{"id":23109,"date":"2026-09-23T14:11:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-23T18:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=23109"},"modified":"2026-09-23T14:11:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-23T18:11:32","slug":"never-forget-federal-marijuana-frauds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/23\/never-forget-federal-marijuana-frauds\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Forget Federal Marijuana Frauds"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Never Forget Federal Marijuana Frauds<\/strong><\/a><\/h1>\r\n

\"\"<\/a>by James Bovard\"\"<\/a><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

For more than 50 years, the federal government shamelessly pretended that marijuana had no recognized medical use.<\/strong> Last

On

Of course, libertarians want to see all federal restrictions on marijuana abolished. The nearly 100-year federal war on the loco weed has been a disgrace and a failure from the start.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

But the long history of federal persecution of marijuana users, researchers, and growers provides a high-potency kick on the perils of federal intervention to purportedly protect Americans\u2019 health.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

During the 1920s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture encouraged farmers to grow cannabis to boost their sagging incomes (hemp was used for such things as paper and rope). Marijuana also grew in popularity during the 1920s as a result of Prohibition, which inflated the price of alcohol by curtailing its availability.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

During the Great Depression, Mexican immigrant<\/strong>s surged into the United States searching for work and brought marijuana with them. Hostility toward the immigrants led to the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which effectively criminalized the possession of marijuana and, according to Yale professor David Musto, \u201cmostly put a lot of jazz bands in jail.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Criminalizing marijuana\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Harvard Professor of Psychiatry Lesther Grinspoon notes, \u201cBetween 1839 and 1900, more than a hundred articles on the therapeutic uses of marijuana appeared in scientific journals. As late as 1937, extract of cannabis was still a legitimate medicine marketed by drug companies.\u201d The American Medical Association testified at hearings that year urging that marijuana not be effectively banned. Unfortunately, Congress \u2014 bowing to the exhortations of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics \u2014 proclaimed in 1937 that marijuana had no medical value. Congress effectively prohibited any use of marijuana for ailing Americans. But simply because a majority of congressmen say something doesn\u2019t make it true.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1972, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) petitioned the federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to reclassify marijuana and recognize its medical uses. The director of the agency refused to consider the petition. NORML took the case to a federal appeals court, which issued a ruling that admonished the agency for rejecting the petition without \u201ca reflective consideration and analysis.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1975, NORML sued the Drug Enforcement Administration (the successor agency to the Bureau) to force the agency to evaluate the evidence on whether Americans should have access to marijuana strictly for medicinal purposes. DEA held a hearing, and a DEA administrative law judge found some merit on some of NORML\u2019s positions. But the chief of the DEA overturned those aspects of the judge\u2019s decision.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1977, a federal court of appeals criticized the DEA\u2019s final order and ordered the agency to reconsider the evidence for the medical benefits of marijuana.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1982, NORML petitioned the federal appeals court to force the DEA to follow the court\u2019s previous orders. That same year, the National Academy of Science\u2019s Institute of Medicine concluded: \u201cCannabis and its derivatives have shown promise in the treatment of a variety of disorders, [including] glaucoma, asthma, … and in the nausea and vomiting of cancer chemotherapy.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1986, a DEA administrative law judge launched an extensive evaluation of the evidence for marijuana. DEA judge Francis Young spent two years conducting hearings and listening to scores of expert witnesses. Young ruled in 1988: \u201cThe marijuana plant is anything but a new drug…. Uncontroverted evidence in this record indicates that marijuana was being used therapeutically by mankind 2,000 years before the birth of Christ<\/strong>. The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for a DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in the light of the evidence of this record.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

How did the DEA respond to the evidence? DEA administrator John Lawn denounced the judge\u2019s finding as a \u201ccruel and dangerous hoax\u201d and refused to accept the judge\u2019s ruling. Lawn announced that the agency would only allow medical use of marijuana if it had already \u201ccurrently accepted medical use.\u201d And since DEA forbid any doctors from prescribing marijuana for medical use, that somehow meant that the agency must continue to ban its use in the future.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

NORML sued again, appealing to a federal court to force the DEA to accept the recommendations of its own administrative law judge, and the court again compelled the DEA to reexamine the issue.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In

As Harvard psychiatry professors Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar noted at that time, \u201cThe Government\u2019s real concern is not that marijuana is ineffective as a medicine, but that it is too effective. The Government cannot acknowledge any of this because it has vastly exaggerated the dangers of marijuana for more than 50 years and is still committed to its war against the drug.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

California\u2019s Proposition 215<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Clinton\u2019s drug czar General Barry McCaffrey effectively claimed to be a wiser scientist than all the experts who researched marijuana\u2019s effects. On

After voters passed the proposition, the drug czar\u2019s office put out a press release warning: \u201cThe passage of [Proposition 215] creates a significant threat to the drug control system that protects our children…. The decision to bring appropriate criminal or administrative enforcement action will be, as always, decided on a case-by-case basis.\u201d McCaffrey\u2019s warning sparked a vision of a DEA agent lurking underneath the desk of every doctor.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Federal judge Fern Smith issued a preliminary injunction on

Clinton administration officials sneered at marijuana referendum results. <\/strong>Attorney General Janet Reno declared: \u201cI don\u2019t think that the determination as to whether there is a medical, a scientific medical use of marijuana, should be made at the ballot box. I think it should be made in an informed way after appropriate scientific evaluation.\u201d And if government officials chose to ignore all the scientific evidence, then that was merely political science.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Pressure toward reform<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

The federal government in 1978 began a program providing marijuana directly to a small number of people with illnesses that undeniably benefited from consuming marijuana, such as glaucoma and epilepsy.<\/strong> But the George H.W. Bush administration closed the program to any new entrants in 1992 after only eight people were certified \u2014 even though hundreds of thousands of people suffered from the same illnesses. The Clinton administration refused to reopen the program to new sufferers. The Justice Department, in a 1999 brief, declared: \u201cIt became clear that the potential widespread use of marijuana for \u2018medical\u2019 purposes under the program … was bad public policy.\u201d According to the Justice Department, the first requisite of good public policy is to pretend that individual citizens do not exist.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In 1997, the CBS situation comedy Murphy Brown<\/em> featured star Candice Bergen suffering from the aftereffects of chemotherapy. A friend provided her with some marijuana. DEA chief Thomas Constantine denounced CBS for \u201cdoing a great disservice\u201d by \u201ctrivializing drug abuse\u201d and \u201cpandering to the libertarian supporters of an `open society\u2019 and to the myths of legalization.\u201d Constantine barked: \u201cI am extremely troubled that at a time when teenage drug abuse is doubling … a television show of the caliber of Murphy Brown<\/em> would portray marijuana as medicine. It is not medicine…. More dangerously, the show sends the message to our children that marijuana must be OK because it\u2019s medicine.\u201d Constantine promised to investigate \u201cif any laws were broken\u201d by broadcasting that show.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Clinton\u2019s drug policy was haunted by the specter of emaciated chemotherapy patients desperately needing something to stop their vomiting and fire their appetites. And nothing works better for this than smoking marijuana. The feds approved pills with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana; however, pills are scant help to someone heaving their guts.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Bluster from Washington political hacks failed to stop the cascade of new scientific evidence on the medicinal benefits of marijuana:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n