Obama has become more hostile to medical marijuana patients than any president in U.S. history

[Tsiyu]

181. For your edification

Nixon and Reagan aside, the War on a Plant has been waged by industrial competitors:

http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Cannabis/index.html

(emphasis mine)

Marijuana was intentionally introduced to North America in Jamestown (1611) as a fiber plant, used primarily for ropes and canvas sails and for paper to print Bibles (the Gutenberg Bible and many others were published on hemp paper; what would Rev. Falwell say about marijuana Bibles?), and in many states marijuana occasionally grows as a weed, spread by birds. Many famous documents, including early drafts of the Declaration of Independence and writings of Thomas Paine, were scribed on cannabis paper. Hemp farming was done by Thomas Jefferson and many other famous individuals of colonial times, our domestic hemp industry helped our ancestors become economically independent of Mother England, and hemp was at the center of debate between the North and the South in fights by Webster and Clay over tariffs. Regardless of that legacy, in the United States the first marijuana laws were enacted in 1900, presumably because the liquor lobby did not want competition, even though from 1840-1900 more than 100 papers had been published in Western medical literature for using marijuana to treat various illnesses and discomforts. The League of Nations opposed the drug in 1925. The great blow to U.S. use of marijuana as a medicine came with the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which became law following a massive campaign by Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who accused marijuana to be an addictive drug, causing violent crimes, psychosis, and mental deterioration. The film Reefer Madness was part of that campaign. That law levied a tax of $1 per ounce for industrial or medical purposes and $100 per ounce for other uses, and tax evasion was punishable by stiff fines or prison terms. That legislation made marijuana a major financial liability for anyone dealing with the plant, and all legitimate uses of marijuana and hemp were essentially stopped economically.

Several books have chronicled the legal and political actions that followed passage of the 1937 law against the use of marijuana. Early on Major LaGuardia of New York City established a commission of physicians to investigate claims made by Anslinger against marijuana; in 1944, that commission published its findings that there is no proof of links between marijuana and crime, antisocial behavior, sexual overstimulation, etc., but the U.S.F.B.N. denounced that report. The U.S. government staunchly defended its policy while later secretly giving contracts to companies to identify military uses of cannabis. In 1970, under President Nixon the Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, which assigned psychoactive drugs to five schedules, and cannabis was assigned to the most restrictive one, Schedule I, meaning that it has no medical use, a high potential for abuse, and cannot be used safely even under doctor's supervision. Remarkably, drugs like cocaine and many opiates were placed on schedules with less restrictions, even though many of those are both deadly and highly addictive. Beginning in 1972, legal challenges began against the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, basically to reclassify Cannabis as a Schedule II drug, so that marijuana could be used for some medical uses. To date, the U.S. government through its agencies has blocked and avoided hearings and sidestepped judgments favoring the reclassification of marijuana, while many states, beginning in 1978 with New Mexico, have attempted to decriminalize possession for medical or personal use.

The one window of opportunity has been a legislated program whereby individuals could apply for medical use, a permission called Compassionate IND, Investigation New Drug, so that a person, through a physician would be allowed to petition the government for variance. The first person to receive a Compassionate IND was Robert Randall (1976), a glaucoma victim. The paperwork to accomplish that was loaded on the physician, the pharmacy, and so forth, and the standard so high that until 1989 only seven had been granted. In 1992, only 12 CINDs had been activated in the United States, and the thousands of frustrated applicants turned instead to illegal procurement rather than fight the battle of swimming upstream against government and public who want the program suspended because it would presumably undercut programs to stop illegal drugs. Passage of California Prop 215 in November 1996 (and another in Arizona) was an attempt to give power to physicians to approve cannabis for medical use, and, of course, the federal government threatened physicians with criminal penalties and loss of a license to practice medicine if they participated in the movement, in violation of federal anti-drug laws.

The medical use of smoked marijuana and orally taken THC or other cannabinoids must be accepted by the United States on its merits. Toward this goal, there is mounting evidence that, for a portion of victims of horrible diseases and pain, smoked marijuana helps alleviate symptoms, reduces or eliminates side effects of traditional medications, permits reduction in dosage of other medications, or even retards the progress of the disease, all this at a fraction of the cost for contemporary methods.

Nixon escalated the War on a Plant, but he by no means was the first to propagandize against it for his own purposes (and that of his buddies.)

http://www.ukcia.org/medical/medicinaluseofmarijuana.php

The history of marijuana's medicinal use was traced by Mikuriya (1973). The earliest records of medicinal marijuana use have been traced back to China in 2737 BC, and evidence of its therapeutic use can be found throughout world cultures. It was used in colonial America and listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, as tincture of cannabis, until 1941. In the 19th century, William B. O'Shaughnessy, MD, studied marijuana and concluded that it was safe and effective in the treatment of various maladies. The first extensive U.S. study, conducted by the Ohio State Medical Society in 1860, had similar conclusions.

More recently, in 1980, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences, at the request of the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services and the director of the National Institutes of Health, agreed to conduct a review and analysis of health-related effects of marijuana. IOM's findings recognized marijuana's therapeutic potential in decreasing the intraocular pressure for glaucoma patients, controlling the severe nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, acting as an anticonvulsant, relaxing muscles and thus counteracting spasticity problems, and other uses. The IOM investigators highly recommended further research to determine the full therapeutic potential of this drug. This study also noted that marijuana seems to work differently than other conventional medicines (Institute of Medicine, 1982). The government's response was to print only 300 copies of this study -- not even enough for each member of Congress


snip

Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, marijuana is a Schedule I controlled drug. This status prohibits its use by anyone and prohibits physicians from prescribing it for patients. Until February 1992, there was a little-known loophole that allowed a handful of patients legal access to this medicine: the Investigational New Drug (IND) Program administered by the Food and Drug Administration. Unfortunately, in February 1992, U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Louis Sullivan, MD, closed this access to all new applicants, as well as to more than 30 patients who had been approved for having access to this medicine but had not yet received their supply. Only 10 patients who had been approved and already were receiving their medicine have been allowed continued legal access to this drug.

Various theories attempt to rationalize the government's prohibition of this drug/plant: As an efficient fuel, it presented competition to the oil industry. As a durable natural fiber, it presented competition to the synthetic fiber industry; in fact, Levi's jeans originally were made of hemp. "Reefer madness" hysteria was created in the 1930s by Harry Anslinger of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, which eventually evolved into the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Use of the Mexican name of the cannabis plant, marijuana, was popularized by the Hearst newspaper chain to scare the public into believing that there was a new and dangerous drug being introduced to American youth by black musicians and Mexicans. The act of bigotry insinuated that the use of this drug would lead to insanity or acts of violence such as rape or murder. The result of this media blitz was the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which marked the beginning of marijuana's prohibition (Herer, 1991).

Big Industry hates hemp and cannabis, and hated it long before Nixon or Reagan entered the picture. These two merely did their bidding........... As Obama is doing today.