MARIJUANA

Other books in this series:

Alcohol
Cocaine and Crack
Hallucinogens
 Contents
FOREWORD 6
INTRODUCTION
A Debate Without End 8
CHAPTER ONE
What Is Marijuana? 11
CHAPTER TWO
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 25
CHAPTER THREE
Illegal Almost Everywhere 40
CHAPTER FOUR
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 57
CHAPTER FIVE
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 75
NOTES 93
ORGANIZATIONS TO CONTACT 97
FOR FURTHER READING 101
WORKS CONSULTED 102
INDEX 106
PICTURE CREDITS 111
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 112
 Foreword

T he development of drugs and drug use in America is a cultural

paradox. On the one hand, strong, potentially dangerous drugs
provide people with relief from numerous physical and psychologi-
cal ailments. Sedatives like Valium counter the effects of anxiety;
steroids treat severe burns, anemia, and some forms of cancer; mor-
phine provides quick pain relief. On the other hand, many drugs
(sedatives, steroids, and morphine among them) are consistently
misused or abused. Millions of Americans struggle each year with
drug addictions that overpower their ability to think and act ratio-
nally. Researchers often link drug abuse to criminal activity, traffic
accidents, domestic violence, and suicide.
These harmful effects seem obvious today. Newspaper articles,
medical papers, and scientific studies have highlighted the myriad
problems drugs and drug use can cause. Yet, there was a time when
many of the drugs now known to be harmful were actually believed
to be beneficial. Cocaine, for example, was once hailed as a great
cure, used to treat everything from nausea and weakness to colds
and asthma. Developed in Europe during the 1880s, cocaine spread
quickly to the United States where manufacturers made it the pri-
mary ingredient in such everyday substances as cough medicines,
lozenges, and tonics. Likewise, heroin, an opium derivative, became
a popular painkiller during the late nineteenth century. Doctors and
patients flocked to American drugstores to buy heroin, described as
the optimal cure for even the worst coughs and chest pains.

6
Foreword 7

As more people began using these drugs, though, doctors, legis-

lators, and the public at large began to realize that they were more
damaging than beneficial. After years of using heroin as a painkiller,
for example, patients began asking their doctors for larger and
stronger doses. Cocaine users reported dangerous side effects, in-
cluding hallucinations and wild mood shifts. As a result, the U.S.
government initiated more stringent regulation of many powerful
and addictive drugs, and in some cases outlawed them entirely.
A drug’s legal status is not always indicative of how dangerous it
is, however. Some drugs known to have harmful effects can be pur-
chased legally in the United States and elsewhere. Nicotine, a key
ingredient in cigarettes, is known to be highly addictive. In an ef-
fort to meet their bodies’ demands for nicotine, smokers expose
themselves to lung cancer, emphysema, and other life-threatening
conditions. Despite these risks, nicotine is legal almost everywhere.
Other drugs that cannot be purchased or sold legally are the sub-
ject of much debate regarding their effects on physical and mental
health. Marijuana, sometimes described as a gateway drug that
leads users to other drugs, cannot legally be used, grown, or sold in
this country. However, some research suggests that marijuana is
neither addictive nor a gateway drug and that it might actually ben-
efit cancer and AIDS patients by reducing pain and encouraging
failing appetites. Despite these findings and occasional legislative at-
tempts to change the drug’s status, marijuana remains illegal.
The Drug Education Library examines the paradox of drugs and
drug use in America by focusing on some of the most commonly
used and abused drugs or categories of drugs available today. By
discussing objectively the many types of drugs, their intended pur-
poses, their effects (both planned and unplanned), and the contro-
versies surrounding them, the books in this series provide readers
with an understanding of the complex role drugs and drug use play
in American society. Informative sidebars, annotated bibliogra-
phies, and organizations to contact lists highlight the text and pro-
vide young readers with many opportunities for further discussion
and research.
 Introduction

A Debate
Without End
M arijuana is the subject of a great deal of debate. The only con-
stant in the marijuana debate is disagreement. People disagree
about the illegality of marijuana. They disagree about whether it is ad-
dictive. They disagree about its medical benefits. They disagree about
it leading to the use of other drugs. Some argue that marijuana is a
menace to society; others insist that it is not particularly harmful to in-
dividuals or society. Clearly there is very little agreement about any-
thing regarding marijuana, and uncovering the truth is difficult.

Getting to the Heart of the Issues

After alcohol and tobacco, marijuana is the most widely consumed
drug in the world, a bewildering fact in light of its almost universal il-
legality. In the United States, as in other parts of the world, the ongo-
ing debate over the legalization of marijuana is often less a search for
facts than a battle between people with opposing opinions. Both sides
tend to make emotional arguments in support of their positions, ar-
guments that frequently slip into unproven claims and exaggerations.
The disagreements are fueled by the lack of clear scientific under-
standing of the long-term effects of marijuana use, both upon indi-
viduals and upon society. Such an understanding is crucial to settling
8
A Debate Without End 9

the disagreements, yet clear research results about marijuana are

more difficult to obtain than for other drugs, including alcohol, to-
bacco, and heroin. This is because many of the effects of marijuana
are extremely variable, reflecting the setting in which the drug is used
and the experience of the user. There are several new research pro-
grams that are attempting to provide scientific evidence about the
health and social risks of marijuana use, but until more conclusive re-
sults are obtained, the issues will remain clouded.
The controversy surrounding marijuana use today centers on sev-
eral issues. First, after a decade-long decline, government statistics
show that marijuana use is on the rise again among all age groups.
Second, more people are rejecting the immense financial cost caused
by marijuana law enforcement, eradication efforts, a judicial system
overwhelmed with marijuana and other drug cases, and prisons for
convicted users, sellers, growers, and importers. Third, efforts to legal-
ize marijuana for medical purposes have gained widespread support

Activists march through Seattle, Washington, to show support for

legalizing marijuana.
 10 Marijuana

with new laws in favor of medical marijuana passed in Canada, several

European countries, and many U.S. states. Finally, marijuana, which
has traditionally been grown in less-developed countries, has become a
multibillion-dollar industry in the United States, Canada, and even
Switzerland. Several regions produce marijuana crops worth several
times the value of all the legal crops grown in those areas.
The huge profits from this illegal marijuana industry now flow to
criminal enterprises. Some studies, however, suggest that legalizing,
regulating, and taxing marijuana production and sales in the same
manner as tobacco and alcohol would divert these illegal profits to
the government and strike a blow against drug traffickers. As with
everything else about marijuana, many disagree with those studies
and insist that the government has a duty to continue trying to at
least reduce the amount of marijuana available to consumers with
vigorous law enforcement efforts.
A lot of money is involved in the marijuana industry, both in the il-
legal profits and in the huge sums spent in fighting production and
sale of the drug and prosecuting and imprisoning offenders. Mari-
juana use continues to increase along with the efforts to fight it. Pa-
tients demand the availability of medical marijuana even as opponents
insist that this is just a trick to legalize marijuana. With such contro-
versy at every turn, the marijuana debate is not likely to go away any
time soon.
 Chapter 1

What Is
Marijuana?
M arijuana has a long history in human civilization. The plants,
from which the fiber hemp and the drug marijuana come, have
been grown all over the world for thousands of years. Humans have
found many uses for this plant, but it is its use as a drug that makes it
controversial and illegal in most countries.

Marijuana Is a Drug
Drug is a medical term that describes any substance that affects the
functioning of living creatures. By this broad definition many com-
mon substances contain drugs, including coffee (caffeine), beer (ethyl
alcohol), cigarettes (nicotine), cough medicine (codeine and other
drugs), chocolate (theobromine and caffeine), and turkey (trypto-
phan). The thousands of substances created and sold by pharmaco-
logical companies with the intent of treating the medical diseases and
conditions of humans and animals are drugs. Hundreds of medicinal
herbs used for millennia by the world’s physicians to treat, cure, and
prevent disease are drugs. Most of these naturally occurring drugs,
however, have been replaced with synthetic pharmaceutical drugs,
which are usually more effective and more profitable than herbs.
In addition to the drugs used for medical treatment, many legal
and illegal drugs are used to create feelings of pleasure, excitement,
11
 12 Marijuana

Marijuana plants are the source of hemp fibers, used for various products
beyond the controversial drug.

sleepiness, sleeplessness, and other sensations. Such drugs that affect

the mind or behavior of the user are often termed psychotropic,
which means the drug moves toward the mind rather than other
parts of the body. This group includes marijuana as well as ethyl alco-
hol, nicotine, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamines, hallucinogens,
and many other substances.
Although most drugs have legitimate medical purposes, many
people use psychotropic drugs to get “high,” which means to feel
one or more nonmedical drug effects like pleasure, excitement,
sleepiness, and sleeplessness. In addition, many people also use drugs
that have genuine medical value for getting high. Excessive or non-
medical use of drugs is often described as drug abuse.
Drugs that have medical value are listed in a special type of cata-
log called a pharmacopoeia. Marijuana has been considered a medic-
What Is Marijuana? 13

inal drug throughout most of human history and has been listed in
most pharmacopoeias until recently. In fact, the oldest known phar-
macopoeia, a nearly four-thousand-year-old stone tablet from an-
cient Babylon, lists marijuana. Almost as old, a Chinese book on
medical drugs called the Shen-nung Pen-tshao Ching describes mari-
juana’s ability to reduce the pain of rheumatism and certain digestive
disorders. Marijuana was listed in the United States Pharmacopoeia
until 1941, when it was removed following the passage of the Mari-
huana Tax Act, which prohibited doctors from prescribing it.

Dangerous Drugs
Drugs cause a great variety of effects in humans and animals. Some of
the effects can make drugs difficult or dangerous to use even when
they have medically important properties. Two of these effects are
called dependence and tolerance. These effects make drugs like mor-
phine, a troublesome medication that requires careful management
by a physician, one of the strongest painkillers known to medicine.
Dependence means that a person’s body chemistry responds to a
drug by developing the need to continue taking it to avoid unpleas-
ant, painful, or even deadly reactions; in addition to whatever else a
dependence-causing drug does (for example, kill pain, relieve fever,
make a person high), it also produces extremely undesirable effects
when the person tries to stop using it. These effects, called with-
drawal symptoms, include breathing difficulty, muscle and joint pain,
headaches, irritability, nausea, sweating, hallucinations, sleeplessness,
psychosis, and, in the worst cases, death. When a drug causes severe
dependence, meaning that the withdrawal symptoms themselves are
severe, it is said to be addictive. Two of the most powerfully addictive
drugs are nicotine, found in tobacco products, and opiates, found in
heroin and morphine. Whether or not marijuana is addictive is a mat-
ter of disagreement, but it does cause mild withdrawal symptoms in a
small percentage of users.
The likelihood of developing dependence increases if a drug causes
tolerance. Tolerance describes the need to take ever-increasing
amounts of the drug to obtain the same effect that a small dose once
provided. As users begin taking such a drug more often, larger quan-
tities of the drug are needed to achieve the same effect and to avoid
 14 Marijuana

unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. In most cases a drug that causes

dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal is considered unsafe for hu-
man use.
The federal government’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
has the job of approving the safety of food and drugs. Drugs that the
FDA determines to have little or no medical value and a high likeli-
hood of being abused—not always with full agreement from the
medical and scientific experts—are generally illegal to use, buy, or sell
under any circumstances except for rigidly controlled research pur-
poses. Some drugs currently judged by the FDA to have no medical
value include heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and, since
1937, marijuana.

Source and Appearance of Marijuana

Marijuana comes from the flowering tops and leaves of two closely
related species of plants known by the scientific names Cannabis
sativa and Cannabis indica. Both species also produce the fiber
known as hemp that is used for rope and fabric. In fact, the marijuana
plant itself is often called hemp because its fiber has been so impor-
tant throughout history.
With such a long history of cultivation, many varieties of cannabis
plants have developed so that today cannabis is grown in almost all
climates. All it needs is lots of sunshine, soil, and water; so besides in-
tentional cultivation, it sometimes also grows wild. Law enforcement
agencies have discovered wild and cultivated marijuana growing in
places as diverse as Alaska, Hawaii, Switzerland, Brazil, and Africa.
Marijuana is usually a green, brown, or gray mixture of dried leaves,
stems, flowers, and seeds from the cannabis plant. Marijuana might
come as a crumbly brown mixture of dried material resembling the
common kitchen spice oregano. Or it can appear as a pressed mass of
light green vegetable matter. In its dry form, it can have a very strong
fragrance, often musty or spicy, or almost no smell at all.
Hashish, often called simply hash, is a form of marijuana that is
popular in Europe and Asia. It is an aromatic, solid material made by
collecting the resin droplets that coat the leaves and flowers of ma-
ture cannabis plants and pressing them into patties of hashish. One of
the most potent forms of cannabis is a thick green or black oil,
What Is Marijuana? 15

Marijuana is derived from the flowering tops of Cannabis sativa and

Cannabis indica plants.

known as marijuana oil or hash oil, that is made by cooking mari-

juana or hashish in alcohol to concentrate the active ingredient.

Different Names and Forms

With a long history of cultivation by many different civilizations, it
comes as no surprise that there are a great number of words for mari-
juana (sometimes spelled marihuana). Marijuana, a Spanish word,
is one of the most common names for the drug, but many people in
 16 Marijuana

medicine and research now refer to marijuana as cannabis (KAN-nah-

biss), which is part of the scientific name for the plant from which
marijuana is derived. The term cannabis is also used increasingly by
journalists in newspaper and magazine articles in place of marijuana.
Although cannabis is now the name preferred by many scientists,
political leaders, and medical professionals, there is a large vocabulary
of popular-slang, and underground terms for marijuana. Some of the
more common terms for this drug in the United States include pot,
dope, weed, herb, grass, bud, Mary Jane, reefer, hydro (refers to mari-
juana grown in nutrient-rich water without soil), pakalolo (Hawaii),
and smoke. Terms from other cultures for marijuana include hashish
(Asia), ganja (India, Caribbean), kif (Morocco), sinsemilla (Latin
America), mota (Mexico), dagga (South Africa), bhang (India), and
macoinha (Brazil).

Hemp, Marijuana’s “Good” Side

Cannabis plants have been grown for hemp fiber for thousands of
years. Hemp was grown in all of the American colonies before and af-
ter independence and formed a valuable raw material throughout
American history until the end of World War II. The varieties of
cannabis plants used for fiber contain only small amounts of the psy-
chotropic ingredients found in the varieties that produce marijuana.
Even though industrial hemp is illegal to grow in the United
States today, in 1994 the American Farm Bureau Federation de-
scribed it as a strong and versatile agricultural crop cultivated in many
other countries. Currently, hemp is grown legally throughout much
of Europe and Asia, and Australia and Canada are both considering
legalizing industrial hemp farming. In France, for instance, where ap-
proximately ten thousand tons of industrial hemp are harvested an-
nually, bales of hemp hay coated with cement are used to restore and
build houses and walls. Various parts of the plant can also be used to
make textiles, paper, paints, clothing, plastics, cosmetics, foodstuffs,
insulation, and animal feed. Hemp produces a higher yield of fiber
per acre than cotton and other fiber-producing plants. In addition,
hemp has an average growing cycle of only a hundred days, and after
harvest the soil is left virtually weed-free for the next planting.
What Is Marijuana? 17

The Chemistry and Action of Marijuana

The components of marijuana that create both the drug’s high and
its medicinal effects belong to a family of chemicals called cannabi-
noids. Marijuana contains more than sixty different cannabinoids, all
found only in the cannabis plant. Furthermore, when marijuana is
heated or burned, chemical changes occur that increase the number
of cannabinoids and their derivatives. The resulting large number of
chemicals interact in complex ways. This is one of the reasons mari-
juana is so difficult to study.
The most psychotropic of the cannabinoids is the compound
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, usually shortened to THC. Dried
marijuana may contain anywhere from 2 to 20 percent THC, with
the average being 4.2 percent.

Until banned in the

United States during
World War II, hemp was a
valuable raw material
used to make clothing,
such as this dress.
 18 Marijuana

What Purpose Does THC Serve

in the Plant?
The fact that THC produces an effect on the human brain is an accidental
outcome of a complex chemistry that serves other purposes for the plant.
Scientists are still researching the value of cannabinoids to the plant, but it
appears certain that these substances are important to the plant’s survival.
Because of the complex structure of the cannabinoid compounds and the
resin glands that produce them, scientists do not believe that THC and other
cannabinoids are merely by-products or waste products of the plant’s me-
tabolism. Instead, cannabinoids appear to be used by the plant for a num-
ber of purposes, most having to do with protecting the plant from predators
and helping it reproduce successfully.
Most scientists now believe that the primary purpose of these complex and
biologically active compounds is to protect the plant from other organisms.
The fragrance and taste of the cannabinoids that coat the leaves and flow-
ers seem to discourage insects and plant-eating animals from consuming
the cannabis plants before they have produced seeds.
Cannabinoids also appear to play another important role in the plant’s bio-
logical success. Scientists have found evidence that cannabinoids released
into the soil help the plant compete for growing room by chemically dis-
couraging the seeds of other species from germinating too close to a
cannabis plant. The sticky nature of cannabinoid resins may also help pollen
grains from male plants adhere to the flowering parts of the female plants.

The amount of THC in marijuana determines its potency as a

drug. The leaves of industrial hemp cannabis have very low THC
content (less than 1 percent of the dry weight) while the flowering
tips of mature female marijuana plants have a higher concentration of
THC (varying between 2 percent and 20 percent of the dry weight).
When THC is consumed, either by smoking or ingesting mari-
juana, the human body reacts in a number of ways. Peak levels of
THC in the blood usually occur within ten minutes of smoking mar-
ijuana, and intoxication lasts approximately two to three hours. Be-
cause it dissolves poorly in water and very well in fat (lipids), THC
and other cannabinoids accumulate in the body’s fatty tissues, includ-
ing the brain and testes. Since cannabinoids and their breakdown
product, called metabolites, linger in these tissues for weeks and
sometimes even months, drug tests can appear positive for cannabi-
noid compounds for a long time after using marijuana.
What Is Marijuana? 19

Scientific research during the 1990s made great strides in under-

standing how THC and other cannabinoids act in the human body.
One of the most important findings of this research was the discovery
that the brain and other parts of the body contain cannabinoid recep-
tor sites, places where cannabinoids can change the chemistry of that
region. (Researchers also found natural cannabinoids in the human
body, which explains why the body has cannabinoid receptor sites in
the first place.)
In the part of the human brain known as the hippocampus, scien-
tists found large numbers of cannabinoid receptors. It is here they be-
lieve THC produces the marijuana high. When THC attaches to the
abundant cannabinoid receptors found in the hippocampus, it causes
the brain to suffer a partial loss of short-term memory. The hip-
pocampus interacts with other brain regions to transfer new informa-
tion, like a math lesson or friend’s phone number, from short-term
memory into long-term memory. Consequently, new information
may never register in long-term memory while the brain is under the
influence of marijuana.
Marijuana’s effects are not limited to the hippocampus, however.
Besides making a person high and interfering with memory, mari-
juana can cause some people to experience uncontrollable laughter
one minute and paranoia the next. These effects are due to cannabi-
noid receptors in another part of the brain, the limbic system, where
emotions are produced.

How Is Marijuana Consumed?

To produce its effects, molecules of marijuana’s active ingredients
(especially the THC) need to reach the brain through the blood-
stream. This is accomplished by smoking or ingesting (eating or
drinking) marijuana.
Marijuana is smoked far more often than it is eaten, however. The
primary reason for this is that smoking produces the high almost im-
mediately while eating it takes anywhere from thirty minutes to an
hour. Marijuana is typically smoked in a hand-rolled cigarette called a
joint or in any of a variety of pipes. A type of pipe that delivers a partic-
ularly large amount of smoke during each inhalation is called a bong.
 20 Marijuana

Another reason smoking marijuana is more widely practiced than

eating it is that smoking allows for more precise dose control. When
the drug is smoked, users can tell almost at once if they have taken in
enough for the desired effect. With eating, it can be an hour before
users can tell if they have too much or too little THC in their blood-
stream.

Effects of Marijuana
Consuming marijuana causes a number of effects on the user. In a so-
cial setting, marijuana may cause infectious laughter and talkativeness.
In addition, short-term memory, attention, coordination, and reac-
tion time are impaired while a person is under the influence of mari-
juana. Soon after smoking marijuana, a user also usually has bloodshot

Marijuana is most often smoked in either a pipe, or bong (left), or hand-

rolled into cigarettes, called joints.
What Is Marijuana? 21

eyes and a dry mouth. And, within a few hours of smoking marijuana,
most users become sleepy.
The total set of effects, however, varies from person to person.
Further, the same person can experience different effects depending
on how strong the marijuana is, his or her mood while using it,
where the drug is used, and whether or not other drugs (including
alcohol) are being used at the same time.
The most commonly reported unpleasant side effects of occasional
marijuana use are anxiety and panic. These effects are reported more
often by inexperienced users, and these unpleasant feelings are often
the reason new users stop taking the drug. More experienced users
also have reported feelings of anxiety and panic after receiving a
much larger than usual dose of THC.
One reason marijuana causes anxiety is that it can increase the
user’s heart rate by 20 to 50 percent within about ten minutes of
smoking it and about half an hour of eating it. This elevated heart
rate, which can continue for as long as three hours, may be accompa-
nied by a slight increase in blood pressure while the user is sitting and
a slight decrease when standing. The light-headedness that can result
from this may also intensify the user’s feeling of anxiety. Despite this
group of effects, cannabinoids are not considered especially toxic and
there are no confirmed reports worldwide of human deaths from
cannabis poisoning.
Nevertheless, marijuana, like tobacco and alcohol, has the poten-
tial to cause permanent harm to children if used by their mothers
during pregnancy. Although there is considerable disagreement
among scientists and doctors as to the severity of the problem, there
is evidence that low birth weight and physical abnormalities have oc-
curred among babies whose mothers used the drug during preg-
nancy.
There is stronger evidence that marijuana use has a negative impact
on athletic performance, a result of research showing impairments in
coordination, reaction time, and concentration caused by marijuana.
Furthermore, some studies have found that athletic performance
might be impaired for as long as twenty-four hours after marijuana
use.
 22 Marijuana

Marijuana’s Effect on the Heart and Lungs

The increased heart rate associated with marijuana use can cause
other problems. A 1999 report on medical marijuana from the U.S.
government’s Institute of Medicine (IOM) noted that even though
the elevated heart rate experienced by marijuana users is not consid-
ered excessive for people in good health, among those with heart dis-
ease, such a rise in heart rate could be fatal.
In such cases, marijuana smokers with unidentified heart disease
may be vulnerable, especially during the first hour after smoking, to
an increased risk of heart attack. In a 2000 report from the American
Heart Association (AHA), researchers questioned 3,882 middle-
aged and elderly patients who had suffered heart attacks. Of that
group, 124 admitted to being current marijuana users, 37 had used
the drug in the twenty-four hours preceding their heart attacks, and
9 had used it in the hour before. The AHA pointed out that this was
the first time science had found evidence that marijuana might trig-
ger a heart attack in susceptible individuals. The report concluded
that among this age group the risk of having a heart attack during the
first hour after smoking marijuana is five times greater than it is in
people who never use the drug.
The AHA report also stated that the cardiac risks from marijuana
appear to be much lower than those from cocaine, which causes a
much sharper rise in both heart rate and blood pressure than mari-
juana. The overall public health threat from marijuana, however,
could be even greater because marijuana use is more widespread than
cocaine use.
Other studies conducted by government and other research facili-
ties contend that the only proven long-term effects of marijuana use
are all related to risks posed by smoking. Users usually inhale mari-
juana smoke deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs for at least sev-
eral seconds. Marijuana smoke contains tar, carbon monoxide, and
many complex chemicals, almost all of which are respiratory irritants
and potential cancer-causing agents. In fact, according to the IOM
report, each inhalation of marijuana smoke contains three to five
times more tar and carbon monoxide than an equal amount of to-
bacco smoke. Therefore, a person who smokes marijuana daily for
What Is Marijuana? 23

years might face the same respiratory problems as a tobacco smoker.

These individuals may cough more often, produce more phlegm,
show symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and have more frequent chest
colds. Long-term smoking of marijuana can also damage lung tissues
and make breathing difficult. The reason marijuana smokers do not

Who Smokes Pot?

Many people have stereotypical views of who uses marijuana. Some people
want to change the image of marijuana users. In the June 28, 2001, issue
of NORML News, an article entitled “We’re Your Good Neighbors. We
Smoke Pot” provides some examples of ordinary citizens “coming out”
about their marijuana use.
Near Portland, Oregon, a June 2001 full-page advertisement in the
Willamette Week newspaper had folks scratching their heads. At the top of
the advertisement was the headline “We’re Jeff and Tracy. We’re your good
neighbors. We smoke pot.”
Jeff Jarvis and Tracy Johnson, the Oregon couple who ran the advertisement,
are calling on mainstream Americans to come out of the closet regarding
their use of marijuana and show people that marijuana smokers are not a
threat to society. Their ad read, “The United States government acknowl-
edges that over 70 million American adults have smoked pot. That’s one in
three of your neighborhood doctors, grocers, college professors, police offi-
cers, computer programmers, postal carriers, engineers, business execu-
tives, and spiritual leaders. These pot smokers are your elected officials. They
are your dearest friends. They are your family members.”
The Oregon couple are part of a growing movement to “come out of the
closet” about marijuana use. Mara Leveritt, senior editor for the Arkansas
Times, took this movement one step further by publicly admitting her use
of marijuana in an op-ed column that appeared in her newspaper in the
spring of 1995. She wrote:
For the past two decades, I have smoked, on average, about a joint a day.
. . . If long-term, regular users like myself felt free to articulate their experi-
ences with marijuana, the walking, talking evidence we’d represent could
put our marijuana laws to shame. We may not all be intellectual and moral
paragons [models]. . . . On the other hand, few of us are wild-eyed ma-
rauders, genetic mutants, or drooling derelicts from whom society need
protect itself. And as we get older, our lives begin to make the lies that have
been broadcast about marijuana look even more ridiculous.
Leveritt and the couple from Oregon join many other marijuana advocates
who want people to know that most cannabis users are responsible citi-
zens. According to them, Americans don’t have to be afraid that marijuana
use is going to spread throughout society—because it already has.
 24 Marijuana

commonly exhibit such health problems, according to the IOM re-

port, is that they usually smoke much less than tobacco smokers.
Although many people consider marijuana to be a dangerous
drug, and many studies confirm that users do indeed place them-
selves at risk for health problems, the extent of those problems and
how much of a risk they pose remain controversial. Now a wave of
new research is showing that marijuana is neither as dangerous to so-
ciety and individuals as some previously believed or as entirely harm-
less as others have believed.
 Chapter 2

Is Marijuana
Use Really
Harmful?
N ot everyone agrees that there is such a thing as a “marijuana cul-
ture,” but when the term is used in the news, it generally refers
to a group of people who are marijuana users and who, by their style
of dress, music, symbols, and values, intentionally set themselves apart
from mainstream society. These marijuana users tend to view people
who are anti-marijuana but use alcohol and tobacco as hypocrites. Op-
ponents of this “marijuana culture,” on the other hand, feel that since
marijuana users do not respect the marijuana laws and encourage other
people to use the drug, they are a threat to law-abiding society.
Although the existence of a “marijuana culture” is questionable,
the growing number of marijuana users in society is evidence that the
popularity of this drug is increasing. It is, therefore, important to de-
termine just how widespread marijuana use truly is, in what ways it is
harmful, how serious these threats are, and how they rank compared
to alcohol, tobacco, and other illegal drugs. Further, it is important to
identify how society acquires its views of marijuana users and how ac-
curate those views are.

How Common Is Marijuana Use?

According to a 1998 federal government survey, marijuana is the
most commonly used illegal drug in the United States. This survey
25
 26 Marijuana

found that there were about 2.1 million people who started using
marijuana in 1998, and that more than 72 million Americans twelve
years of age and older (33 percent of that population) had tried mar-
ijuana at least once in their lifetimes. When those numbers are com-
pared to a 1985 survey by the same organization, it is clear that
marijuana use is increasing. The 1985 survey found 56.5 million
Americans twelve years of age and older (29.4 percent versus 33 per-
cent in 1998) had tried marijuana at least once in their lifetimes. Fur-
ther, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA),
use among high school–aged people alone increased by about 56
percent between 1991 and 1998.
Another indication that marijuana use is on the rise in the United
States is the amount of money spent on the drug. Various govern-
ment agencies report that Americans spend between $7 billion and
$11 billion on marijuana each year, and those agencies report that
these figures may be low.
Marijuana use is clearly very common, and use is increasing across
all social, age, and ethnic groups. During the early part of the twenti-

A group of hippies smokes marijuana in 1970. This activity is

stereotypically linked with that counterculture movement.
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 27

eth century, for instance, marijuana use in the United States was
largely confined to African Americans and immigrants from Mexico,
but by the 1970s and continuing into the present, surveys and arrest
records show that marijuana users now represent the entire spectrum
of American society.

Marijuana in Movies and Music

One of the most common ways that ideas, including ideas about
marijuana, spread throughout modern society is by popular enter-
tainment, especially movies and music. Until recently, no far-reaching
analysis of how drugs are portrayed in the popular media existed. In
1999, however, the White House Office of National Drug Control
Policy (ONDCP) released the first study designed to measure the fre-
quency and nature of illegal drug, alcohol, and tobacco use in popu-
lar movies and music. This study determined how often illegal drugs,
alcohol, and tobacco were mentioned or shown in movies and music
as a first step toward understanding the possible connection between
media representations of substances and real-world substance use.
The researchers found that an extremely high percentage of the
movies studied (98 percent of the two hundred most popular movie
rentals of 1996 and 1997) showed tobacco, alcohol, or illegal drugs
being consumed. Tobacco and alcohol appeared in more than 90
percent of the movies, and illegal drugs appeared in 22 percent of the
movies. Further, one-fourth of the movies depicting illegal drugs
contained graphic portrayals of drug preparation and consumption.
Researchers also looked at the thousand most popular songs of
1996 and 1997 and found that more than a quarter of them con-
tained clear references to either alcohol or illegal drugs, although
only 2 percent of the songs had substance use as a central theme.
Only about a fifth of these songs mentioned any consequences of
drug use, being arrested or getting addicted, for example. Use of ille-
gal drugs was associated with wealth or luxury in a fifth of the songs
in which drugs appeared, with sexual activity in about a third, and
crime or violence in a fifth. The researchers also found that references
to drug use were far more common in rap music (63 percent of all
rap songs) than any other type of music, including alternative rock
 28 Marijuana

Marijuana References in Music

RAP
AP
P663
63%

y 1%
Countr

(11 percent), top 100 (11 percent), heavy metal (9 percent), or

country-western (1 percent).
Although no statistics prove that drug messages in movies and
music actually cause drug use, there is a general feeling among many
people that the media help shape society’s ideas of what is normal
and acceptable. If there is such a thing as a “marijuana culture,” say
the critics, the creators of popular entertainment must accept a good
deal of responsibility for creating and spreading it.

Marijuana on the Internet

Marijuana is also consistently one of the top one hundred words
looked up on the Internet’s search engines. It is possible to find pic-
tures of marijuana, learn how to grow it, find out how to beat a drug
test, become a connoisseur of different types of marijuana, chat with
other users about their marijuana experiences, buy drug parapherna-
lia, and even purchase marijuana seeds.
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 29

Marijuana Internet sites are about equally divided between those

presenting a wide range of information about the drug and those of-
fering marijuana-related merchandise for sale. From smoking para-
phernalia to pro-pot T-shirts, marijuana-related products are
abundantly available on the Internet. Exact figures on how much
money is spent via the Internet on products related to marijuana and
other drugs are difficult to determine, but the sites advertising this
merchandise number in the thousands.
This particular branch of e-commerce disturbs many people, par-
ticularly because so many teens are attracted to it. Statistics show that
teenagers spend more time online than any other age group, and the
operators of the unregulated marijuana websites appear to recognize
this fact. Critics argue that many of the sites direct much of their ad-
vertising, by language and images, at kids and teens.
Looking at the prevalence of marijuana-related items and infor-
mation on the Internet and in other media, many people conclude
that there is an organized, highly visible, and active pro-marijuana
culture in America. Pro-marijuana messages show up in popular
mainstream movies (Saving Grace, Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke

Movies like Cheech and Chong’s Up in Smoke offer pro-marijuana

messages to mainstream audiences.
 30 Marijuana

series, Half-Baked, and Stepmom, to name a few), music, magazines,

books, political rhetoric, and television shows (for example, That
’70s Show). As a result, several organizations, including the National
Institute on Drug Abuse and U.S. Department of Health and Hu-
man Services, have begun programs that address this imbalance be-
tween pro- and anti-marijuana messages in the popular media to
prevent further encouraging youth to embrace marijuana culture.

A “Gateway” Drug?
One of the most common reasons opponents of marijuana view the
drug as harmful is that they believe it leads to the use of “harder”
drugs such as heroin, LSD, and cocaine. Indeed, numerous studies
have found that most users of heroin, LSD, and cocaine used mari-
juana before they used the more harmful substances. Those studies,
however, also found that most marijuana users never go on to use
other illegal drugs.
In fact, a large body of statistical evidence actually supports the
view that marijuana does not typically function as a gateway drug. As
marijuana use in the United States increased during the 1960s and
’70s, use of heroin, a strong and very addictive drug, declined. Then
when marijuana use declined during the 1980s, heroin use remained
fairly stable. In addition, from 1960 to 1990, as the percentage of the
American population using marijuana went up and down, the per-
centage of the population using the drug LSD hardly changed at all.
Likewise, cocaine use increased in the early 1980s as marijuana use
was declining. And during the 1990s, cocaine use continued to de-
cline as marijuana use increased slightly.
According to the Lindesmith Center–Drug Policy Foundation, of
all the high school seniors in 1994 who had ever tried marijuana, less
than 16 percent had ever tried cocaine, the drug most often associ-
ated with the alleged gateway effect of marijuana. In fact, the propor-
tion of marijuana users trying cocaine has declined steadily since
1986. The Lindesmith Center found no studies whatsoever that
linked marijuana use with an increased likelihood of using harder
drugs like cocaine and heroin.
In short, numerous researchers have found no evidence that mari-
juana use inevitably leads to the use of other drugs. The 1999 U.S.
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 31

government IOM report on medical uses of marijuana states, “There

is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are
causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.” 1
This is the case in other countries, too. In the Netherlands, for ex-
ample, where marijuana use among young people increased during
the 1990s, cocaine use decreased and remains considerably lower
than in the United States. In the Netherlands, marijuana is legal if
purchased in government-regulated outlets, a policy designed specifi-
cally to separate young marijuana users from the illegal markets
where heroin and cocaine are sold. The Netherlands was the first
country to enact legislation based on the notion that marijuana users
would not even be exposed to drugs like cocaine and heroin if mari-
juana use were legalized, and the Dutch government considers this
policy successful in reducing hard drug use.
American proponents of marijuana legalization, like the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), agree
with the conclusions of the IOM report and the marijuana policy of
the Netherlands. NORML asserts that the real gateway effect of mar-
ijuana use is not the result of any tendency of marijuana to make users
crave stronger drugs but its illegal status, which exposes buyers to
more dangerous drugs on the black market. As long as marijuana is
illegal, NORML and others say, users are more likely to be exposed
to heroin and cocaine when buying marijuana from illegal sources,
because those people are sometimes the same dealers who sell more
dangerous, addictive drugs.

Does Marijuana Use Cause

Dependence or Addiction?
Most scientific medical evidence indicates that marijuana is not addic-
tive in the way that heroin, nicotine, and other drugs are addictive.
Marijuana generally does not make a user’s body so dependent on
the drug that the person feels physically compelled to keep using it.
Nevertheless, all drugs can be used in an addictive fashion by some
people, and that includes marijuana. This possibility is another reason
marijuana opponents contend that the drug is harmful.
For a drug to be classified as addictive, there needs to be evidence
that using it causes substantial numbers of users to fail repeatedly in
 32 Marijuana

their attempts to stop using it. Heroin and nicotine, for instance,
meet this definition, and both are considered highly addictive. Based
on numerous national studies, however, marijuana does not appear
to meet this definition of addictiveness.
This is because the great majority of people who have used mari-
juana do not become regular users. For example, a 1993 report by
the Lindesmith Center found that about 34 percent of Americans
had used marijuana sometime in their life, but only 9 percent had
used it in the past year, 4.3 percent in the past month, and 2.8 per-
cent in the past week. The report also described a study of young

87%
Addiction: Marijuana vs.
Alcohol and Cigarettes
77% 76%

64%
% High School Students Use

60%

49%

34%

26%

16%

Lifetime Last Year Last Month

Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 33

adults who had first been surveyed in high school. The study found
that even though many students had tried marijuana, most had not
continued using it: 77 percent reported they had used the drug—but
74 percent of those had not used it in the past year, and 84 percent
had not used it in the past month.
In addition to the Lindesmith Center study, many other private
and government research studies have sought to determine if mari-
juana actually does produce the classic symptoms of addiction in hu-
mans, including physical dependence, tolerance, and withdrawal. In
1972 during the Nixon administration, growing marijuana use
prompted the federal government to review the existing studies on
the drug. After studying all the available information, the govern-
ment issued a report concluding that marijuana does not possess
physically addictive traits. Since then the vast majority of articles pub-
lished in medical journals have agreed. Two reports in particular—
one from the Addiction Research Center (part of the National
Institute on Drug Abuse) and another from the University of Cali-
fornia—compared the addictiveness of heroin, cocaine, nicotine, al-
cohol, caffeine, and marijuana. These reports found nicotine to be
the most addictive and marijuana the least addictive of the drugs
studied. Marijuana also ranked last in terms of producing a physical
tolerance to the drug and was deemed least likely to produce signs of
withdrawal upon quitting. According to the 1999 IOM report on
marijuana’s potential medical uses, “Compared to most other drugs
. . . dependence among marijuana users is relatively rare. . . . [T]he
proportion of marijuana users that ever become dependent is 9 per-
cent of all users, compared to 32 percent of all tobacco users, 15 per-
cent of all alcohol users, 17 percent of all cocaine users, and 23
percent of all heroin users.” 2
Even so, some researchers contend that there is evidence to show
that some marijuana users experience some withdrawal symptoms
when they want to stop using the drug. These symptoms are minor,
however, when compared to the withdrawal symptoms experienced
by users of highly addictive drugs like heroin or nicotine. In the
words of the 1999 IOM report, “Although few marijuana users de-
velop dependence, some do. . . . A distinctive marijuana withdrawal
 34 Marijuana

Dependence: Marijuana vs. Other Drugs

32%
Drug Users Who Become Addicted

23%

15% 17%

9%

Marijuana Cigarettes Alcohol Cocaine Heroin

syndrome has been identified, but it is mild and short-lived. The syn-
drome includes restlessness, irritability, mild agitation, insomnia,
sleep disturbance, nausea, and cramping.” 3
Another fact marijuana opponents point to as an indication that
marijuana may be addictive after all is the rise in recent years of mari-
juana addiction treatment programs. At first glance, this would seem
to confirm the existence of marijuana addicts, but on closer examina-
tion, even this situation is ambiguous. Corresponding to the increase
in treatment programs, there has been an increase in drug testing in
the workplace, schools, and elsewhere. When an employee fails a
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 35

drug test by testing positive for marijuana, that person is usually given
the option of going to a treatment program, getting fired from the
job, or being arrested. Marijuana supporters contend that this choice
of options has given rise to an increase in the number of people vol-
untarily entering treatment programs for marijuana dependence.
Neither side yet has unambiguous evidence to support its position.

Does Marijuana Cause Lung Disease?

Marijuana may not be as addictive as some other drugs, but mari-
juana smoke does contain lung irritants that could increase the risk of
lung disease. Although frequent marijuana smokers report respira-
tory problems like chronic cough, phlegm, and wheezing, clinical
studies of daily marijuana users have found no increased risk of seri-
ous lung diseases like chronic bronchitis, emphysema, or lung cancer.
In one study, conducted continuously since 1982 at the University
of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) Medical School, researchers have
compared marijuana-only smokers, tobacco-only smokers, smokers
of both, and nonsmokers. They found that some marijuana-only
smokers developed lung problems, but such problems were much
less frequent and less pronounced than those found in tobacco smok-
ers. In addition, the impairments found in marijuana-only smokers
occurred primarily in the lung’s large airways, not the smaller, more
delicate airways. Since repeated inflammation of the small airways
leads to chronic bronchitis and emphysema, marijuana smokers, the
study concluded, are not likely to develop these diseases.
Marijuana is usually smoked unfiltered, which allows more of the
tar and other substances found in burning vegetable matter into the
user’s lungs. Furthermore, because most marijuana smokers inhale
deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs for many seconds, more of
these dangerous substances are consumed in one inhalation of mari-
juana than in one inhalation of tobacco. Nevertheless, even a heavy
marijuana user smokes the equivalent of only a few cigarettes per day.
That may explain why research has not found any evidence that mar-
ijuana-only smokers have an increased risk of developing lung cancer.
Nevertheless, bronchial cell changes that appear to be precancerous
have been seen in some people who smoke marijuana more than
twice a day, which indicates that an increased risk of cancer among
 36 Marijuana

heavy users is definitely possible. More research, however, will be

necessary to confirm this connection.

Does Marijuana Use Lead to Brain Damage?

The lungs are not the only place in the body that marijuana oppo-
nents say is at risk from marijuana use. They insist that marijuana use
damages a person’s brain. But like all issues associated with marijuana
use, not everyone agrees.
A research study from the 1970s found structural changes in sev-
eral brain regions in two rhesus monkeys that had been intentionally
exposed to high doses of THC. Because these changes primarily in-
volved the hippocampus, this finding suggested that brain damage
(problems with learning and memory) in human marijuana users
might be possible. Other studies on mice and rats found similar brain
changes. Like many studies on marijuana’s effects, however, all of
these animal studies required exceptionally large doses of THC to
produce observable changes to brain tissues, in some cases up to two
hundred times the typical dose used by humans.
Several years later in another study, rhesus monkeys were exposed
through face-mask inhalation to marijuana smoke that was equal to
four to five joints per day for one year. When the monkeys were ana-
lyzed seven months later, the scientists found no changes in the hip-
pocampus structure, cell size, cell number, or nerve connections,
suggesting that even heavy marijuana use may not lead to irreversible
changes in the hippocampus part of the brain. Because of research
like this repudiating earlier reports of brain damage, the 1999 IOM
report on medical marijuana concluded, “Earlier studies purporting
[claiming] to show structural changes in the brains of heavy mari-
juana users have not been replicated with more sophisticated tech-
niques.” 4
Despite this conclusion, opponents of marijuana insist that the re-
search is not complete and that further studies will turn up evidence
that marijuana use leads to brain damage. Thus studies continue to
explore the effect of marijuana on brain functioning with ever-
increasing scientific reliability. These latest studies have found that
even though marijuana intoxication does not impair the brain’s ability
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 37

to retrieve information learned previously, it can, particularly when

high doses are used, interfere with the ability to transfer new informa-
tion into long-term memory. Therefore, most researchers conclude
that marijuana can temporarily impair some memory functions, but
that it does not cause permanent brain damage.

Does Marijuana Affect Male Fertility?

For many years scientists have known that in men, marijuana use also
causes reduced fertility. A 2000 study conducted by scientists from
the University of Buffalo found definite evidence that marijuana use
has caused infertility in some men. This research proved that cannabi-
noids, both the body’s natural cannabinoids and THC from mari-
juana, can prevent sperm from functioning normally. High
concentrations of cannabinoids, for instance, can cause sperm to be
less effective at fertilizing eggs. This fact led scientists to conclude
that heavy marijuana users may jeopardize their fertility. How often
this happens is still unknown, but the lead scientist in the University
of Buffalo study stated, “The increased load of cannabinoids in peo-
ple who abuse marijuana could flood the natural cannabinoid-signal
systems in reproductive organs and adversely impact fertility. This
possibility may explain observations made over the past 30 to 40
years that marijuana smoke drastically reduces sperm production in
males.” 5

Does Marijuana Use Make

People Unmotivated?
Marijuana is also sometimes said to make users passive, apathetic, un-
productive, and unable or unwilling to fulfill their responsibilities.
This combination of traits is called the amotivational syndrome.
The thought that marijuana causes amotivational syndrome in
users first appeared during the late 1960s, as marijuana use was in-
creasing among American youth. Whether or not marijuana makes
people less motivated, though, is difficult to test and prove. For ex-
ample, it is difficult to tell whether an unmotivated person became
that way because of marijuana use or if that person was unmotivated
for other reasons before ever trying marijuana. In efforts to better
 38 Marijuana

understand this issue, researchers conducted several large-scale stud-

ies of high school and college students. One study of college students
found that marijuana users actually had higher grades than nonusers
and that both groups were equally likely to successfully complete
their educations. Other studies, these conducted in high schools,
found little difference in grade-point averages between marijuana
users and nonusers, except that one study found lower grades among
students who used marijuana every day. That study’s authors felt,
however, that it was possible, based on profiles of the students, that
the poor grades and marijuana use were part of a bigger set of social
and emotional problems.
Besides studies comparing marijuana users and nonusers, consider-
able laboratory research has been directed at finding a link between
marijuana use and amotivational syndrome. Most of these studies
found that marijuana did not have a significant impact on motivation
or learning and work performance. Such results have led researchers
to suspect that people with low motivation from nondrug reasons—
perhaps because they live with depression, illness, or poverty—are

420!
If there is truly such a thing as the marijuana culture, then its national holi-
day is April 20, or 4/20. For many years, marijuana users have used the
number 420 as a symbol for their drug, and all around the world they have
developed a tradition of smoking marijuana at 4:20 P.M. on 4/20. Further-
more, many pro-marijuana organizations hold rallies and lectures on April
20 each year.
There are several theories to explain the origin of 420 as a symbol of the
marijuana culture. One theory says that 420 is a police code for marijuana
use in some towns. Another theory says it represents the 420 chemical
components supposedly found in marijuana. Others believe that a group of
students met regularly after school and their meeting time, 4:20, became a
symbol of marijuana smoking that somehow spread.
Whatever its origin, for many years 420 was a secret symbol understood
only by members of the marijuana culture. Its symbolic meaning eventu-
ally leaked out into mainstream society, however, and it has since become
commercialized, showing up on clothing, bumper stickers, and other mer-
chandise.
Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful? 39

more likely to use drugs, including marijuana. The 1999 IOM report
on medical uses for marijuana supported this view, citing statistical
evidence suggesting that people with preexisting low motivation lev-
els are more likely to use alcohol and other drugs. The IOM report
added that there is no evidence linking low motivation to marijuana
use, stating: “When heavy marijuana use accompanies these symp-
toms [of low motivation], the drug is often cited as the cause, but no
convincing data demonstrate a causal relationship between marijuana
smoking and these behavioral characteristics.”6
Currently available evidence strongly suggests that the health and
social risks posed by marijuana are less than previously believed. Nev-
ertheless considerable disagreement remains about whether or not
marijuana and the existence of a marijuana culture are harmful.
 Chapter 3

Illegal Almost
Everywhere
M arijuana is now illegal in most countries of the world. In the
United States it is illegal to use, possess, grow, or sell marijuana
in about three-quarters of the states. Many people ignore these laws,
however; in 2000 an average of one marijuana smoker was arrested
every forty-five seconds in America.
Recently, though, the illegal status of marijuana has come under
ever-increasing criticism. This is due largely to a growing belief that
outlawing marijuana, a drug many experts say is less harmful than al-
cohol or tobacco, has been an entirely unsuccessful and exceedingly
expensive experiment.

Before Marijuana Was Illegal

In the United States, marijuana and other substances derived from
the cannabis plant were first made illegal in 1937, but the story lead-
ing up to the various cannabis laws goes back to the turn of the twen-
tieth century. In 1900 between 2 and 5 percent of the U.S.
population was addicted to morphine, a drug that was the primary in-
gredient in numerous unregulated medications known as patent
medicines. These medicines promised to cure just about every ail-
ment from headaches to indigestion. Because of the strong pain-
killing ability of morphine, the medications seemed to work. When
40
Illegal Almost Everywhere 41

the pain associated with disease or injury began to come back, an in-
dividual had only to go to the local store and buy another bottle of
the patent medicine. Morphine is a highly addictive drug, however,
so it was not long before people were buying their patent medicines
frequently, and not necessarily because they were still in pain; instead,
they bought the medicine to avoid the agony of withdrawal.

Patent medicines from the early twentieth century contained morphine, a

highly addictive drug.
 42 Marijuana

The federal government, alarmed at the growing number of unin-

tentionally addicted citizens, responded in 1906 with the Pure Food
and Drug Act. This law created the U.S. government’s Food and
Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA had the task of approving all
foods and drugs meant for human consumption before they could be
sold. The very first job of the FDA was to remove medicines contain-
ing morphine and other opium derivatives from the open market and
make them available only by a doctor’s prescription. Ultimately, the
FDA’s actions reduced the number of customers so much that the
patent medicine manufacturers went out of business.

The Harrison Act of 1914

The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which was not a criminal law,
was extremely effective and reduced the level of addiction more than
any of the many criminal drug laws enacted since. One such law, the
Harrison Act, enacted in 1914, represented the first time drug use
had ever been defined as a crime. This law applied only to derivatives
of the drug opium (including morphine) and to derivatives of the
coca plant (including cocaine). Although marijuana was not specifi-
cally covered by the Harrison Act, this unusual law is important in
the history of marijuana illegality because it set the pattern, or prece-
dent, for the federal drug legislation that followed.
The Harrison Act was unusual in that it was actually a tax law,
and for the next fifty years American drug laws followed this model,
indirectly making the use of certain pain medications a criminal act.
The law taxed the nonmedical use of drugs like morphine and co-
caine, strong painkillers to which up to 5 percent of the American
population was addicted in 1900. The tax for nonmedical use of
these drugs was far more than the cost of morphine or cocaine. People
who used the drugs without paying the tax were subject to criminal
prosecution.

Widespread Illegality
The Harrison Act paved the way for the national prohibition of
cannabis. Between 1914 and 1937, twenty-seven different states
made marijuana illegal. The states that passed these laws fell into two
groups. The first states to pass marijuana laws were in the western
Illegal Almost Everywhere 43

part of the country. These states had recently experienced a large im-
migration of Mexican citizens, who had come north from their coun-
try in search of better economic conditions. They were mostly
farmworkers, and some of them brought marijuana with them. Most
of the non-Hispanic people in the western part of the United States
mistrusted the new immigrants and knew nothing about marijuana.
Consequently the first anti-marijuana laws were more of an expres-
sion of hostility toward the newly arrived Mexican community than
opposition to the marijuana some of them used.
A second group of states that enacted criminal laws against the use
of marijuana were in the northeastern part of the country. In these
states there were few Mexicans, but northeastern residents had heard
about the influx of Mexican immigrants out west and about the drug
marijuana. These states had just begun to get the morphine addiction
problem under control and feared that addicts, cut off from mor-
phine, would substitute some other drug that was not yet controlled.
In the absence of any research or medical information, marijuana
seemed like a possible candidate for this substitution. So even though
marijuana use was virtually unknown in the Northeast at that time,
these states also outlawed it.

The Marihuana Tax Act

The law that made nonmedical use of marijuana (spelled marihuana
in 1937) illegal was called the Marihuana Tax Act and was passed by
Congress in 1937. How that law came to pass is a curious chapter in
American lawmaking.
Whenever Congress considers a proposal for a new law, a congres-
sional committee holds hearings to determine the facts surrounding
the proposed law. Typically, these hearings require testimony from
experts on all sides of the question, and it usually takes at least a few
weeks to thoroughly examine all aspects of the proposed new law.
Hearings on the new marijuana law, however, lasted only three days,
and less than two hours of that time was devoted to testimony. Years
later, when professors Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread were
doing research for their book about the history of the marijuana laws,
they were surprised to discover how little discussion took place in
Congress before the new marijuana law was passed. They report:
 44 Marijuana

When we asked at the Library of Congress for a copy of the hearings, to the
shock of the Library of Congress, none could be found. . . . It took them four
months to finally honor our request because the hearings were so brief that
the volume had slid down inside the side shelf of the bookcase and was so thin
it had slid right down to the bottom inside the bookshelf. That’s how brief
they were. They had to break the bookshelf open because it had slid down in-
side. 7

Only a few people testified during that brief 1937 hearing. The
first speaker was Harry Anslinger, the newly named commissioner of
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger gave a very short testi-
mony based on hearsay and unproven reports, which he summed up
with the words, “Marihuana is an addictive drug, which produces in
its users insanity, criminality, and death.” 8
Since outlawing marijuana would make all cannabis cultivation ille-
gal, Congress also wanted to hear testimony from representatives of
the rope, paint, and birdseed industries that used hemp for their
products. Representatives from the rope and paint industries testified
that they could use other raw materials in place of hemp. The repre-
sentative of the birdseed industry, however, said no other seeds pro-
duced the glossy feathers that hemp seed did and they wanted to
keep using hemp seed. As a result of that testimony, birdseed compa-
nies later received an exemption from the Marihuana Tax Act. They
were allowed to use imported hemp seeds that have been treated so
they do not sprout. That exemption remains in effect today.
Following testimony from Anslinger and representatives of the
hemp industries, the congressional committee heard from the med-
ical community. The first medical testimony came from James C.
Munch, a pharmacology researcher at Temple University who stud-
ied the effects of drugs. Munch testified that he had injected into the
brains of three hundred living dogs what he claimed was the active
ingredient in cannabis, and that two of those dogs had died.
Researchers today argue that this was highly questionable science.
The standard way scientists confirm new research is to publish the
results of an experiment in a scientific journal and have those results
independently reproduced by a number of other scientists. Munch’s
experiments with dogs and marijuana were never published, and no
other scientist ever reproduced his results. Further, the true active
ingredient in cannabis was not even identified until after World War
Illegal Almost Everywhere 45

The Father of Marijuana Prohibition

When Harry J. Anslinger be-
came the commissioner of the
Bureau of Narcotics, he was al-
ready known for his very strong
feelings about drug abuse.
While the alcohol Prohibition
Act was still in effect during the
1930s, for example, he criti-
cized the law as being lenient;
it penalized only people who
sold, manufactured, and trans-
ported liquor, not people who
bought and used it. Anslinger
felt that the law should be Commissioner of the Bureau of
Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger, reports to
changed so that buyers and
a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee about
consumers of liquor would also drug use.
be punished, and he proposed
harsh punishments to force the
public to obey the liquor laws. He thought that a first-time conviction for buy-
ing alcohol deserved a jail term of not less than six months and a fine of not
less than $1,000. He felt a second violation deserved imprisonment for two
to five years and a fine of $5,000 to $50,000. Although his philosophy of pun-
ishing consumers of alcohol was not shared by most of Congress, he did
manage to influence the lawmakers in that direction when it came to other
substances, including marijuana.
The United States was suffering through the Great Depression when
Anslinger became commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics in 1930. It was
a difficult time to get funding for any kind of project, even for law enforce-
ment. To convince Congress to grant the bureau more funds, the commis-
sioner had to prove there was a dangerous new drug threatening the
country, one that required immediate federal attention and more money
for the Bureau of Narcotics. He believed that dangerous new drug was
marijuana.
Anslinger knew the power of public opinion, and he decided to use it. Un-
der his guidance the bureau produced frightening stories about the evils of
marijuana. These tales appeared in virtually every newspaper and publica-
tion. Lurid posters went up on billboards, in government offices, and on
public transportation. And movies like Reefer Madness amplified the fear of
marijuana that was growing in America. Although Anslinger, through his vast
media campaign, almost single-handedly created the idea of a “marijuana
problem” in the United States, much of what he did was the result of a sin-
cere conviction that marijuana posed a danger to the country.
 46 Marijuana

II in a laboratory in Holland. In 1937, however, no one else had

done any research on marijuana. Thus, no one on the committee
objected to Munch’s testimony, and his statements were accepted as
fact.
Following Munch, William C. Woodward, who was both a lawyer
and a doctor, testified. Woodward was the top legal adviser for the
American Medical Association (AMA), the organization that repre-
sents physicians in the United States. Testifying on behalf of the
AMA, Woodward noted that the AMA did not consider Munch’s
research conclusive. Further, he said that the AMA had no other ev-
idence of the harmfulness of marijuana. Woodward summed up his
testimony with the words, “The American Medical Association
knows of no evidence that marihuana is a dangerous drug.” 9

Films like Reefer

Madness and other
media campaigns were
used by the government
to warn of the evils of
marijuana.
Illegal Almost Everywhere 47

Politics Get in the Way

When the hearing ended, the committee shared what it had learned
with the rest of the members of Congress, a common practice used
before voting on a new law. Theoretically this is a good system, but
sometimes political motivations prevent it from working the way it is
intended to.
In 1937 Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the
middle of a successful push to get Congress to pass the huge package
of economic and social reform legislation that came to be known as
the New Deal. The overwhelmingly Democratic Congress was help-
ing the president by attempting to discredit all opposition to New
Deal legislation. The AMA, however, felt that the New Deal was bad
for the medical profession and opposed most of the new legislation.
Since the AMA constantly opposed the New Deal from 1932 to
1937, the Democrats who made up most of the marijuana hearing
committee treated the AMA as their political enemy. This became
obvious during the hearings. Following Woodward’s statement that
the AMA had found no evidence of marijuana’s harmfulness, one of
the New Deal congressmen went so far as to say, “Doctor, if you
want to advise us on legislation, you ought to come here with some
constructive proposals . . . rather than trying to throw obstacles in the
way of something that the federal government is trying to do.” 10
So despite the AMA’s opposition, the Marihuana Tax bill passed
from the committee to the floor of Congress for debate and voting.
The debate in the House of Representatives lasted only a few min-
utes. Only one pertinent question was asked from the floor: Did any-
one talk to the AMA and get their opinion? Representative Carl
Vinson, one of the New Deal Democrats who supported the mari-
juana bill, answered the question. Getting both the name of the
AMA representative and the facts wrong in order to push the new
law through, Vinson said, “Their Doctor Wharton gave this measure
his full support . . . [as well as] the approval [of] the American Med-
ical Association.” 11
Thus, the bill passed and went to the Senate, where it passed with-
out debate. President Roosevelt immediately signed the bill into law,
making marijuana essentially illegal in the United States.
 48 Marijuana

Soon after the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, Commissioner

Anslinger appointed James C. Munch, the researcher who had in-
jected marijuana into dog brains, to be the Federal Bureau of Nar-
cotics’ expert on marijuana. He held that position until 1962.

A Temporary Comeback for Hemp

In 1942, only five years after the Marihuana Tax Act outlawed all cul-
tivation of cannabis, the United States was embroiled in World War II
and found itself cut off from Asian sources of cheap hemp fiber. The
country’s warships needed a lot of hemp for rope, however, so the
Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was ignored while the federal govern-
ment went into the business of growing hemp on large farms
throughout the Midwest and the South.
Hemp cultivation ceased again when the war ended, but the re-
sults of that large-scale cultivation can still be seen in the extensive
amount of wild hemp, called ditchweed, that reappears each summer
throughout the Midwest. Although this ditchweed contains very lit-
tle THC, various government and police agencies go to great trouble
and expense to remove it every year.

The “Insane Killer” Drug

At the congressional committee hearing in 1937, Harry Anslinger,
the commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, had said that marijuana
causes, among other things, insanity. He was not just making this up.
In fact, at that time there had been several well-publicized murder tri-
als where the defendants’ sole defense had been not guilty by reason
of insanity due to having used marijuana prior to the commission of
the crime.
To make the “innocent by reason of insanity” defense work, a de-
fense lawyer must produce an expert witness who will testify that the
defendant was truly insane, even if temporarily. During the 1930s
and ’40s when scientific research on marijuana was virtually nonexis-
tent, there was only one witness in the country who could be called
on to testify about the effects of marijuana. It was Munch,
Anslinger’s own marijuana expert who claimed to have injected the
drug into dogs.
Illegal Almost Everywhere 49

The most famous of the “defense by reason of insanity from mari-

juana” trials involved two women who had robbed and killed a bus
driver, claiming that they committed the crime because they had
gone temporarily insane after smoking marijuana. During the trial
Munch justified his expert status by testifying that not only had he
conducted the experiments on dogs and testified before Congress
about it, but that he had tried the drug himself and it had made him
temporarily insane. In this high-profile trial, he testified that after
smoking two puffs of marijuana, he hallucinated that he had become
a bat and flown around the room for fifteen minutes, ending up at
the bottom of a giant inkwell.

During World War II, the need for stronger rope made from hemp fiber
caused the federal government to ignore the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937.
 50 Marijuana

Following Munch’s sensational testimony, one of the defendants

took the stand. She claimed that while she was under the influence of
marijuana, she imagined that she grew vampirish fangs that dripped
with blood. These testimonies convinced the jury that marijuana
causes temporary insanity.

In the 1950s, the idea of marijuana use causing criminal insanity became a
popular theme in pulp books.
Illegal Almost Everywhere 51

In another murder trial during the same period, the defendant did
not even claim to use the drug. He declared that there had been a bag
of marijuana in the room and it had put out “homicidal vibrations”
that made him kill dogs, cats, and ultimately two police officers. In the
years immediately following the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act,
where the marijuana defense was used, the defendants in those and
other murder trials were all found innocent by reason of insanity.
Meanwhile, Anslinger was beginning to develop doubts that mari-
juana was the culprit in the murder cases, and he was bothered by the
successful marijuana insanity defenses. He wrote to Munch and told
him that if he did not stop testifying for the defense, he would be
fired as the official marijuana expert of the Federal Bureau of Nar-
cotics. The pharmacologist stopped testifying, and since there were
no other marijuana “experts” around at the time, the “insanity by
marijuana” defenses ended. By then, though, marijuana had become
known as a drug that turned people into insane killers.

The Boggs Act of 1951

By 1950 the notion that marijuana was an addictive drug that caused
insanity, criminality, and death was no longer accepted by many peo-
ple. In the years since the marijuana hysteria of the 1930s, and de-
spite the fact that the drug was illegal, marijuana use had continued
to spread. As a result, more people witnessed its effects firsthand, and
few believed the stories about insanity, criminality, and addiction.
However, there was a growing sense in the United States that drug
use among teenagers was increasing. Congress responded by intro-
ducing a new law, the Boggs Act, which carried much harsher penal-
ties for marijuana use.
To pass a new law with harsher penalties, it was necessary to
demonstrate that marijuana, if not the cause of insanity, criminality,
and addiction, was nevertheless dangerous. As before, a congres-
sional committee heard testimony. First a doctor who ran a govern-
ment narcotics rehabilitation clinic in Kentucky testified that the
medical community knew that marijuana was not an addictive drug
and that it did not produce insanity, criminality, or death. The next
witness, Commissioner Anslinger, reversed his earlier position, the
 52 Marijuana

one he expressed in his 1937 testimony, and agreed that marijuana

was not addictive and did not produce insanity or death. Instead,
he said, marijuana use is the first step to heroin addiction. That
statement introduced the world to the idea that marijuana was the
“gateway” to heroin, meaning that using marijuana makes the user
more likely to use heroin, a highly addictive drug. In addition to in-
troducing the concept of marijuana as a gateway drug, this repre-
sented the first time that it had been categorized with more
dangerous drugs.
The Boggs Act had one more reason compelling Congress to vote
for it. In 1951 the Cold War was in full swing, and many Americans
feared that communist spies and infiltrators were everywhere. News-
papers published hundreds of articles asserting that enemies of the
United States were trying to break down the moral fiber of the coun-
try’s youth. The articles claimed that one way the country’s enemies
were supposedly doing this was by getting America’s youth so
hooked on drugs they would be incapable of defending their country
should the need arise. Suddenly increasing the penalties for using or
selling all nonmedical drugs sounded like a patriotic duty. The Boggs
Act passed easily.
Ultimately, the Boggs Act had international consequences. World
War II was over and the United States was the most economically
and militarily powerful country in the world. Consequently, Ameri-
can laws influenced the laws of other countries. During the 1950s a
flurry of new international agreements and laws in almost every
country in the world were passed with little reason other than the
Americans were doing it. These agreements, influenced by America’s
Boggs Act, led to outlawing nonmedical use of drugs, including mar-
ijuana, in most countries.

The Daniel Act of 1956

By 1956 the United States was responding with shock and anger to a
new awareness of organized crime organizations like the Mafia. And
Americans were learning for the first time that much of the huge
profits going into the pockets of these criminal organizations came
from the sale of illegal drugs.
Illegal Almost Everywhere 53

Vito Genovese (in handcuffs) leaves court to begin a fifteen-year prison

sentence. Genovese was the head of a large Mafia drug ring.

Congress and most state governments responded to the booming

illegal drug business by further increasing the penalties for sale and
possession of all drugs. One federal law, the Daniel Act of 1956,
greatly increased the penalties of the Boggs Act by requiring the
courts to give much longer sentences for drug crimes. The Daniel
 54 Marijuana

Act included marijuana because people still feared it was the “gate-
way” to drugs like heroin and cocaine.
Many states followed the Daniel Act with their own versions, and
like the new federal law, these provided harsher penalties than previ-
ous laws. Many states passed their own laws making possession of
any drug the most heavily penalized crime in the state. Virginia’s
law, for example, required a mandatory minimum sentence of
twenty years without possibility of parole, probation, or suspension
of sentence for anyone found guilty of possessing any drug for non-
medical use.

The Dangerous Substances Act of 1969

Despite these new harsher laws, the illegal drug business continued
to grow. In response, still another new federal law, the Dangerous
Substances Act, was passed in 1969. This law took all the drugs
known at that time (except alcohol and tobacco) and divided them
into groups, or “schedules,” based on what the government believed
to be their medical value and potential for abuse. (It was also about
this time that the government stopped calling all illegal drugs nar-
cotics. This represented an official recognition that narcotic was the
medical term for a drug that stops pain or puts people to sleep, a de-
scription that did not include many of the drugs being used in non-
medical ways.)
According to the Dangerous Substances Act, which has been
modified over the years but is still largely in effect today, the most
dangerous drugs are placed in schedules 1, 2, or 3. Schedule 1 drugs
are those defined as having little or no legitimate medical use and a
high potential for abuse; marijuana, hashish, LSD, and heroin were
placed in this group. Schedule 2 drugs are those with accepted but
limited medical value and a high potential for abuse, like cocaine, bar-
biturates, and amphetamines. Schedule 3 drugs are those with high
medical value and a high potential for abuse, like morphine and
codeine. The Dangerous Substances Act also provides penalties for il-
legal use, manufacture, and sale of the various drugs.
The Dangerous Substances Act of 1969 was the first federal drug
law that had the benefit of some good new scientific research. It was
Illegal Almost Everywhere 55

also the first time an American law lowered most of the penalties for
nonmedical use of drugs instead of raising them.

Recent Trends in Marijuana Laws

In the years immediately following the Dangerous Substances Act,
the national attitude toward marijuana softened and penalties actually
declined in many states; by 1980 eleven states had decriminalized
possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use. Declining
penalties were accompanied by a decline in the number of people us-
ing the drug, a fact that challenged the popular belief that lesser
penalties lead to greater use. In 1984 marijuana use (including both
infrequent and frequent users) was 26.3 percent nationwide. In the
eleven states that had decriminalized marijuana, it was almost the
same, 27.3 percent. By 1988, after two decades of decreasing penal-
ties and decriminalization in eleven states, the percentages of users
had dropped to 15.4 nationwide and 16.1 in the states that had de-
criminalized marijuana. Instead of use climbing with lesser penalties,
it had been cut almost in half.
As more legislators saw the significance of the statistics, some be-
gan to look favorably on decriminalization of marijuana use, meaning
that individuals would no longer be arrested for possession of small
amounts of cannabis. As of mid-2001 twelve states (Alaska, Califor-
nia, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada,
New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon) had decriminalized
possession of small amounts of marijuana, and six others (Florida,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, Texas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin)
were poised to do the same. In many of those states, there is a small
fine (up to $100) for possession, the result of a federal government
requirement for minimum punishment standards.
International laws are changing, too, as the decriminalization
movement grows around the world following the success of a
Netherlands program that since 1976 has essentially allowed the per-
sonal use of cannabis. Following the adoption of the new policy to-
ward marijuana use, the Netherlands saw a 40 percent decrease in
marijuana use and an even larger drop in heroin addiction. These re-
sults led many other European countries, Canada, Australia, New
 56 Marijuana

DecriminalizationCANADA
of Marijuana
Minnesota Massachusetts

Oregon Maine

Wisconsin New York

New Jersey
Nevada Nebraska
Ohio
Colorado West Virgina
California
North Carolina
Pacific
Ocean
Mississippi Atlantic
Ocean
Arctic Ocean
Texas
RUSSIA
Florida
ALASKA
CANADA MEXICO
BAHAMAS
Bering Medical Marijuana States
Sea
Gulf of Pacific Undecided Medical Marijuana
Alaska Ocean States CUBA

Zealand, South Africa, and Jamaica, among others, to pass or con-

sider decriminalization laws.
Even as marijuana laws are changing in the United States and else-
where, the drug remains illegal almost everywhere. And as long as
marijuana remains illegal, some people will continue to press for laws
that legalize and regulate its use.
 Chapter 4

The Responses
to Illegal
Marijuana Use
T he popularity of marijuana makes its illegality a highly scruti-
nized and controversial topic. Even though it is the third most
frequently used nonmedical drug after alcohol and tobacco and the
most popular illegal drug in the world, it is also the subject of ex-
tensive efforts by law enforcement agencies to stop its importation,
cultivation, transportation, sale, and use. Further, preventing peo-
ple, especially young people, from using marijuana is the subject of
numerous educational and treatment programs. Even so, wide-
spread use of marijuana continues in the United States, leading
some people to contend that the nation’s marijuana laws should be
changed.

Prohibition Again?
From 1919 to 1933, the United States undertook an experiment
to stop the manufacture, transportation, and sale of all alcoholic
beverages. The result was a set of laws known as Prohibition.
Anslinger spoke about how he thought Prohibition should have
punished the users of alcohol, an oversight that he intended not to
repeat in the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. In fact, the thinking and
social concerns that led to alcohol prohibition strongly influenced
the formation of America’s early marijuana laws, and because of the
57
 58 Marijuana

At a speakeasy, patrons buy illegal alcohol during Prohibition.

similarities, many people have called the illegality of cannabis “mar-

ijuana prohibition.”
Today alcohol prohibition is generally viewed as a total failure.
Prohibition not only failed to prevent alcohol consumption, but
making the alcohol business illegal put it in the control of criminals
who used increasingly violent means to control the market. Alcohol
prohibition created a huge illegal business with extensive smuggling
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 59

and secret domestic manufacturing operations. Illegality increased

the prices of alcohol and the huge profits that resulted made alcohol
smugglers and dealers very wealthy. The dealers and smugglers, in
turn, commonly used their riches to bribe police and government of-
ficials into ignoring their illegal activities.
Other negative consequences of alcohol prohibition also appeared.
Since hard liquor was more profitable to smuggle and manufacture,
beer and wine almost disappeared and more people began to con-
sume stronger alcoholic beverages. Organized crime, for the first
time ever, became a fact of life in America. Further, to combat the re-
sulting crime wave, the government created the largest police force
that had ever existed in the United States, which led to more fre-
quent violent encounters with criminals. All the while, to the govern-
ment’s astonishment, illegal alcohol sales continued to increase.
Finally, after more than a decade of Prohibition, the government de-
cided to repeal the laws and once again allow people to sell alcohol
legally and to pay taxes on its sales.
Alcohol prohibition created a criminal empire, lost huge amounts
of tax revenues, caused many deaths in the battles for control of the
illegal business, led to the corruption of many police and politicians,
and failed to achieve its goal of reducing alcohol consumption. Mari-
juana prohibition exhibits the same characteristics with one major dif-
ference: alcohol prohibition did not attempt to punish the users of
the illegal substance.

Is Marijuana Prohibition Failing, Too?

Based on many government statistics and scores of studies, mari-
juana prohibition is even less successful and far more costly than al-
cohol prohibition was. First, assuming that the purpose of
marijuana prohibition is to stop people from using marijuana, so far
it has not succeeded. Marijuana has been illegal in the United
States since 1937, yet marijuana use is at an all-time high and grow-
ing. Very few Americans had even heard of marijuana in 1937, but
in 2001 nearly 70 million Americans had used it. During the 1980s
the U.S. government declared an official “war on drugs,” a govern-
ment program aimed at reducing and even eliminating drug use in
 60 Marijuana

America. Yet the federal government’s Drug Enforcement Agency

(DEA) reported that marijuana was more available in 2000 than it
was in 1980.
In addition, many critics of marijuana prohibition contend that the
cost to the criminal justice system has been staggering. Arrest rates
are so high for marijuana and other drug offenses that prison officials
sometimes are forced to release violent criminals early to make room
for more drug offenders. And the ever-rising cost of the war against
drugs drains funds from other social programs. For these reasons
some people believe that marijuana prohibition has been more harm-
ful to society than marijuana use.
A number of government and private studies and research reports
have also arrived at this conclusion. Typical of these is a comprehen-
sive, long-term study conducted by the Kaiser Permanente medical
group that concluded no link exists between regular marijuana smok-
ing and increased health problems. The report emphasizes that mari-
juana prohibition actually poses the most significant health hazard to
the user and strongly suggests that “medical guidelines regarding
[marijuana’s] prudent use . . . be established, akin to the common-
sense guidelines that apply to alcohol use.” 12

Marijuana Prohibition and Teen Marijuana Use

Government efforts to reduce marijuana use have focused, among
other areas, on reducing teen use. Many studies, however, show that
marijuana prohibition seems to have had exactly the opposite effect
on cannabis use by teenagers.
Since marijuana prohibition began in 1937, marijuana use by teens
has skyrocketed. In 1937 only 0.4 percent of all Americans under the
age of twenty-one had ever smoked marijuana. By 1979, after forty-
two years of heavy penalties for breaking the marijuana laws, that fig-
ure had jumped to 51 percent. This increase does not necessarily
prove that marijuana prohibition actually caused more people under
the age of twenty-one to use the drug, but it does illustrate that teen
use increased dramatically despite the fact that marijuana use was
against the law.
Opponents of marijuana legalization say the fact that prohibition
does not seem to be working is no reason to legalize the drug. If
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 61

A young woman passes a pipe to someone at a 1960’s love-in.

marijuana were legalized, they argue, teen use would simply increase.
One federally funded study looked at this question by studying high
school students’ attitudes about drugs in states where decriminaliza-
tion had occurred. Over a five-year period from 1975 to 1980, the
researchers found that “decriminalization has had virtually no effect
either on the marijuana use or on related attitudes and beliefs about
marijuana use among American young people.” 13
With only one such study conducted in the United States, it is
necessary to look elsewhere for additional evidence of how teen mar-
ijuana use changes when the drug is decriminalized. Studies pub-
lished by governments in places where marijuana use has been
decriminalized, including the Netherlands and two of Australia’s
 62 Marijuana

eight territories, indicate that the rates of marijuana use across all age
groups has not substantially changed after decriminalization.
Many people are baffled by the way marijuana prohibition has, for
the most part, produced the opposite of the desired effects, particu-
larly when it comes to curtailing use by young people. By prohibiting
marijuana, the government expected that it would make the drug less
available—but according to every report that has come out in the last
two decades, this is obviously not the case. The federally funded
Monitoring the Future survey, for example, found that in 1995
teenagers in many areas of the United States considered marijuana
easier to obtain than beer. According to the report, “Every year,
about 85 percent of the nation’s high school seniors report that mar-
ijuana is ‘fairly easy’ or ‘very easy’ to obtain.” 14
In addition, the fact that using marijuana is against the law does not
appear to be the primary factor in most teenagers’ decision to use or
not to use marijuana, much like the illegality of underage drinking
seems to do little to deter underage drinking. In fact, a 1995 series of
national public opinion surveys about marijuana found that “non-users
were much more likely to mention ‘not interested’ than ‘fear of legal
reprisals’ as the primary reason why they did not use marijuana.” 15
Further, the drug’s illegality also sometimes works the opposite
way for many teens, and the illegality of marijuana can actually in-
crease the attractiveness of the drug. Best-selling natural health au-
thor Andrew Weil, M.D., wrote in 1993, “Because drugs are so
surrounded by taboos, they invite rebellious behavior. . . . Unfortu-
nately, our society’s attempt to control drug-taking by making some
substances illegal plays into the hands of rebellious children.” 16
Weil’s statement was echoed by the Netherlands Institute of Men-
tal Health and Addiction when that agency explained why marijuana
use was decriminalized in Holland. The institute stated that to pre-
vent alcohol and drug abuse, these substances must be “stripped of
their taboo image and of the sensational and emotional tone of voice
that did in fact act as an attraction.” 17

Marijuana Arrest Rates

Reducing the number of youthful marijuana users is just one goal of
marijuana prohibition; the larger goal is to reduce the number of
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 63

marijuana users of all ages. This goal is further from being achieved
today than it was when the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was enacted.
Despite more than half a century of anti-marijuana laws, despite the
tens of billions of dollars spent on enforcing those laws, and despite
the presence of drug education programs in schools, arrests for mari-
juana use are at an all-time high and still climbing.
The total number of annual marijuana arrests rose steadily during
the 1960s and ’70s, and then leveled off and even dropped during
the ’80s. Beginning in 1992, however, arrests for marijuana began
climbing sharply again, a trend that has continued to the present
time. Public records from the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of
Justice Statistics (BJS) show that there have been more than seven
hundred thousand marijuana arrests every year since 1996, the high-
est numbers in history. Of these arrests, almost 90 percent are for
possession rather than trafficking or selling.
Also, according to BJS figures, in 1998 the average number of mari-
juana offenders in jail or prison, not counting those awaiting trial, was
close to sixty thousand. About thirty-seven thousand of those were con-
victed of possession. The BJS estimates that the direct costs to American
taxpayers for maintaining this population of marijuana prisoners in fed-
eral and state prisons and local jails is about $1.2 billion per year.

The Financial Cost of Marijuana Prohibition

Exact figures on how much the government spends specifically on
marijuana prohibition are not available, but it is possible to make a
conservative estimate based on the available figures for fighting all il-
legal drugs. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reports that the fed-
eral expenditure for all categories of drug law enforcement
(investigating and arresting people and seizing drugs) is well over
$15 billion a year. In addition, state and local governments spend an
additional $16 billion per year enforcing drug laws. Adding these
two figures means that the total cost of enforcing the drug laws in
America is at least $31 billion per year. Based on DOJ estimates that
between 25 and 40 percent of all drug arrests are for marijuana, the
cost to American taxpayers of enforcing just the marijuana laws is be-
tween $7.8 billion and $12.4 billion each year.
 64 Marijuana

These huge sums of public money must be diverted from other

causes, causes like education and fighting violent crime. Further, each
of the more than half a million arrests made each year in the United
States for violating marijuana laws, even the most trivial arrest, re-
moves at least one or two police officers from crime fighting for sev-
eral hours while they complete the paperwork and process the
defendant. This adds up to millions of man-hours per year that could
be used for fighting more serious crime.

Police officers arrest a protester at a demonstration in support of legalizing

marijuana.
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 65

Recognizing that this is a problem, some state governments have

tried to reduce these costs. In 1976 California passed the Moscone
Act, a marijuana decriminalization law that reduced the penalty for
possession of small amounts of the drug to a citation and a small fine.
As a result of the Moscone Act, police in California no longer arrest
people for small amounts of marijuana, and courts and jails are no
longer clogged with marijuana users. Further, according to a 1988
report, “California has saved an average of $95.8 million annually
during the ten years since the Moscone Act was passed.” 18 An in-
depth study is needed, however, to calculate the true cost of mari-
juana prohibition.

Marijuana and the “War on Drugs”

Despite the success in California and other states, the federal govern-
ment has not shown much interest in backing down from its opposi-
tion to decriminalizing marijuana. Instead, the government has
remained committed to its “war on drugs,” a term that describes the
immense effort to reduce drug availability and use in the U.S.
The marijuana part of the government’s war on drugs has several
components. The most obvious one is the constant effort of local po-
lice and DEA agents to catch, arrest, and punish users (except in the
states where it has been decriminalized) and dealers. But there are
other components in the war on drugs that often go unseen by the
general public, components that require immense amounts of man-
power, equipment, and money. These are interdiction (stopping the
importing of cannabis products), eradication (stopping the growing
of cannabis within U.S. borders), and education (stopping the use of
marijuana).

Interdiction
For many years the United States has concentrated much of its mili-
tary, technological, and law enforcement might into stopping mari-
juana and other drugs from entering the country. The amounts of
marijuana seized by authorities during this time are huge. In 1997, for
example, along the country’s southwest border, a record 593 tons of
marijuana were intercepted. Even so, the DEA estimates that despite
all the government’s massive interdiction efforts, only 15 percent of
the marijuana coming into the United States gets stopped.
 66 Marijuana

According to the DEA, drug-trafficking organizations based in

Mexico supply most of the foreign marijuana available in the United
States. However, countries in South America (primarily Colombia)
and Asia (including Cambodia, Thailand, India, and Pakistan) also
cultivate and ship marijuana to the United States.
Foreign marijuana bound for U.S. markets must be smuggled into
the country. Smugglers resort to a great variety of methods of getting
the bulky drug across the borders, using everything from trucks to
ships and aircraft. Even though the government seizes many tons
every year, most experts agree, and the statistics back them, that it is
virtually impossible to stop this flow of marijuana into the country.
This is a troubling fact to the many people involved in the war on
drugs.

Eradication
Besides curbing the flow of marijuana into the United States, officials
are also focusing on cultivation of the drug within the country. Be-
ginning in the 1970s, cannabis cultivation within the borders of the
United States began to blossom. This was primarily the result of two
factors. First, increased interdiction pressure on drug smugglers has
decreased the availability of imported (smuggled) marijuana. The
second reason is that marijuana’s tremendous profit potential makes
people willing to take the risk of growing cannabis in or close to their
homes. The wholesale value of American-grown marijuana (its value
to the farmers who grow it), by the DOJ’s most conservative esti-
mates, has exceeded $15 billion every year since 1995. And on the
retail market, domestic marijuana is worth more than $25 billion.
This makes marijuana the fourth largest cash crop in the country,
with only corn, soybeans, and hay ranking as more profitable. Ac-
cording to 1998 DEA and state police statistics, marijuana cultivation
produces more money than any other crop in Alabama, California,
Colorado, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vir-
ginia, and West Virginia, and ranks as one of the top five cash crops in
twenty-nine other states. In fact, the government estimates that at
least a quarter of the marijuana consumed by Americans is grown
within the country’s borders.
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 67

An Eradication Story from California

Sometimes eradication efforts are successful. During the summer of 2000,
an eleven-week sweep of California marijuana growing areas produced a
record haul. During that operation, called Campaign Against Marijuana Plant-
ing (CAMP), a total of 345,207 marijuana plants were seized at large-scale
growing operations around the state. The raids resulted in the arrests of fifty-
seven people, and officials estimated the cash value of the seized marijuana
at $1.3 billion.
Successful raids like these are not easy. Eradicating the big bushy plants, even
ones that are growing right out in the open, is more difficult than it might
seem. To make the dark green marijuana plants less visible to spotters in
planes and helicopters, growers usually spread the plants around instead of
planting them in rows like conventional crops. When task force agents are
successful at spotting marijuana from the air, the hard work starts. The sites
are rarely accessible from public roads, so the raids are often carried out by
helicopter. In some cases agents are lowered to the ground in slings because
the remote ravines and hillsides where the plants grow are too rocky, steep,
or thickly forested for helicopters to land. Once on the ground, the agents cut
the plants and load them into a sling to be hauled up into the helicopter and
transported away for destruction.

A helicopter hauls
away $15 million worth
of marijuana plants
that were growing in a
California national
forest.
 68 Marijuana

It takes a lot of cannabis plants to produce that much marijuana,

and the DEA first noticed the growing amount of domestic cultiva-
tion during the late 1970s. The U.S. government, specifically the
DEA, responded in 1979 by starting the Domestic Cannabis Eradi-
cation/Suppression Program (DCE/SP). This program initially in-
cluded two multiagency operations, one in Hawaii and the other in
California, whose goal was to eradicate marijuana cultivation in those
states. Gradually other states discovered that they, too, had marijuana
growing within their borders and began participating in the program.
By 1982 twenty-five states were involved in the DCE/SP, and by
1985 all fifty states had joined it.
DCE/SP’s eradication program uses advanced technology, includ-
ing military aircraft, remote infrared sensing devices, and satellites to
find outdoor marijuana crops, and thermal imaging systems for find-
ing indoor growing operations. In addition, the DCE/SP sometimes
uses herbicidal eradication, similar to the defoliation program used
during the Vietnam War. Herbicidal eradication relies on controver-
sial plant poisons, and most states still don’t allow their use. Okla-
homa was the first state to use herbicidal marijuana eradication, and
Hawaii, South Dakota, and Indiana have joined the list.
Because of pressure from the DCE/SP, many marijuana growers
have been forced to move their operations indoors, where their
crops are better hidden from helicopters and satellites. At first this
seemed like a victory for the DCE/SP, but it soon became apparent
that this was not the case at all. Indoor cultivation, as both the DEA
and growers soon discovered, provides a controlled environment
that favors the production of higher potency grades of marijuana.
Indoor cultivation also permits year-round production and can be
carried out everywhere from closets, garages, attics, and basements
to elaborate, specially constructed greenhouses. Furthermore,
growth rates of indoor cannabis plants can be more precisely con-
trolled and enhanced by special fertilizers, plant hormones, steroids,
insecticides, and genetic engineering, advantages that are nearly im-
possible outdoors.
Indoor cultivation is not completely immune to detection by law
enforcement agencies, however. The special high-intensity lights used
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 69

Marijuana plants are grown indoors in efforts to escape detection from the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.

by growers to take the place of sunlight consume large amounts of

electricity, so buildings with unexplained high electrical bills are likely
to draw the attention of the DEA. Government agents then used
thermal sensing technology to identify garages and closets in private
homes that are too hot due to the presence of the high-intensity
lights. In 2001, however, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling on an
indoor marijuana cultivation case, voted that using thermal-sensing
technology to investigate private homes is an unconstitutional inva-
sion of privacy and could no longer be used as a basis for obtaining a
search warrant (permission for the police to search a home).
 70 Marijuana

The government’s eradication program requires considerable

manpower, aircraft, and other equipment, all of which are expensive.
To justify requests for more funding, the eradication program’s ad-
ministrators must present evidence of large marijuana seizures to
prove that the program is working. Critics of the program discovered
that the government was counting ditchweed in their marijuana
seizure figures. This practice, say the critics, creates the impression
that the program is far more successful than it actually is. Ditchweed,
the wild cannabis that grows in fields and ditches, mostly throughout
the Midwest, has very low THC content and no value as marijuana.
Critics say if ditchweed were removed from the government’s eradi-
cation figures, the amount of destroyed marijuana would be so low
that the program would be considered a failure.

Education
Many people, including some government and law enforcement offi-
cials, believe that interdiction and eradication efforts are having little
success. Consequently, many feel that education programs may offer
the best hope for reducing marijuana use.
The nation’s major drug education program is known as
D.A.R.E., an acronym for Drug Abuse Resistance Education. For-
mer Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates founded the first D.A.R.E.
program during the late 1970s to teach children about the dangers of
drugs. Since then it has expanded to become the federal govern-
ment’s favored drug education program. Today the national
D.A.R.E. program receives about $600 million a year from federal,
state, and local governments, and employs uniformed police officers,
who go into schools to present the program.
At first, educators and parents welcomed a drug education pro-
gram in schools. After years of unquestioning community accep-
tance, however, the D.A.R.E. program has recently found itself
facing growing opposition from all sides. Numerous research and
government agencies have issued scathing critiques of the program,
accusing D.A.R.E. of having little or no impact and arguing that the
approximately $600 million a year from federal, state, and local gov-
ernments used to fund it might be better spent elsewhere. One gov-
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 71

ernment study reported that D.A.R.E. students were not less likely to
use drugs than students not involved in the program. That report
concluded, “D.A.R.E. could be taking the place of other, more ben-
eficial drug use curricula that adolescents could be receiving.” 19
Further, in California, where the program began, researchers
found that 40 percent of the students surveyed were “not at all” in-
fluenced by D.A.R.E. programs, and only 15 percent were influenced
“a lot” or “completely.” Nearly 70 percent described a “neutral to
negative” feeling toward the D.A.R.E. officers.
Numbers and reports like these have caused parents, teachers, stu-
dents, and government officials to become increasingly dissatisfied
with the D.A.R.E. program. Consequently, D.A.R.E. officials an-
nounced in 2001 that the program was being completely redesigned.

Treatment Programs
One reason government officials spend so much time and money on
marijuana interdiction and eradication is that they believe marijuana
is addictive. Even though marijuana use has not been associated with
the life-wrecking effects of alcoholism or health-damaging effects of
nicotine addiction, some marijuana users do have to seek treatment
to help them stop using the drug. A small percentage of marijuana
smokers (anywhere from 1 to 5 percent) develop a dependency on
the drug and feel that they cannot function without it or stop using
it. Some of these people seek treatment on their own. Others are or-
dered by employers or a court to attend a treatment program.
One of the most common treatment programs is Marijuana
Anonymous (MA), an organization that helps users learn to live with-
out the drug. Based on a twelve-step program pioneered by Alco-
holics Anonymous, MA meetings bring together people with similar
experiences who feel they are either emotionally or psychologically
addicted to marijuana. MA meetings provide a sense of camaraderie
that allows members to feel comfortable admitting that using mari-
juana causes problems in their lives.
Programs like this are becoming increasingly popular because many
people now believe that treating marijuana users is preferable to
putting them in jail. The newest and boldest effort to put marijuana
 72 Marijuana

and other drug users into treatment programs instead of prison began
in July 2001 in California when the state’s Proposition 36 took effect.
This new law directs judges to require treatment instead of jail for
most nonviolent drug users on their first and second offense. Previ-
ously, treatment had been an option only if offenders pleaded guilty
and a judge approved. Under the new law, approximately thirty-seven
thousand offenders in California will be eligible for treatment the first
year. Officials estimate that this will save the state about $250 million a
year in prison costs. Courts, prosecutors, and police officials around
the country are eagerly awaiting the results of this new law, which if it
is successful may encourage similar laws in many other states.

Legalization?
Some people feel that requiring treatment programs instead of jail
time still does not solve the problems associated with marijuana pro-
hibition. These people, marijuana smokers and not, want to see mar-
ijuana legalized.
The reasons for legalization are as varied as the people who sup-
port it. Some want marijuana to be legalized for sick patients who can
benefit from its usage. Others want it to be legalized so that more
hemp products, which have proven environmental and industrial
benefits, can be produced. Still others want it to be legalized to cut
off criminal profits and to create tax revenues for the state and federal
governments. And then there are those who want it legalized so they
can use it when they want to without fear of legal consequences.
One outspoken advocate for legalizing marijuana and other drugs
is James Gray, a superior court judge in California. In 2001 Gray said;
Based upon my background as a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, a
criminal defense attorney in the Navy and as a trial judge in Orange County[,]
California[,] since 1983, I believe we must change . . . our laws of drug prohi-
bition and develop a policy based upon truthful drug education, drug treat-
ment, deprofitization of these often dangerous drugs, and, most importantly,
individual responsibility. . . . [T]o me it makes as much sense to put people
like the actor Robert Downey, Jr. in jail for drug abuse as it would have to put
[former first lady] Betty Ford in jail for her alcohol abuse. And even if people
somehow disagree with that view, from my experience on the bench, we have
proved to any reasonable person’s satisfaction that this approach [putting
drug users in jail] simply doesn’t work. 20
The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use 73

A Quaker Speaks Out on the Drug War

The Quaker faith, also known as the Society of Friends, is one of America’s
original religious groups. In a February, 1996, article titled “Getting Off
Drugs: The Legalization Option,” that appeared in the Friends Journal, a
leading Quaker spokesman, Walter Wink, made a strong case for changing
the way the United States deals with drug use.

The drug war is over, and we [the United States] lost. We merely re-
peated the mistake of Prohibition. The harder we tried to stamp out this
evil, the more lucrative we made it, and the more it spread. An evil can-
not be eradicated by making it more profitable. . . . Drug laws have also
fostered drug-related murders and an estimated 40 percent of all prop-
erty crime in the United States. The greatest beneficiaries of the drug
laws are drug traffickers, who benefit from the inflated prices that the
drug war creates. Rather than collecting taxes on the sale of drugs, gov-
ernments at all levels expend billions in what amounts to a subsidy of
organized criminals. . . .

The uproar about drugs is itself odd. Illicit drugs are, on the whole, far
less dangerous than the legal drugs that many more people consume.
Alcohol is associated with 40 percent of all suicide attempts, 40 percent
of all traffic deaths, 54 percent of all violent crimes, and 10 percent of all
work-related injuries. Nicotine, the most addictive drug of all, has trans-
formed lung cancer from a medical curiosity to a common disease that
now accounts for 3 million deaths a year worldwide. . . . We must be
honest about these facts, because much of the hysteria about illegal
drugs has been based on misinformation. . . .

It is safe to say as we approach the end of the eighth decade of federal

control of inebriating drugs that the experiment has been a dismal and
costly failure. . . . Already 95 percent of our adult population is using
drugs, and the vast majority do so responsibly. Most people who would
misuse drugs are already doing so. . . . No one wants to live in a coun-
try overrun with drugs, but we already do.

Although considerable disagreement about how the American

government should go about legalizing marijuana remains, most
supporters agree that the way alcohol is regulated and taxed in the
United States provides a workable model. Judge Gray offers this view
of what a marijuana legalization law would look like:
Marijuana, defined as cannabis with a THC content greater than 0.3 percent,
may be purchased by anyone who is 21 years of age or older at a package store
 74 Marijuana

which sells only this product, and may be purchased, possessed and used by
that same person without criminal or civil penalty. Reasonable taxes will be ac-
cessed for this sale, and the revenues raised will be used exclusively for drug
and alcohol education and treatment. Furnishing marijuana to anyone under
the age of 21 years of age, driving a motor vehicle under the influence of mar-
ijuana, etc. are prohibited by this initiative. 21

Since the 1970s the United States has spent tens of billions of dol-
lars in what most deem to be a largely unsuccessful effort to stop the
flow of marijuana into the country. Hundreds of thousands of men
and women have been imprisoned for marijuana offenses as the gov-
ernment continues to pour billions of dollars into enforcement, inter-
diction, eradication, and education campaigns of questionable
effectiveness. In spite of this, most studies indicate that marijuana pro-
hibition has failed to stop marijuana from entering the country, from
being grown in the country, and from being used by ever-increasing
numbers of people. Nevertheless, the efforts continue as the govern-
ment searches for effective ways to control people’s use of marijuana.
 Chapter 5

The Debate
over Medical
Marijuana
T he mere mention of the phrase medical marijuana is enough to
get at least two groups of people agitated. There are those who
believe marijuana should be accessible to patients whose doctors have
recommended cannabis to improve their medical condition. These
people are angry that the federal government and many states con-
tinue to insist that marijuana does not have legitimate medical value.
On the other hand, opponents of medical marijuana fear that the is-
sue is just the first step toward legalizing cannabis (and maybe other
outlawed drugs).
Between 1996 and 2001, several developments occurred that have
repeatedly brought the medical cannabis debate to the attention of
the American public. First, beginning in 1996, voters in many states
passed laws permitting access to marijuana for patients who have a
doctor’s statement verifying medical need. Second, places where peo-
ple with doctors’ statements could purchase the drug legally, called
medical marijuana buyers’ clubs, began to appear in the states where
the new laws had been passed, creating the controversial situation of
public marijuana sales. Third, in 1997 Barry McCaffrey, the federal
government’s highest drug law enforcement official, ordered an
analysis of all the research ever done on marijuana. The analysis was
conducted by a team of top scientists, took two years to complete,
75
 76 Marijuana

Demonstrators march to protest a federal lawsuit that opposes distributing

cannabis for medical purposes.

and resulted in a report that said cannabis does indeed have medical
value, is not a gateway drug, and, while not harmless, is less harmful
than alcohol and tobacco. Finally, one of the medical marijuana buy-
ers’ clubs fought the federal government’s prohibition of their opera-
tion all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost.

The Medical Uses of Cannabis

For a long time patients, doctors, and scientists have attributed a vari-
ety of therapeutic functions to marijuana and other THC-containing
preparations. One of the most remarkable things about cannabis, say
medical marijuana advocates, is that it can alleviate a wide spectrum
of symptoms at one time with minimal side effects. Most notably,
cannabis has been credited with reducing nausea and pain while im-
proving appetite and a variety of movement problems.
Treating all of these symptoms at once without toxic side effects
has made marijuana the treatment of choice for many HIV/AIDS
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 77

and cancer patients as well as people suffering from a number of

other diseases. Many HIV/AIDS patients claim marijuana gives
them relief from pain, nausea, and wasting disease (loss of body
mass). And thousands of cancer patients have claimed that marijuana
is the best way to alleviate the loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting
that often accompany chemotherapy, which is used to treat many
kinds of cancer.
Patients are not the only ones claiming marijuana has medicinal
value, however. Recent research has found that some of the cannabi-
noids in marijuana have the capability to help protect nerves from
further damage following trauma and neurological disease. And sci-
entists contend that there is considerable evidence that using mari-
juana can also improve the limitations in joint movement and
muscle function associated with multiple sclerosis and spinal cord in-
jury.
Despite these claims, opponents often assert that the medical mar-
ijuana movement is nothing more than the first step toward legaliza-
tion of all drugs. They also contend that even when marijuana does
have some medical value, there are other drugs—legal drugs—that
do the job better.
Both sides in the medical marijuana argument do agree, however,
that there are some concerns to using marijuana as a medicine. First is
the method of ingestion: inhaling smoke from burning plant material
has definite health hazards. Second, the therapeutic values of
cannabis, including pain relief, control of nausea, and appetite stimu-
lation, can all be achieved by other drugs that are legal. Third, the eu-
phoric effect of marijuana is an undesirable side effect for many
patients.
As in most aspects of the marijuana debate, this agreement quickly
turns into disagreement. Doctors and their patients who use mari-
juana say that the three concerns should actually be viewed as advan-
tages. First, inhalation allows very accurate control of the dosage by
the patient: smoking gives the therapeutic effect within seconds; the
effects would not be felt for thirty minutes or more if the drug were
taken orally (as a pill, for example), which increases the chances of
under- or overdosing. Second, marijuana is the only known drug that
 78 Marijuana

produces multiple desired effects in a single drug, thus eliminating

the need for patients to take a variety of drugs that also have a variety
of side effects. Third, the euphoric effect of cannabis can reduce anx-
iety and calm patients.
In the medical marijuana debate, such totally opposite views are
typical. Often what one side sees as a problem the other sees as an ad-
vantage. Perhaps the only clear fact about medical cannabis is that
marijuana is still illegal at the federal level. Given that, the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) set about to determine the truths about medical
marijuana.

Investigating the Medical Value of Marijuana

In 1997 the director of the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy (ONDCP), General Barry McCaffrey, faced a big
public relations problem. Even though McCaffrey, several former
presidents, and many others lobbied against medical marijuana initia-
tives in California and Arizona, the citizens of those states voted to le-
galize medical marijuana. McCaffrey stuck to his conviction that
marijuana was not medicine and vowed that the federal government
would prosecute patients and doctors who broke federal marijuana
laws.
In response to the new laws, McCaffrey began an effort to defeat
medical marijuana legislation in other states. Despite his efforts, seven
other states went ahead and legalized medical marijuana. In looking
for a way to slow the building momentum of the medical marijuana
movement, McCaffrey commissioned a report from the IOM, which
he felt sure would support his position.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the federal sponsor of
much of the scientific research that occurs in the United States, cre-
ated the IOM in 1970 to provide politically independent scientific
advice to the government. McCaffrey’s ONDCP paid the IOM
$896,000 to create a committee of unbiased scientists to evaluate
all the research on marijuana and produce a comprehensive report
on its dangers and medical value. The committee released the
study, titled Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, in
1999.
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 79

McCaffrey must have been shocked after reading the report. The
IOM study, the most comprehensive government study of marijuana
to date, took an opposing view of almost every one of McCaffrey’s
own beliefs about the drug. The study reported, for example, that
the committee found no proof that marijuana use leads to use of

Informally known as the nation’s drug czar, Barry McCaffrey was the
director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy,
stepping down from office in January 2001.
 80 Marijuana

harder drugs. It declared marijuana’s addictiveness to be much less

than legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco and of little consequence. It
found that almost every harmful side effect that had ever been attrib-
uted to marijuana had no basis in scientific fact, and it acknowledged
that marijuana did, in fact, have legitimate medical value.
Disappointed, McCaffrey and the ONDCP chose to ignore the
IOM’s conclusions and publicly criticized and contradicted the re-
port. Until he resigned in 2001, McCaffrey continued to insist that
marijuana leads to the use of harder drugs, is extremely addictive, and
has no medical usefulness.
Among those criticized by McCaffrey was neurobiologist Janet
Joy, the scientist heading the IOM committee. She publicly expressed
embarrassment at McCaffrey’s public attack on the report and de-
fended it, saying the IOM report reflected the most rigorous acade-
mic standards. She told reporters that the committee’s scientists and
physicians, among the best in the country, had thoroughly analyzed
more than two thousand scientific studies on marijuana over a two-
year period. She also stated that the IOM report was based solely on
medical evidence that measured the ways people are affected by
cannabis, evidence that has been duplicated and confirmed numerous
times by other researchers.
Most Americans agreed with Joy and the conclusions of the IOM
report. In a nationwide Gallup poll conducted in 1999 after the re-
port was published, 73 percent favored making marijuana legal for
doctors to prescribe to suffering patients.

The Institute of Medicine Report

The 1999 IOM report was what scientists call a meta-analysis,
meaning experts study all the research on a particular issue (med-
ical marijuana in this case) to determine the facts and make conclu-
sions. The IOM meta-analysis targeted very specific issues,
including what medical conditions have been successfully treated
by marijuana, what advantages marijuana has over legal medicines,
how dangerous marijuana’s side effects are, and if allowing the use
of marijuana for medical purposes would promote nonmedical
uses of the drug.
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 81

Protesters rally in San Francisco, California, to oppose a federal lawsuit

that would close buyers’ clubs distributing medical marijuana.

After studying the research on these issues, the IOM committee

came to some conclusions. First, they said that marijuana was helpful,
particularly for AIDS and cancer patients. The introduction to the
IOM report states:
There are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking mar-
ijuana for medical uses. . . . The accumulated data indicate a potential thera-
peutic value for cannabinoid drugs, particularly for symptoms such as pain
relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation. . . . For pa-
tients such as those with AIDS or who are undergoing chemotherapy and
who suffer simultaneously from severe pain, nausea, and appetite loss,
cannabinoid drugs might offer broad-spectrum relief not found in any other
single medication. 22
 82 Marijuana

That last point illustrates one of medical marijuana’s chief advan-

tages over other drugs used to treat AIDS and cancer patients. In-
stead of taking a number of different drugs, most with significant side
effects, a patient can decrease a variety of symptoms with just mari-
juana, which has relatively minor side effects. The IOM report con-
firmed that there is no single drug currently available that can do the
several things that marijuana does.
Addressing the possibility of a patient becoming addicted to mari-
juana, the IOM report found that according to all evidence, depen-
dence among marijuana users is rare. Further, the researchers said the
dependence and withdrawal symptoms associated with smoked mari-
juana are “mild and subtle compared with the profound physical syn-
drome of alcohol or heroin withdrawal.” 23
The IOM report also found no evidence that marijuana is a gate-
way drug likely to lead to using other drugs. And the report re-
sponded to the concern that allowing the medical use of marijuana
might increase its use among the general population, in particular,
among young people, stating, “No evidence suggests that the use of
opiates or cocaine for medical purposes has increased the perception
that their illicit use is safe or acceptable. . . . [T]here is little evidence
that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substan-
tial increase in marijuana use.” 24 Finally, the IOM report explained
that the danger of marijuana’s side effects is actually less than the
medically accepted levels of side effects associated with many legal
drugs.
The one harmful aspect of using marijuana for medical purposes,
said the IOM report, is the fact that currently the most effective way
to take the drug is by smoking it, which may lead to lung and respira-
tory problems. The report added, however, that the respiratory can-
cers found in many chronic tobacco smokers have not been found in
people who smoke marijuana daily (if they do not use tobacco). And
although the researchers expressed a desire for an effective alternate
means of delivering marijuana to patients, the report determined that
currently existing alternatives (including Marinol, a pill of synthetic
THC available by prescription since the 1980s) are not nearly as ef-
fective as the smoked form.
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 83

The IOM report concluded by stating that marijuana offers

substantial therapeutic advantages. Nevertheless, the IOM com-
mittee felt that more research is needed to confirm the scope of
the drug’s usefulness and its side effects and to discover alternative
delivery methods that are as effective as but less harmful than
smoking.

Medical Marijuana Research

Research into medical applications of marijuana is made all the
more difficult by the fact that all forms of cannabis remain in the
schedule 1 category, which makes it almost impossible for scientists
to obtain marijuana of consistent potency needed for studies. Often
current marijuana laws make it very difficult for scientists at univer-
sities and pharmaceutical companies to get permission to do
cannabis research at all. And if they succeed in getting permission
to do cannabis research, it is very difficult for them to obtain the
drug legally. Furthermore, confiscated marijuana that researchers
obtain from law enforcement sources (a common source of mari-
juana used in cannabis research programs) varies greatly in potency
and is sometimes tainted by other drugs, pesticides, and other im-
purities. Nevertheless, scientists have continued to do what re-
search they can.
One important discovery took place during the 1990s when sci-
entists found naturally occurring cannabinoid molecules in mam-
mals, including humans, and cannabinoid receptors in the brain
and the body. Researchers identified about half a dozen of these
cannabinoids in the human body, which made them want to look
more closely at the hundreds of cannabinoids found in marijuana.
Scientists want to learn more about why the body has these natural
relatives of the cannabinoids in marijuana. Further, pharmaceutical
companies want to know if the cannabinoids in marijuana can help
the body’s own cannabinoids for some therapeutic purposes. Re-
cent research has found, for instance, evidence that some cannabi-
noids, both the body’s own and those found in marijuana, can
control some movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease and
Tourette’s syndrome, and researchers have also found indications
 84 Marijuana

Marijuana for Brain Cancer?

Malignant glioma is a fairly common, especially aggressive, and often fatal
form of brain cancer. Existing treatments for this disease have a low suc-
cess rate, but recent research on rats indicates that cannabinoids from
marijuana may be able to stop the disease in humans. In the research,
which was performed in Spain and reported in the March 2000 issue of
the scientific journal Nature Medicine, malignant brain tumors either dis-
appeared or were reduced in two-thirds of cancerous rats injected with
cannabinoids. The cannabinoid treatments caused no damage to healthy
cells.
The lead researcher on the project—Manuel Guzman, Ph. D., a professor of
biochemistry in Madrid (Spain)—is concerned that the debate over medical
marijuana use will hinder future testing of this treatment in humans. In Liza
Jane Maltin’s February 2000 online article “Marijuana’s Active Ingredient
Targets Deadly Brain Cancer,” Guzman is quoted as saying, “If these com-
pounds were present in pine leaves or lettuce, then most likely things
would be different. But they are present in marijuana, so it’s controversial,
which is nonsense. Hospitalized patients are given morphine and other
drugs, but for some reason, it’s considered immoral to give them
cannabis.”
Daniele Piomelli, Ph. D., a professor of pharmacology at the University of Cal-
ifornia, Irvine, agrees, saying in an editorial that accompanied the journal ar-
ticle, “Placing restrictions on clinical use and testing of marijuana-based
therapies is not only silly, it can be criminal. When patients are dying, there
should be no consideration to such matters. . . . I believe it would be ethi-
cally acceptable to offer [cannabinoids] to patients, especially in light of the
fact that the toxicity is likely to be very, very small.”

that cannabinoids can play a role in controlling some forms of high

blood pressure.
Cannabinoid research is also looking at the problems associated
with medical marijuana use. One involves separating the medical
aspects of cannabis from the aspects that make a patient high; the
euphoric effect that so many recreational marijuana users seek is
viewed as an adverse side effect in medical applications. Another
major challenge for medical marijuana research is finding ways of
administering the active ingredients (THC and other cannabi-
noids) without requiring the patient to smoke it. Besides introduc-
ing its own health problems, smoking is an issue in medical
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 85

marijuana because many patients do not smoke or are so sick they

cannot tolerate smoking. Thus, some pharmaceutical companies
are developing alternative ways to administer THC. These include
an aerosol inhaler much like those used to dispense asthma med-
ication, an under-the-tongue spray, and a transdermal skin patch
containing the medication in a small bandage that allows the drug
to be absorbed through the skin.

Doctors and Medical Marijuana

As the research continues, the doctors who would be affected by
legalizing medical marijuana remain almost evenly divided on the
topic. In April 2001, in response to a question about whether doc-
tors should be able to prescribe marijuana legally as a medical
treatment, 36 percent of the physicians surveyed thought they
should, 38 percent thought they should not, and 26 percent were
neutral.
In some cases the specialty of the doctor affected the position. For
instance, the survey found that obstetricians, gynecologists, and in-
ternists were more likely to support medical marijuana than other
specialists. The survey team speculated that because doctors in those
two specialties are more likely to see cancer patients, they may be
more aware of marijuana’s potential for managing pain and the side
effects of chemotherapy and therefore more receptive to using mari-
juana for medical therapy.
Whether they support medical marijuana use or not, many doctors
resent the intrusion of nonmedically trained politicians and law en-
forcement officials into the debate on medical marijuana. One of the
most outspoken critics of the government’s medical marijuana policy
is Lester Grinspoon, M.D., an associate clinical professor of medicine
at Harvard Medical School who has written two books on the medi-
cinal use of marijuana and served as an official at NORML. After his
son died from leukemia (a cancer of the blood system), Dr. Grin-
spoon became an avid medical marijuana activist, often recommend-
ing marijuana to his cancer and AIDS patients. Speaking about his
firsthand experience with the medical use of marijuana, Grinspoon
said:
 86 Marijuana

Dr. Lester Grinspoon supports the use of medical marijuana to relieve the
pain and nausea caused by AIDS and cancer treatments.

I had a son with leukemia, and I saw with my own eyes how helpful cannabis
was in dealing with the nausea that he had with chemotherapy. The memory
of him eating a submarine sandwich after chemotherapy—and keeping it
down—is one I will never forget. . . . I know better than any federal official
what’s best for my patients and whether marijuana can help them. I’m not go-
ing to be told by those [federal officials] how to practice medicine.25

State and Federal Governments Disagree

Despite claims like Grinspoon’s, the federal government decided to
challenge the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, a large, highly
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 87

visible nonprofit organization that provided medical marijuana to pa-

tients in northern California and was and still is legal under state law.
In May 2001 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in this case
that since marijuana is classified as a schedule 1 drug (no medical
value, high potential for abuse), it has no legal medical use and the
Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative could not continue provid-
ing marijuana to patients. This was seen as a major defeat for those
who want access to the drug to relieve the symptoms of HIV/AIDS,
cancer, and other diseases.

The Oakland Cannabis Buyers’

Cooperative
When California voters passed Proposition 215, the law officially known as
the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, people with a doctor-certified need for
medical marijuana were elated. But since it was still illegal to sell marijuana
in the state, patients were faced with the problem of how to obtain the drug
legally. The need was filled by a new phenomenon, medical cannabis buy-
ers’ clubs and cooperatives.
As suppliers of marijuana to medically approved buyers, these organizations
were protected from prosecution by state law. The only problem was that
their actions were still against federal laws. Eventually one of the first buyers’
clubs, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative (OCBC), became the sub-
ject of a federal lawsuit, a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court. Following the Court’s mid-2001 decision against them, however, the
OCBC was no longer able to dispense marijuana to its members.
The mission statement of OCBC, as stated on the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’
Cooperative website, www.rxcbc.org, says:

The goal of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative (OCBC) is to pro-

vide seriously ill patients with a safe and reliable source of medical
cannabis information and patient support. Our cooperative is open to all
patients with a verifiable letter of recommendation for medical
cannabis, used to alleviate or terminate the effects of their illnesses.

Federal statutes currently prohibit the use of cannabis as medicine.

However, scientific evidence, including anecdotal evidence, documents
the relief that cannabis provides to many seriously ill patients. The co-
operative is dedicated to reducing the harm these patients encounter
due to the prohibition of cannabis.
 88 Marijuana

Following the Supreme Court decision, Republican Congressman

Bob Barr said:
The unanimous vote in this case reflects the overwhelming evidence that mar-
ijuana has been appropriately and lawfully declared to be a dangerous, mind-
altering substance that should not be legalized for whatever contrived reason.
The true aim of those who support the so-called medical marijuana move-
ment has been . . . the legalization of all drugs. Terminally ill patients have
been used as pawns in a cynical political game designed to weaken society’s
opposition to drug abuse. 26

The federal government’s position, though, did not significantly

affect the beliefs of state legislators, who are often more supportive of
medical marijuana. In fact, within weeks of the U.S. Supreme Court’s
ruling, Colorado’s legislature passed a new state constitutional
amendment protecting medical marijuana users from state criminal
penalties; the amendment followed eight other states that had, begin-
ning with California in 1996, passed similar legislation. The new Col-
orado law, which allows legally registered patients to possess up to
two ounces of marijuana and/or six marijuana plants, directly op-
poses the Supreme Court’s ruling that people or organizations that
grow or distribute marijuana may not use medical necessity as a de-
fense from federal prosecution. Defiant in the face of the Supreme
Court decision, Colorado’s attorney general Ken Salazar announced
that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not invalidate Colorado’s state
law or prevent the medical use of marijuana in the state. California’s
attorney general Bill Lockyer agreed, saying, “It’s unfortunate that
the Supreme Court was unable to respect California’s historic role as
a . . . leader in the effort to help sick and dying residents who have no
hope for relief other than through medical marijuana.” 27
Most legal experts feel that the Supreme Court decision does not
prevent patients in states with medical marijuana laws from growing
their own marijuana at home. But not all patients are able to do that,
and they no longer have a source in the buyers’ clubs. Since almost all
arrests for use and possession of marijuana are done by state and local
officials, the federal government is expected to confine enforcement
efforts to shutting down medical marijuana distribution centers like
the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, which triggered the
Supreme Court case.
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 89

Although the immediate effect of the Supreme Court ruling was

to stop the distribution of marijuana to patients in those states with
medical marijuana laws, it may ultimately have another effect. Essen-
tially the Supreme Court ruling said that as long as marijuana is clas-
sified as a schedule 1 drug, the only way to get it approved at the
federal level for medical use would be for Congress to pass a new law
reclassifying cannabis as a schedule 2 drug (limited medical value,
high potential for abuse) or even schedule 3 (high medical value,
high potential for abuse). As a result, following the Supreme Court
decision, Democratic Congressman Barney Frank reintroduced legis-
lation allowing certain patients to use marijuana for medical purposes
and doctors to prescribe or recommend marijuana where permitted
under state law. If that or similar legislation eventually passes, mari-
juana will be reclassified, paving the way for legalizing medical mari-
juana at the federal level.

Founder of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative, Jeff Jones (right),

speaks with his lawyer after the Supreme Court rules marijuana illegal for
medical uses.
 90 Marijuana

Judges and Medical Marijuana

The justices of the Supreme Court notwithstanding, however, there
is a growing trend among American judges to accept that medical use
of marijuana has a place in American society. Most surprising among
the many judges who have made public statements in favor of med-
ical marijuana is Francis L. Young, a DEA administrative law judge.
In 1988 Judge Young presided over a hearing in which several
groups petitioned the DEA to have marijuana reclassified as a sched-
ule 2 drug so it could be prescribed for medical needs. After consid-
ering all the testimony and exhibits, Judge Young wrote a report for
the DEA stating that the court “accepted as fact” the medical value
of cannabis. He listed numerous examples from individual doctors,
hospitals, and patients demonstrating the medical uses of cannabis.
Young concluded by saying that cannabis is “far safer than many
foods we commonly consume . . . and in its natural form it is one of
the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any
measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a su-
pervised routine of medical care.” 28
Young is not the only judge who thinks this. In doing research for
his 2001 book on the failure of the war on drugs, California Superior
Court Judge James P. Gray found many other judges willing to de-
clare their support for medical marijuana. He himself is a staunch
supporter of allowing medical uses of marijuana, and in a 2001 inter-
view Judge Gray said:
I have never used marijuana, or any of these other drugs either . . . and I have
never smoked cigarettes. I believe marijuana is a carcinogenic [cancer caus-
ing], and does have other adverse effects upon the user. However, it is hard
for me to be unduly hard upon marijuana users since I do drink alcohol, and
believe that alcohol is potentially far more harmful to the user than marijuana,
and the actions of people who have used alcohol are potentially far more
harmful to other people.29

Despite such strong opinions by well-respected judges, the DEA

has refused, without giving a reason, to reclassify cannabis. Immedi-
ately after Judge Young’s report was made public, editorials began
appearing in newspapers asking why the DEA was so intent on keep-
ing marijuana illegal in the face of so much evidence that the drug’s
illegality was by far the biggest, most expensive, and most unsuccess-
The Debate over Medical Marijuana 91

ful part of the war on drugs. Judge Gray offers an explanation in his
book when he points out that since marijuana users make up the vast
majority of all drug users, without them the “enemy” in the drug war
would instantly shrink to a fraction of its current size. Then the num-
bers of drug users, contends Gray, would be too small to justify the
tens of billions of dollars consumed by the DEA. Of course, he
claims, the DEA needs to keep marijuana illegal. The DEA, however,
continues to insist simply that marijuana is a dangerous drug.
In 2001 Canada passed a new law allowing patients access to med-
ical marijuana. This new legislation, the first federal-level medical
marijuana law in the world, also provides for a company to legally
grow and distribute cannabis to approved patients. With medical
marijuana now legal in Canada, pressure to change the cannabis laws
is even greater in the United States. Nevertheless, medical marijuana,
like everything else about the drug, remains a controversial topic in
American politics.
 Notes
Chapter 2: Is Marijuana Use Really Harmful?
1. Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson Jr., and John A. Benson Jr., eds.,
Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Institute of
Medicine, Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Health.
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1999, p. 3.
2. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 90.
3. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 89.
4. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 106.
5. Kristin Leutwyler, “Marijuana Definitely Linked to Infertil-
ity,” Scientific American, December 12, 2000.
www.sciam.com/news/121200/2.html.
6. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 102.

Chapter 3: Illegal Almost Everywhere

7. Richard J. Bonnie and Charles H. Whitebread II, “The For-
bidden Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into
the Legal History of American Marijuana Prohibition,” Vir-
ginia Law Review 56, no. 6, October 1970, p. 53.
8. Bonnie and Whitebread, “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree
of Knowledge,” p. 53.
9. Bonnie and Whitebread, “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree
of Knowledge,” p. 54.
10. Bonnie and Whitebread, “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree
of Knowledge,” p. 54.
11. Bonnie and Whitebread, “The Forbidden Fruit and the Tree
of Knowledge,” p. 55.

Chapter 4: The Responses to Illegal Marijuana Use

12. Michael Polen et al., “Health Care Use by Frequent Mari-
juana Smokers Who Do Not Smoke Tobacco,” Western
Journal of Medicine 158, no. 6, June 1993, pp. 569ff.
93
 94 Marijuana

13. Lloyd Johnston, Patrick O’Malley, and Jerald Bachman,

“Marijuana Decriminalization: The Impact on Youth,
1975–1980,” Monitoring the Future Occasional Paper 13.
Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 1981, pp.
27ff.
14. Lloyd Johnston, Jerald Bachman, and Patrick O’Malley, Na-
tional Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the
Future Study, 1975–1995. Washington, DC: National Insti-
tute on Drug Abuse, 1996, p. 88.
15. Johnston et al., National Survey Results on Drug Use, p. 89.
16. Andrew Weil and W. Rosen, From Chocolate to Morphine:
Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993, p. 98.
17. Trimbos-Instituut, Education and Prevention Policy Alcohol
and Drug Fact Sheet. Utrecht: Netherlands Institute of
Mental Health and Addiction, 1996, p. 2.
18. Michael Aldrich and Tod Mikuriya, “Savings in California
Marijuana Law Enforcement Costs Attributable to the
Moscone Act of 1976—A Summary,” Journal of Psychoactive
Drugs 20, no. 1, January–March 1988, p. 81.
19. S. Ennett et al., “How Effective Is Drug Abuse Resistance
Education?: A Meta-Analysis of Project D.A.R.E. Outcome
Evaluations,” American Journal of Public Health 84, no. 9,
September 1994, pp. 1394ff.
20. James P. Gray, Drugsense Chat transcript, Media Awareness
Project website, June 3, 2001. www.mapinc.org/drugnews/
v01.n1122.a06.html.
21. Gray, Drugsense Chat transcript.

Chapter 5: The Debate over Medical Marijuana

22. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 3ff.
23. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 89ff.
24. Joy et al., Marijuana and Medicine, p. 102ff.
25. Quoted in Beatrice Motamedi, “Mary Jane Medicine,”
WebMD Medical News, February 21, 2000. www.webmd.com.
26. Quoted in Sean Martin, “Drug Law Allows No Exceptions
for Medical Use, Justices Say,” WebMD Medical News, May
14, 2001. www.webmd.com.
Notes 95

27. Quoted in Larry Margasak, “Court Rules Against Marijuana

Use,” WebMD Medical News, May 15, 2001,
www.webmd.com.
28. Judge Francis L. Young, “Marijuana Rescheduling Petition,
Docket No. 86-22, Opinion and Recommended Ruling,
Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision of Admin-
istrative Law,” September 6, 1988. www.calyx.net/olsen/
MEDICAL/YOUNG/young.html.
29. Gray, Drugsense Chat transcript.
 Organizations
to Contact
Californians for Compassionate Use
www.marijuana.org
This is one of the leading organizations advocating legalization of
marijuana for medical purposes.

Drug Enforcement Administration

DEA Information Office
2401 Jefferson Davis Highway
Alexandria, VA 22301
Website: www.dea.gov
This is the arm of the Department of Justice dedicated to drug law
investigation and enforcement.

International Association for Cannabis as Medicine

Arnimstrasse 1A
50825 Cologne, Germany
Phone: 49-221-9543-9229
Website: www.acmed.org
This nonprofit organization provides information about medical
cannabis to individuals, organizations, and governments all over
the world.

International Cannabinoid Research Society

55 Elsom Pkwy
S. Burlington, VT 05403
Phone: 802-865-0970
Website: www.cannabinoidsociety.org
97
 98 Marijuana

This nonprofit organization is dedicated to research in all fields

relating to cannabinoids.

Marijuana Anonymous World Services

P.O. Box 2912
Van Nuys, CA 91404
Phone: 800-766-6779
Website: www.marijuana-anonymous.org
Based on the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous, provides help for
marijuana users who want to stop using the drug.

Marijuana Policy Project

P.O. Box 77492
Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, 20013
Website: www.prr.org

This national organization (chapters in every state) is dedicated to

minimizing the harm caused by marijuana laws.

National Organization for the Reform of

Marijuana Laws (NORML)
1001 Connecticut Ave.NW, Suite 710
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-483-5500
Website: www.norml.org
This is the national organization for the reform of marijuana laws.

Reality Check
P.O. Box 2345
Rockville, MD 20852
Phone: 800-767-0117
Website: www.health.org/reality
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services runs this
campaign to help parents and other adults help children to under-
stand the issues around marijuana use.
Organizations to Contact 99

National Institute on Drug Abuse

5600 Fisher’s Lane
Rockville, MD 20867
301-443-1124
Website: www.nida.gov
This is the U.S. federal government’s center for anti-drug information.
 For Further
Reading
Books
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Marijuana: Facts Parents Need
to Know. Washington, DC: USGPO, 1995. This is information
on marijuana presented by one of the central anti-drug agencies
of the federal government.
Andrew Weil and W. Rosen, From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything
You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1993. Written for nonscientists, this is fascinating and unbi-
ased writing.
L. Zimmer and J. Morgan, Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A
Review of the Scientific Evidence. New York: Lindesmith Center,
1997. An objective and clear analysis of the facts about mari-
juana. The Lindesmith Center is a respectable organization that
provides a library of unbiased material relating to the drug war.

Website
Schaffer Library (www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/
medical.htm). This website contains a wealth of information on
medical marijuana.

101
 Works
Consulted
Books
Nelba Chavez and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration, Key Influences on Youth Drug Use Identified.
Washington, DC: Department of Health and Human Services,
2001. A statistical analysis of influences on young people leading
to the use of drugs.
———, Substance Abuse in Popular Movies and Music. Washington,
DC: White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, De-
partment of Health and Human Services, 1999. A mostly scien-
tific look at the topic.
James P. Gray, Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can
Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs. Philadel-
phia: Temple University Press, 2001. A recent book that builds the
most powerful attack on current drug laws yet.
Lester Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 1977. This marijuana expert, both a doctor
and Harvard professor, reveals the misunderstandings behind
marijuana prohibition in an intelligent manner.
Lester Grinspoon, and James B. Bakalar, Marijuana: The Forbid-
den Medicine. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993.
This book takes up where Grinspoon’s earlier book stopped
and makes a strong case for medical marijuana.
Lloyd Johnston, Jerald Bachman, and Patrick O’Malley, National
Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the Future Study,
1975–1995. Washington, DC: National Institute on Drug Abuse,
1996.
Janet E. Joy, Stanley J. Watson Jr., and John A. Benson Jr., eds, Mari-
juana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base. Institute of Medi-
cine, Division of Neuroscience and Behavioral Health. Washington,
102
Works Consulted 103

DC: National Academy Press, 1999. This report is extremely use-

ful, fact filled and quite definitive for anyone interested on how
marijuana and medicine relate, but it is not easy to read unless you
have a background in medicine and biochemistry.
Laura Murphy, Marijuana Cannabinoids Neurobiology and Neuro-
physiology. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1992. This volume is
packed with heavy marijuana science.
Michael Starks, Marijuana Chemistry, Genetics, Processing, and Po-
tency. New York: Ronin, 1990. This book presents the heavy sci-
ence of marijuana.
Trimbos-Institute, Education and Prevention Policy Alcohol and
Drug Fact Sheet. Utrecht: Netherlands Institute of Mental Health
and addiction, 1996.

Periodicals
Michael Aldrich and Tod Mikuriya, “Savings in California Mari-
juana Law Enforcement Costs Attributable to the Moscone
Act of 1976—A Summary,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 20,
no. 1, January–March 1988. A scientific article full of statistics
and analysis of the first medical marijuana bill.
Richard J. Bonnie and Charles H. Whitebread II, “The Forbidden
Fruit and the Tree of Knowledge: An Inquiry into the Legal His-
tory of American Marijuana Prohibition,” Virginia Law Review
56, no. 6, October 1970. This is an unbiased and lengthy article
written for law students about the history of the marijuana laws.
S. Ennett et al., “How Effective Is Drug Abuse Resistance Educa-
tion?: A Meta-Analysis of Project D.A.R.E. Outcome Evalua-
tions,” American Journal of Public Health 84, no. 9,
September 1994. This article studies all the research on
D.A.R.E. programs and draws conclusions.
Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Crime in the United States:
1997,” FBI Division of Uniform Crime Reports. Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998. A government re-
port filled with statistics.
Wayne Hall and Nadia Solowij, “Adverse Effects of Cannabis,”
Lancet 352, 1998. This is a scientific analysis of every harmful ef-
fect ever attributed to marijuana.
104 Marijuana

Lloyd Johnston, Patrick O’Malley, and Jerald Bachman, “Marijuana

Decriminalization: The Impact on Youth, 1975–1980,” Monitor-
ing the Future Occasional Paper 13. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research, 1981. This is a dry but informative look at surveys
and other metrics concerning marijuana and young people from
the sociological angle.
Michael Polen et al., “Health Care Use by Freqent Marijuana Smok-
ers Who Do Not Smoke Tobacco,” Western Journal of Medicine
158, no. 6, June 1993.
Sean Reilly, “Senator’s Letter to General Accounting Office Prompts
Inquiry,” Mobile (Alabama) Register, February 6, 2001. This article
describes former anti-drug warrior Senator Sessions changing ideas
about the drug war.
Chuck Thomas, “Marijuana Arrests and Incarceration in the United
States,” Drug Policy Analysis Bulletin, no. 7, June 1999. This very
informative article presents a scientific look at police statistics.
Walter Wink, “Getting Off Drugs: The Legalization Option,”
Friends Journal, February 1996.

Internet Sources
David Barry, “Calif. Pot Busts Set Record—Authorities Seize
$1.3 Billion Worth in Latest Campaign,” All Points Bulletin
website, October 24, 2000. www.apbnews.com/newscenter/
breakingnews/2000/10/24/pot1024_01.html.
James R. Gray, Drugsense Chat transcript, Media Awareness Pro-
ject website, June 3, 2001. www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01.
n1122.a06.html.
Kristin Leutwyler, “Marijuana Definitely Linked to Infertility,” Scien-
tific American, December 12, 2000. www.sciam.com/news/
121200/2.html.
Liza Jane Maltin, “Marijuana’s Active Ingredient Targets Deadly Brain
Cancer,” WebMD Medical News, February 28, 2000. www.webmd.
com. This is an article written for a general audience about a new
medical use for THC.
Larry Margasak, “Court Rules Against Marijuana Use,” WebMD
Medical News, May 15, 2001. www.webmd.com.
Sean Martin, “Drug Law Allows No Exceptions for Medical Use, Jus-
tices Say,” WebMD Medical News, May 14, 2001. www.webmd.
com.
Works Consulted 105

Beatrice Motamedi, “Mary Jane Medicine,” WebMD Medical News,

February 21, 2000. www.webmd.com. This medically reviewed
article gives a brief overview of medical marijuana written in
layperson’s terms.
Judge Francis L. Young, “Marijuana Rescheduling Petition, Docket
No. 86-22, Opinion and Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact,
Conclusions of Law and Decision of Administrative Law,” Sep-
tember 6, 1988. www.calyx.net/olsen/MEDICAL/YOUNG/
young.html.

Website
Oakland Cannabis Buyers’ Cooperative (www.rxcbc.org). Here
is the story on the first legal medical marijuana source that was
closed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
 Index
alcohol, 34 male fertility and, 37
prohibition of, 57–59 receptor sites for, 19, 83
American Medical Association research on, 83–85
(AMA), 46–47 THC, 17–19
amotivational syndrome, 37–39 cannabis. See marijuana
Anslinger, Harry, 44, 45, 48, Cannabis indica, 14
51–52, 57 cannabis plants
anxiety, 21 described, 14–15
arrest rates, 62–63 eradication of, 66–70
hemp from, 16
Barr, Bob, 88 purpose of THC in, 18
birdseed, 44 Cannabis sativa, 14
Boggs Act of 1951, 51–52 cigarettes, 34
bong, 19 cocaine, 22, 30, 34
Bonnie, Richard, 43–44 cold war, 52
brain crime, organized, 52–54, 59
cancer of, 84
chemistry of, 19 Dangerous Substances Act of
damage to 36–37 1969, 54–55
Daniel Act of 1956, 52–54
Californians for Compassionate D.A.R.E., 70–71
Use, 97 delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol. See
Campaign Against Marijuana THC
Planting (CAMP), 67 ditchweed, 48
cancer patients, 75–76, 81–82 Domestic Cannabis
cannabinoids Eradication/Suppression
body’s reaction to, 18–19 Program (DCE/SP), 68
described, 17 drug(s)

106
Index 107

abuse of, 12 Gray, James, 72, 73–74, 90, 91

addictive, 31–32 Grinspoon, Lester, 85–86
dangerous, 13–14 Guzman, Manuel, 84
defined, 11–13
dependence on, 13 Harrison Act of 1914, 42
gateway, 30–31, 52, 82 hashish, 14
illegal hash oil, 14–15
depicted in media, 27–28 heart rate, 21, 22
organized crime and, 52–54 hemp
nonmedical effects of, 12 cultivation, during World War II,
psychotropic, 12 48
tolerance, 13–14 uses of, 14, 16
uses of, 11–12 wild, 48
war on, 59–60, 72 heroin, 30, 32, 34, 52
education, 70–71 high, 12
eradication, 66–70 HIV/AIDS, 75–76, 81–82
interdiction, 65–66
Drug Abuse Resistance infertility, 37
Education. See D.A.R.E. insanity defense, 48–51
drug education programs, 70–71 Institute of Medicine (IOM)
drug smugglers, 66 report by, 78–83
drug treatment. See treatment interdiction, 65–66
programs Internet, 28–30

education, 70–71 Jarvis, Jeff, 23

Johnson, Tracy, 23
Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 44, joint, 19
45 Joy, Janet, 80
fertility, 37
Food and Drug Administration law enforcement
(FDA), 14, 42, 38 arrest rates, 62–63
Frank, Barney, 89 cost of, 9, 10, 59–60, 63–65, 70
see also drugs, war on
“Getting Off Drugs: The laws
Legalization Option” (Wink), decriminalization, 55–56, 65
73 international, 52, 55–56
108 Marijuana

against marijuana, 42–48, 51–55 dangerous, 13–14

on medical marijuana, 87–89 on health, 22–24
politics of, 47 on heart, 22
recent trends in, 55–56 on heart rate, 21
see also names of individual laws lack of scientific understanding
legalization of, 8–9
arguments against, 60–61 on lungs, 22–24, 35–36
arguments for, 60, 72–74 on male fertility, 37
debate over, 8–10 on memory, 19, 36–37
for medical purposes, 9–10 on motivation, 37–39
Netherlands policy and, 31 nonmedical, 12
process of, 73–74 on unborn child, 21
Leveritt, Mara, 23 unpleasant, 21
Lindesmith Center, 30, 32–33 variability of, 9, 21
LSD, 30 eradication of
costs of, 70
Mafia, 52–54 herbicidal, 68
Marihuana Tax Act, 13, 43–48 war on drugs and, 66–70
marijuana as gateway drug, 30–31, 52, 82
addictive properties of, 13, industry, 10, 26
31–35 insanity defense and, 48–51
appearance of, 14–15 on the Internet, 28–30
body’s reaction to, 18–19 lack of scientific understanding
chemical properties of, 17–19 of, 8–9
consumption of, 19–20 legal status of
cultivation of pre-1937, 40–42
eradication efforts against, present day, 40, 55–56
66–70 names for, 15–16
indoor, 68–69 oil, 14–15
culture of, 25, 28 popularity of, 8, 9, 25–27, 57,
420 as symbol of, 38 59–60
debate over, 8–10 portrayal of, 27–28
dependence on, 13, 33–34 prohibition of
effects of compared with alcohol
on athletic performance, 21 prohibition, 57–59
on brain, 19, 36–37 failure of, 59–63, 74
Index 109

financial costs of, 63–65 87–89

teen use and, 60–62 uses of, 76–78
source of, 14 memory, 19, 36–37
users of Monitoring the Future survey, 62
are ordinary people, 23, 25 morphine, 40–42
teenage, 60–62 Moscone Act, 65
Marijuana and Medicine: motivation, 37–39
Assessing the Science Base Munch, James C., 44, 46, 48–49,
(Institute of Medicine), 78–80 51
see also laws; legalization;
medical marijuana; treatment narcotics, 54
programs National Organization for the
Marijuana Anonymous (MA), 71, Reform of Marijuana Laws
98 (NORML), 31
Marijuana Policy Project, 98 nausea, 76
McCaffrey, Barry, 75, 78, 79, 80 Netherlands, 31, 55, 62
media, 27–28 nicotine, 13, 32, 33
medical cannabis buyers’ clubs, 87
medical marijuana Oakland Cannabis Buyers’
advantages of, 81–82 Cooperative, 86–87
alternative methods for opiates, 13
administering, 84–85
for brain cancer, 84 pain, 76
concerns about, 77–78 panic, 21
doctors and, 85–86 pharmacopoeias, 12–13
federal government and, 86–89 Piomelli, Daniele, 84
Institute of Medicine report on, pregnancy, 21
78–83 Prohibition, 45
judges and, 90–91 Proposition 215 (1996), 87
legalization for, 9–10 Proposition 36 (2001), 72
problems with, 84–85 Pure Food and Drug Act, 42
recent developments concerning,
75–76 Quakers, 73
research on, 83–85
state government and, 86–89 Reality Check, 98
Supreme Court decision on, Reefer Madness (film), 45, 46
110 Marijuana

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 47 71–72

side effects. See marijuana, effects
of Vinson, Carl, 47
slang terms, 16
smugglers, 66 Weil, Andrew, 62
Society of Friends, 73 Whitebread, Charles, 43–44
White House Office of National
teenagers, 60–62 Drug Control Policy (ONDCP),
THC 27
body’s reaction to, Wink, Walter, 73
18–19 withdrawal, 13, 33–34
described, 17–19 Woodward, William C., 46
purpose of, to plant, 18 World War II, 48
tolerance, 13–14
treatment programs, 34–35, Young, Francis L., 90
 Picture Credits
On Cover: © Owen Franken/CORBIS
The Advertising Archive Ltd., 50
Associated Press, AP, 9, 41, 64, 67, 76, 79, 81, 89
© Bettmann/CORBIS, 45, 46, 53, 58
© Henry Diltz/CORBIS, 61
© Rick Doyle/CORBIS, 12
Hulton/Archive by Getty Images, 26, 49 (both)
Kobal Collection/Paramount , 29
Brandy Noon, 28, 32, 34, 56
Dan Skye, 15, 17, 20, 69, 86

111
 About the
Author
William Goodwin is a writer and channel manager for an online
health information service. He also works as a consultant and
speaker. He has been a science teacher at the high school and middle
school levels, where he also taught drug abuse prevention classes. He
earned a BA from UCLA and did his graduate work in biochemistry
and later in English at UCSB and UCSD.

112