Marijuana as Medicine:
A Recent History

SECTION II
Political Actions
Federal Legislation
Opinion Samplings
Polls & Surveys 
Public Elections 
A Remarkable Consensus 

SECTION III
Current Federal Policy
Demands for Change
Medical Prohibition Under Pressure
The Collapse of Compassion
Bush Blunders
Aftermath

SECTION IV
Let'em Eat THC
Marinol Isn't Marijuana
The Great White Drug
Let The Market Decide 

SECTION V
Presidents Come & Go
On The Other Hand
Beyond Cultural Warfare
Conclusion 

SECTION VI
Citations

II. The Medical Prohibition Has No Public Support 

It is difficult to find any other question which unites so many of the American people in opposition to an existing federal policy. 

Federal laws which prohibit marijuana's therapeutic availability are not politically, socially or legally tenable. Federal agencies enforcing the medical prohibition long ago lost the public debate for hearts and minds. 

While few people would identify medical marijuana as a "front-burner" issue, there are emblematic aspects to the problem which can directly affect public perceptions of an administration's candor, honesty and compassion. 

All available evidence suggests the medical prohibition of marijuana has no support among the American people. Indeed, public repudiation of the medical prohibition is now nearly universal. Despite two decades of bureaucratic misinformation the American people view the medical prohibition as an irrational outgrowth of misdirected War on Drugs zealotry.(9) 

Public rejection of the medical prohibition is evident in political actions, available polling data, and recent election returns. 

Political Actions 

In 1978, a young cancer patient, Lynn Pierson, brought marijuana's medical value to the attention of the New Mexico legislature. After public hearings in which cancer and glaucoma patients and their physicians strongly endorsed marijuana's medical availability, the legislature overwhelmingly enacted the nation's first law recognizing marijuana's medical value.(10) 

Patients in other states quickly followed Lynn Pierson's lead and petitioned their legislatures for similar laws. The result was an explosion of state legislation which has continued into this decade. 

On December 31, 1991, Massachusetts Governor William Weld signed the nation's thirty-fourth state law recognizing marijuana's medical value. In every instance these state laws gained broad bipartisan support and were enacted by tremendous legislative margins.(11) 

State efforts to end the medical prohibition failed, however, because of entrenched opposition from federal drug agencies.(12) This bureaucratic opposition had very real human consequences. In New Mexico nine patients, including Lynn Pierson, died "while waiting for promised supplies of federal marijuana which never arrived. "(13) 

Despite bureaucratic hostility, six states finally managed to satisfy federal regulatory demands to establish programs of patient access to medical marijuana.(14) 

Angered by federal efforts to destroy the intent of their marijuana-as-medicine statutes, the legislatures of New Mexico, Michigan and New Hampshire enacted Resolutions to the U.S. Congress condemning federal efforts to block marijuana's medical use. The Michigan Resolution bluntly states: 

"Federal agencies have failed to meet this good faith effort, and have instead, through regulatory ploys and obscure bureaucratic devices, resisted and obstructed the intent of the Michigan legislature."(15) 

While the state legislatures failed to overturn the negative effects of a federally-imposed prohibition, there are several important political realities highlighted by the enactment of so many state statutes: 

Federal Legislation 
This same pattern of broad bipartisan political support was also evident in federal legislative efforts. In September 1981, four Republican Congressmen -- Stewart McKinney (CT), Millicent Fenwick (NJ), Hamilton Fish (NY) and Newt Gingrich (GA) -- introduced a federal marijuana-as-medicine bill. This legislation, re-introduced in 1983 and 1985, received broad bipartisan support in the House, attracting more than 110 co-sponsors. It is difficult to find another legislative matter which could unite far-right conservatives Gingrich, Fish, William Dannemeyer and Mickey Edwards with moderates McKinney, Fenwick and William B. Hughes, and liberals Richard Gephardt and Barney Frank. (16) 

Despite the wide-range of political support for meaningful federal legislation, Representative Henry Waxman (CA), chairman of the House subcommittee on health, failed to hold public hearings on this broadly sponsored legislation, preferring instead to concentrate attention on his own poorly supported heroin-as-medicine measure. 

In early 1987, Representative McKinney became the first Member of Congress to die of AIDS. The legislation he sponsored died with him. There was no federal marijuana-as-medicine bill until eight years later when Representative Barney Frank re-introduced the McKinney legislation. Hoping to embarrass the new Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich by pointing to Gingrich's former support of the bill, Frank rushed to embrace the thirteen-year-old legislation and presented it with a small cadre of supporters, all liberal Democrats. In the newly elected Republication Congress such political shenanigans had a predictable result. The bill was branded a "pro-drug" measure and failed to gather much additional support over the next two years. 

Moreover, the bill was no longer relevant. In a time of shrinking governmental budgets and agencies, the bill calls for expansion of federal marijuana production and the establishment of a new federal office to oversee distribution of the drug. 

The future of legislative action on the federal level is unclear at this writing. Efforts to counter the Arizona and California voter initiatives of 1996 with federal legislation have been discussed but nothing has been pursued as yet. 

Opinion Samplings 

Polling data of public attitudes on this question mirrors the actions of the state legislatures and consistently indicate a vast majority of the American people believe marijuana has medical value and should be legally available, by prescription. 

There is a generalized public anger over increasingly intrusive bureaucratic controls on the delivery of medical care. A poll conducted by The Wirthlin Group found 80% of Americans believe patients should have a legal right to use promising, but not yet approved, therapies for terminal illnesses such as AIDS or cancer. 

Even in non-fatal diseases, 78-84% of the American people felt control over the choice of medical treatment should be decided by patients and their physicians, not remote bureaucrats or policemen. (17) 

This deep-seated public concern over who controls basic medical decisions is starkly evident in the polling data available on the question of marijuana's medical availability. 

Polls & Surveys 

The first reliable polling information on this question appeared in the late 1970s from surveys conducted in Pennsylvania (18) and Nebraska.(19) Both polls disclosed more than 80% of those randomly questioned favored marijuana's prescriptive medical availability. A very sizable majority of all those questioned -- whether segmented by age, party identification, religion, education or income -- supported marijuana's medical use. Both polls, conducted by different polling organizations, found opposition to marijuana's medical use was limited to a scant 12% of the population.(20) 

A telephone poll conducted by the Detroit Free Press on October 13, 1978, revealed 85.4% of those calling favored prescriptive access to marijuana. 

In Washington, the State Medical Association conducted a poll in which 80% of the doctors favored the controlled medical availability of marijuana.(21) 

A more recent polling of physicians was conducted in 1991 by Harvard University's J.F.K. School of Public Policy. More than 2,000 cancer specialists were surveyed about their attitudes towards marijuana's medical utility. An astonishing 89% of those physicians with an opinion said marijuana is an effective antiemetic treatment.(22) 

Unscientific radio-talk show and newspaper samplings of public opinion consistently register a similarly high range -- 75-85% -- of public support for medical marijuana. 

For example, a December 22, 1992 radio-talk poll conducted by Roanoke, Virginia station WFIR is typical. The station reports that 96% of the listeners who phoned the station vote-line endorsed marijuana's medical availability.(23) 

The most recent scientific poll on this question was conducted for the Drug Policy Foundation. In response to the one question relating to marijuana's medical use 69% of those questioned favored prescriptive access to marijuana for the treatment of glaucoma.(24) 


Public Elections 

While polls provide a "snapshot" of social attitudes, there is no more powerful, exacting or legitimate expression of the electorate's mind than that afforded by an election. 

In November 1991, "liberal" San Francisco became the first political jurisdiction in the United States to put this question on the ballot. An astonishing 79.5% of the electorate rejected the federal prohibition to vote in favor of marijuana's medical availability. 

One year later, in November 1992, the voters in "conservative" Santa Cruz County, south of San Francisco, voted to end the medical prohibition by an equally astonishing 77.1%. 

Significantly, Proposition P in San Francisco and Measure A in Santa Cruz won by larger electoral margins than any national candidate on the 1992 ballot or any previous voter initiatives in California history. 

These public expressions of support for medical access to marijuana reached a zenith in November 1996 when the states of Arizona and California passed state-wide voter initiatives. 

A Remarkable Consensus 

There is no other issue which unites so many of the American people in opposition to an existing federal policy. 

The American people know marijuana has medical value, and they are clearly fed-up with bureaucratic efforts to block marijuana's therapeutic availability. As noted above: 

The scale of the electoral victories reflects the bipartisan public consensus so evident in the state legislatures, in the range of cosponsors attracted to Representative McKinney's federal marijuana-as-medicine bill, and in the available polling data. 

The most remarkable aspect of this vast public consensus is its constancy over time, and its reach beyond mere party or ideological identifications. In the purest political terms the net difference between multi-ethnic urban liberal voters in San Francisco and predominately white, conservative voters in Santa Cruz County was a mere 2.4%. In both elections, nearly eight out of ten voters rejected the medical prohibition to vote in favor of a more rational and humane policy directed at meeting legitimate medical needs.