of smoked cannabis vs Marinol. The FDA was very supportive of the study and approved it – next step was to get a Schedule I license from the DEA. To do that he had to get cannabis from NIDA because they are the only legal source in the country. However NIDA denied it because they were doing studies on the effectiveness of cannabis and not the danger of it. Then the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research came into being thanks to a $3 million budget surplus – appropriated for three years to study the effectiveness of smoked cannabis and in 1996 when Prop 215 passed things changed as well. When protease inhibitors arrived, HIV wasting disappeared which was their main reason for study, so they had to find a new approach. A patient who had also taken Ecstasy had died on the new AIDS protease inhibitors because of an interaction by way of the liver enzyme that metabolizes these drugs. It was the same mechanism involved in the metabolism of cannabinoids so they were invited to submit to the National Institutes of Health by NIDA, who had funds available to study drug use in HIV patients. The NIH created a special study section, they were granted funding and they got NIDA marijuana and were able to do their first study. This study showed that cannabis was safe in this relatively vulnerable patient population and there was no interaction between cannabis and the protease inhibitors and that the patients actually gained weight.

After having two studies approved by the FDA but blocked by NIDA’s refusal to supply the marijuana, Rick realized that ending the NIDA monopoly on the supply of marijuana was the key to opening the door to privately funded marijuana development. He found Dr. Lyle Craker, director of the Medicinal Plant Program at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Dr. Craker applied to the DEA in 2001 for a license to establish a MAPS-sponsored production facility.

Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly who runs the University of Mississippi Marijuana Project testified during the hearings that the Missoula studies of 2001 (work that members of Patients Out of Time had done) was falsified. He lied under oath in a DEA courtroom by doing this. The Missoula studies examined the health of the federal IND patients. They took pictures of the seeds and stems from two marijuana cigarettes issued by the program – they were unrolled in the presence of the advising doctor and fifteen other witnesses, and published those pictures in the study. When ElSohly was under oath he was asked how those seeds and stems could possibly be there, and he said “They’re not. They’ve doctored the photographs. There is no way those seeds and stems were ever put in a cigarette that I issued.” He lied under oath and was never charged with perjury. The government lawyers never followed up on it. It’s also worth it to mention that ElSohly has a conflict of interest as he makes money growing cannabis for Marinol privately so it’s in his best interest for the government cannabis to be low quality. It’s in the government’s interests also, if they’re doing cannabis research on lousy cannabis then it’s harder to show its effectiveness. The age is also incredible – back in 2007 the canisters of joints were often marked 1988-1992.

The DEA did its best to delay the process by “losing the application” for six months and then refusing to respond for over three years until they sued the DEA for unreasonable delay under the Administrative Procedures Act. They eventually forced the DEA into an Administrative Law Judge hearing which they won in February 2007 when ALJ Mary Ellen Bittner found that it would be in the public interest to end the NIDA monopoly and recommended that the DEA should license Professor Craker. True to form, the DEA delayed responding to the recommendation for two years, finally rejecting it six days before Obama was inaugurated. The DEA made some sloppy errors in their rejection so they filed a Motion to Reconsider that halted the DEA’s final ruling from going into effect. That was also denied. To this day the University of Mississippi is still the only federally approved production facility for government issued cannabis. This only very recently has had some movement. After unanimous consent from the Senate, President Biden signed into law the Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act, an act aimed at providing federal support to facilitate research of cannabis and its potential health benefits. This Act does three major things:

1) Provides a mechanism for the scientific study of cannabidiol and cannabis for medical purposes; 

2) Arranges a pathway for the FDA to approve the commercial production of drugs containing or derived from cannabis; and

3) Protects doctors who may now discuss the harms and benefits of using cannabis and cannabis derivatives.

 

It Goes On and On…

Ads against cannabis use are sponsored by The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, with donors in the pharmaceutical industry as well as the old anti-hemp team: Chevron & ExxonMobil (both previously Standard Oil), Hearst, and DuPont, who donate $30,000-$100,000 yearly. Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan & Citibank sometimes provide up to $15K per year to The Partnership for a Drug-Free America, while General Motors and even Ford (once a proponent of hemp) give double that. Election campaign contributions also ensure that hemp remains prohibited or overregulated. The oil & gas industry donated $4,529,926 to the Bush presidential campaigns. From 1992-2002, energy giant Enron contributed a total of $3,021,108 to the Republican National Committee and other political campaigns including Bush-Quayle ’92 and George W Bush 2000. George Sr. was also a previous Texas oilman, and Dick Cheney ran Halliburton – the massive oil well construction and services corporation. Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice worked at Rockefeller’s Chevron – they even named a tanker after her!

 

The government holds the patent (#6630507) for medicinal use of cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants. To further add to the irony, in 1999 the DEA and FDA moved THC pills (Marinol and others) from Schedule II to Schedule III, a category for drugs with legitimate medical indications but some potential for abuse, like Vicodin and ketamine. The problem with these synthetic oral THC pills is they get you higher than smoked cannabis and they last longer. To have the whole plant listed in Schedule I and its main psychoactive component listed in Schedule III is nonsensical, especially when you consider that THC is the chemical element in cannabis most thought to cause euphoria and the sense of an altered state. Sativex, a whole plant extract that is administered sublingually is being approved in other countries as a Rx drug but not in the US. Our government says it needs proof that cannabis is in fact therapeutic but makes it impossible to prove with its monopoly on plant material from the approved farm in Mississippi. FDA requires NIDA to sign off on cannabis studies, a hoop that no other drug researchers need jump through. Cigarettes & alcohol remain unscheduled while a full 20 percent of deaths in America are caused by them. Cannabis kills no one. It is impossible to overdose. But there is tremendous lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry, alcohol distilleries, the textile industries, and petroleum interests to keep the status quo in the prohibition of cannabis and hemp.

  

Today, transferring to Schedule II wouldn’t be enough to make it available as a prescription drug. Such drugs must undergo rigorous, expensive, and time-consuming tests before they are approved by the FDA. This system is designed to regulate the commercial distribution of products made my drug companies and protect the public about false or misleading claims about their efficacy or safety. The cost of this process exceeds $200 million per drug. There are doubts that it’s possible to develop herbal marijuana as an officially recognized medicine via this route. The plant cannabis also cannot be patented. If the full potential of cannabis as a medicine were to be achieved in the setting of the present prohibition system, many problems would have to be addressed (such as how would cost be controlled), and a delivery system that successfully navigated that minefield would be cumbersome, inefficient and bureaucratically top-heavy. The only real solution is to completely decriminalize it and tax and regulate it like alcohol.

 

One interesting way to view our current drug policy is this: the American government is like an overcontrolling parent, and the American populace is like a rebellious toddler. You can’t have these cookies, so I’m going to put them on a high shelf where you can’t reach them. So the toddler climbs up on the counter, steals the cookies, and eats them in a closet. Making the cookies taboo just makes them more enticing.

A policy of total forbiddance drives the behavior underground, where it becomes clandestine, unsupervised and infused with guilt. The hiding and shame that result from the illegality then lace the behavior with an adrenaline charge, making the experience more salient and potentially reinforcing, creating an addicting quality. The enhanced shame & fear at being discovered (or prosecuted) also may require more self-soothing actions, fueling repeated drug-taking behaviors. Our drug policy is making us act like addicts! Guilt exacerbates our national problematic drug use. Perhaps if we were to honor the practice, to normalize it and destigmatize it, we would find that we have less of a national drug problem, much like the Dutch have done.

 

Collateral Consequences of Cannabis: A conviction for a cannabis offense results in two different categories of punishment: the punishment directly imposed by the judge, and a range of collateral sanctions that are triggered by the conviction. Collateral sanctions triggered by a cannabis conviction can include revocation or suspension of professional licenses; barriers to employment or promotion; loss of educational aid; driver’s license suspension; and bars on adoption, voting and jury service. For people who depend on public assistance, a cannabis conviction can trigger a bar on receiving food stamps and restrict access to public housing. In some states, these sanctions continue for life. In 38 states a misdemeanor cannabis conviction (for example personal possession) can result in a bar on adopting a child. In 7 of these states this bar can operate for life. In 12 states a felony cannabis conviction (for example growing a plant) results in a lifetime bar on receiving food stamps or temporary assistance for needy families. In 7 states, a misdemeanor conviction can result in a lifetime ban. Only felony drug offenses result in this ban – not robbery, not kidnapping, not even murder. In 20 states occupational licensing and certification agencies may deny, revoke, or suspend a professional license based on a misdemeanor conviction even if the offense is completely unrelated to the person’s duties. In 28 states a student who is convicted of possessing any amount of cannabis will be denied federal financial aid for a year and may also be denied state educational aid for a year or longer. Further, under the laws of many states, employers may lawfully refuse to hire or promote a person because of a cannabis conviction (or in some states merely because of an arrest). States should consider enacting provisions that automatically expunge and/or seal some or all cannabis-related convictions after successful completion of the sentence or probation.

 

Other effects beyond direct costs of prohibition enforcement: