Why is Marijuana Illegal?

2 comments to Why is Marijuana Illegal?

• John Smith

  January 26, 2010 at 9:27 am

  it is only illegal because the goverment has trouble taxing something i can grow in my back yard or closet

• Leonard Krivitsky, MD, DD

  May 5, 2010 at 9:47 am

  Marijuana should not have been illegal in the first place, had it not been for the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, promoted by the racist prohibitionist Harri Aslinger who held the views that blacks who used marijuana became “disrespectful” to whites and even “assaulted white women”. This is the “legacy” that the DEA is protecting right now. It is absolutely amazing how the forces of ignorance have united against this medicinal plant that has been used by humans for thousands of years, beginning with ancient Sumeria or even before that. I worked for years as a Program Physician in drug addiction clinics of Philadelphia, PA where I observed first hand the devastating dependencies that current prescription drugs cause; the seizures accompanying withdrawal, the methadone maintenance therapy as the “final common pathway” for opiate addicts and so on, while marijuana use has not killed one single person in all the 10,000 years of its use by humans for medicinal and recreational purposes. There is no such thing as physical marijuana “withdrawal”, and it has been shown that cannabis use suppresses violent crime. The so-called “gateway drug” theory is a fantasy, for were it valid we would all be drug addicts already after sipping a drink, inhaling on a cigarette, or even drinking strong, sweet coffee. The American Medical Association is now in favor of medical marijuana, and the Canadian Government even pays for this medicinal plant for their veterans, while we are still discussing whether to make it legal even for medical use. Isn’t this simply shameful? This is what I believe: Medical Marijuana is the very quintessence of a medicinal plant, and those who say otherwise might as well say that the Earth is flat; we must keep up the pressure to force the DEA to give up the shameful legacy of Harri Aslinger and to change the current classification of marijuana as AMA and other experts, including many in the legal profession support, because their current classification of the plant as Schedule I is against all the scientific reality. This is what one of the country’s leading experts said:
  “Cannabis will one day be seen as a wonder drug, as was penicillin in the 1940s. Like penicillin, herbal marijuana is remarkably nontoxic, has a wide range of therapeutic applications and would be quite inexpensive if it were legal”.
  Dr. Lester Grinspoon, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Los Angeles Times, May 5, 2006 ”

  According to recent ABC and CBS polls, between 74 and 81% of Americans want medical marijuana legalized, so it is not clear to me why we are still discussing it. I believe that the movement to legalize medical marijuana combines modern scientific knowledge with ancient Gnostic struggle against ignorance.
  It is also beyond all dispute that marijuana is much, much safer than alcohol, so the fundamental fairness dictates that if alcohol is legal, marijuana should be legal as well, without a question.