The Politics of Pot
A Register-Guard Editorial May 01, 2006 Oregon*
The FDA should change its name to the Politically Approved Food and Drug Administration - PAFDA. It's a longer acronym, but it rolls off the tongue nicely and people would appreciate its greater honesty. The agency's other option is to stop embarrassing its dedicated doctors and scientists with utterly unscientific announcements such as the recent bulletin that smoked marijuana has no medicinal value. Continued...
cannabisnews.com/news/thread21800
Professor Lester Grinspoon, Harvard Medical School, USA
"Marijuana is one of the least toxic substances in the whole pharmacopoeia"
President Abraham Lincoln (December 1840)
"Prohibition... goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans' appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes... A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded"
Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, 1894
"The commission has come to the conclusion that the moderate use of hemp
drugs is practically attended by no evil results at all. ... ...moderate use
of hemp... appears to cause no appreciable physical injury of any kind,...
no injurious effects on the mind... [and] no moral injury whatever."
Albert Eistein: My First Impression of the U.S.A., 1921
"The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this."
Panama Canal Zone Report, 1925
"There is no evidence... that any deleterious influence on the individual using [cannabis]"
PREJUDICE: MARIJUANA AND JIM CROW LAWS
The Racist Ganjawar
LaGuardia Commission Report, 1944
"Cannabis smoking] does not lead directly to mental or physical deterioration... Those who have consumed marijuana for a period of years showed no mental or physical deterioration which may be attributed to the drug."
The LaGardia sub-committee of New York 1944
"The use of marijuana does not lead to morphine or heroin or cocaine addiction and no effort is made to create a market for these narcotics by stimulating the practice of marijuana smoking"
"Marijuana is not the determining factor in the commission of major crime....The publicity concerning the catastrophic effect of marijuana smoking in New York City, is unfounded"
Dr J. H. Jaffe, The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. L.Goodman and A
Gillman, 3rd edn. 1965
"There are no long lasting ill-effects from the acute use of marijuana and no fatalities have ever been recorded ... there seems to be growing agreement within the medical community, at least, that marijuana does not directly cause criminal behaviour, juvenile delinquency, sexual excitement, or addiction."
1968 UK ROYAL COMMISSION, THE WOOTTON REPORT
"Having reviewed all the material available to us we find ourselves in agreement with the conclusion reached by the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission appointed by the Government of India (1893-94) and the New York Mayor's Committee (1944 - LaGuardia) that the long-term consumption of cannabis in moderate doses has no harmful effects" "the long-asserted dangers of cannabis are exaggerated and that the related law is socially damaging, if not unworkable"
Marijuana: the law vs. 12 million people
Life magazine Oct 31, 1969. 25-35
