The Past, Present, and Future of Medical Marijuana in the United States

On October 19, 2009, the Office of the Deputy US Attorney General issued a memorandum, “Investigations and Prosecutions in States Authorizing the Medical Use of Marijuana.”

The memo announced a federal policy to abstain from investigating or prosecuting “individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.”

The memo made clear, however, that it did not “legalize marijuana or provide a legal defense to a violation of federal law.” Rather, it was “intended solely as a guide to the exercise of investigative and prosecutorial discretion.”

This article seeks to place the attorney general’s action in historical, medical, and legal context.

From the article:

"Healers have turned to cannabis, known in the vernacular as marijuana, for its medicinal qualities for more than 5 millennia. Indeed, the world’s oldest surviving medical text, the Chinese Shen-nung Pen-tshao Ching, recommends marijuana to reduce the pain of rheumatism and to address digestive disorders.

The herb had an established use in Western medicine, too. Between 1840 and 1900, more than 100 articles extolling its therapeutic virtues appeared in American and European medical journals.

In 1851, the United States Pharmacopoeia included the “extract of hemp,” in its catalog of medicinal amalgams. That same year, The Dispensatory of the United States of America proclaimed, “The complaints in which [marijuana] has been specially recommended are neuralgia, gout, rheumatism, tetanus, hydrophobia, epidemic cholera, convulsions, chorea, hysteria, mental depression, insanity, and uterine hemorrhage.” A little more than a decade later, the 1864 edition of the Pharmacopoeia gave precise instructions in the preparation of this medicine.

American physicians routinely prescribed marijuana until the late 1930s. It would not be until 1970 that the law would intervene to proscribe all uses of the herb....


"Imagine the cancer survivor who resides in one of the 13 states that recognizes medical use of marijuana. She can ingest the herb knowing that federal agents are unlikely to kick her door down and arrest her. She will also know that her conduct is patently illegal. Every day, to address the nausea that accompanies her chemotherapy, she will engage in illegal conduct that the attorney general has authorized.

This is the nature of the compromise that the October 19 memorandum represents. The nation’s top law enforcement official has embraced the “compassionate use” that the California electorate recognized more than a dozen years ago. Current law may be the best that the cancer patient can hope for, but the remainder of the populace should not be satisfied. Those who support medical use of marijuana should not be happy with its continuing illegality. Those opposed to it should not accept federally licensed illegal behavior. "