{"id":23227,"date":"2026-09-25T10:59:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:59:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=23227"},"modified":"2026-09-25T10:59:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T14:59:57","slug":"never-trust-uncle-sam-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/25\/never-trust-uncle-sam-on-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"Never Trust Uncle Sam on Drugs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Never Trust Uncle Sam on Drugs<\/a><\/h1>\n
By \"\"James Bovard<\/span><\/a> <\/span>\u00a0 September 25, 2026\u00a0 \"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

As the Covid-19 pandemic struck this nation, many Americans were stunned to see top federal health officials brazenly lie to buttress their own power. Bureaucrats and politicians unleashed themselves by shrouding how the feds bankrolled the creation of the pathogen, sanctifying a pseudo-miracle cure vaccine that was concocted almost overnight, and denying the vast collateral damage from effectively placing hundreds of millions of citizens under house arrest.\u00a0<\/mark><\/p>\n

But there were precedents for all those crimes and follies in the federal war on drugs that began more than a century ago. That crusade established the right of federal officials to define reality and to scourge anyone who tried to reveal that federal Drug Czars were dangerous hucksters.<\/p>\n

Federal contortions on marijuana are Exhibit A for why Americans should never trust Uncle Sam on drugs. For more than 50 years, the federal government shamelessly pretended that marijuana had no recognized medical use.<\/p>\n

Last December 18, President Trump signed an executive order<\/a> entitled, \u201cIncreasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research.\u201d Trump ordered the Attorney General and the Drug Enforcement Administration to speed up rule-making to finally enable far more medical research on the benefits of marijuana. On April 23, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that henceforth all \u201cFDA-approved marijuana-derived products\u201d and \u201cState-licensed medical marijuana products\u201d are shifted from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3, a far less restrictive federal regulatory regime.<\/p>\n

But the long history of federal persecution of marijuana users, researchers, and growers vivified the folly of trusting federal intervention to protect Americans\u2019 health.<\/p>\n

During the 1920s, the US 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.<\/p>\n

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

Harvard Professor of Psychiatry Lester 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.<\/p>\n

Federal Judges Need Not Apply<\/h3>\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>\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. The DEA held a hearing, and a DEA administrative law judge found some merit in some of NORML\u2019s positions. But the chief of the DEA overturned those aspects of the judge\u2019s decision.<\/p>\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>\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, \u2026 and in the nausea and vomiting of cancer chemotherapy.\u201d<\/p>\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\u2026.Uncontroverted evidence in this record indicates that marijuana was being used therapeutically by mankind 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. 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.\u201d<\/p>\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 the DEA forbade any doctors from prescribing marijuana for medical use, that somehow meant that the agency must continue to ban its use in the future.<\/p>\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.<\/p>\n

In March 1992, the DEA \u201creconsidered\u201d and announced that it was right all along and that it would continue to ban any medical use of marijuana. DEA chief Robert Bonner decreed: \u201cLay testimonials, impressions of physicians, isolated case studies, random clinical experience, reports so lacking in details they cannot be scientifically evaluated and all other forms of anecdotal proof are entirely irrelevant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bonner got warmed up and showed some of the fervor that is the pride of DEA: \u201cBeyond doubt, the claims that marijuana is medicine are false, dangerous and cruel. Sick men, women and children can be fooled by these claims and experiment with the drug. Instead of being helped, they risk serious side effects.\u201d Bonner acknowledged that he based his findings on the same testimony and documents that led DEA Administrative Law Judge Young to an opposite conclusion four years earlier. (Bonner denounced me for writing a Washington Times<\/em> article exposing the DEA\u2019s chemical warfare on hapless Guatemalan farmers.)<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Pseudo-Science Trumps Democracy<\/h3>\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 August 15, 1996, while campaigning in California against Proposition 215, which would have legalized the medical use of marijuana, McCaffrey declared: \u201cThere is not a shred of scientific evidence that shows that smoked marijuana is useful or needed. This is not science. This is not medicine. This is a cruel hoax.\u201d On December 30, 1996, when asked by a CNN reporter \u201cis there any evidence\u2026that marijuana is useful in a medical situation?\u201d McCaffrey responded: \u201cNo, none at all. There are hundreds of studies that indicate that it isn\u2019t.\u201d McCaffrey ridiculed claims of marijuana\u2019s benefit as \u201cCheech \u2018n\u2019 Chong medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2026.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.<\/p>\n

Federal judge Fern Smith issued a preliminary injunction on April 30, 1997, prohibiting the feds from punishing doctors: \u201cThe government\u2019s fear that frank dialogue between physicians and patients about medical marijuana might foster drug use\u2026does not justify infringing the First Amendment\u2026[T]his case is about the ability of doctors, on an individualized basis, to give advice and recommendations to bona fide patients suffering from serious, debilitating illnesses regarding the possible benefits of personal, medical use of small quantities of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clinton administration officials sneered at marijuana referendum results. 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.<\/p>\n

The Specter of Emaciated Chemo Patients<\/h3>\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. 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2026was 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>\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 \u2018open society\u2019 and to the myths of legalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Constantine barked: \u201cI am extremely troubled that at a time when teenage drug abuse is doubling\u2026a television show of the caliber of Murphy Brown would portray marijuana as medicine. It is not medicine.\u201d Constantine promised to investigate \u201cif any laws were broken\u201d by broadcasting that show.<\/p>\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>\n

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

\u2022 A 1997 study performed on animals at the University of California at San Francisco found that cannabinoids (the active ingredient in marijuana) can be an effective reliever of pain without the adverse side effects of opiates.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The American Journal of Psychiatry<\/em> reported in 1999 that German researchers successfully used the major psychoactive ingredient in marijuana to treat Tourette\u2019s Syndrome (a complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by sudden spasms).<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported in 1998 that marijuana may protect brain cells during a stroke.<\/p>\n

\u2022 British researchers revealed in 2000 that a marijuana compound was very effective in helping control the muscle spasms that afflict people with multiple sclerosis.<\/p>\n

Clinton administration officials suppressed research results of United Nations affiliates that embarrassed the US drug war. The World Health Organization (WHO) completed a major study of marijuana\u2019s effects in 1997. The draft of the final report included a comparison of the adverse effects of cannabis with alcohol and tobacco. However, the WHO, bowing to pressure from the US government and other drug warriors, suppressed that chapter.<\/p>\n

New Scientist<\/em>, a British magazine, acquired a copy of the study and reported that in five out of seven categories of long-term health damage, alcohol was judged more harmful than marijuana. The report also observed that \u201cin developed societies, cannabis appears to play little role in injuries caused by violence, as does alcohol.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s Great Betrayal<\/h3>\n

In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appeared to pledge an end to the persecution of medical marijuana users and providers: \u201cWhat I\u2019m not going to be doing is using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue.\u201d Regardless, the Obama administration brought almost twice as many prosecutions against medical marijuana providers and users as did the George W. Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, complained in 2012 that \u201cObama has become more hostile to medical marijuana patients than any president in US history.\u201d A 2012 Time Magazine<\/em> analysis<\/a> noted that the DEA \u201chas made it clear that medical marijuana is not medicine, and even called it a \u2018mortal danger.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s repression of medical marijuana coincided with an explosion in abuse of prescription painkillers. A 2016 federal report estimated that 38 percent of adults had used prescription painkillers in the previous year, resulting in 19,000 deaths (more than the national homicide total). Medical marijuana is a proven painkiller, but the Obama administration (supported by pharmaceutical companies\u2019 campaign contributions and lobbying) scorned it. The National Institute on Drug Abuse torpedoed a 2011 research project testing whether \u201cmarijuana helps combat veterans with their post-traumatic stress disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n

Generations of politicians and bureaucrats scorned the scientific evidence on marijuana to score \u201ctough on crime\u201d points. Anyone with an illness or malady that marijuana could help became merely collateral damage in the war on drugs. More than ten million Americans were arrested for marijuana to help prop up Washington\u2019s campaign to demonize weed and anyone who touched it.<\/p>\n

Marijuana policy vivifies how federal policymakers were perpetually more interested in controlling and punishing Americans than in permitting citizens to find relief for all that ailed them. \u201cWhen you mix politics and science, you get politics,\u201d observed John Barry in The Great Influenza<\/em><\/a>, his history of the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak. Unfortunately, hard facts can rarely compete with massive national campaigns to demonize anyone who refuses to submit to the latest commands.<\/p>\n

An earlier version<\/a> of this piece was published by the Future of Freedom Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never Trust Uncle Sam on Drugs By James Bovard \u00a0 September 25, 2026\u00a0 As the Covid-19 pandemic struck this nation, many Americans were stunned to see top federal health officials brazenly lie to buttress their own power. Bureaucrats and politicians unleashed themselves by shrouding how the feds bankrolled the creation of the pathogen, sanctifying a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2349,202,27,23,38,4951],"class_list":["post-23227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid","tag-fraud","tag-lying","tag-marijuana","tag-obama","tag-public-health"],"yoast_head":"\nNever Trust Uncle Sam on Drugs - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Federal Covid policy and federal marijuana policy both relied on massively deceiving the American public\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/25\/never-trust-uncle-sam-on-drugs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Never Trust Uncle Sam on Drugs - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \\\"the roving inspector general of the modern state\\\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \\\"one-man truth squad.\\\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \\\"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\\\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23229,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23227\/revisions\/23229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}