Medical Use of Marijuana

Marijuana has been used a medicine for thousands of years. In the United States, it was a legal medicine until 1969. In 1970, the Controlled Substances Act placed illicit and prescription drugs into five categories. Marijuana was placed in ScheduleßI, defining it as having a high potential for abuse, no currently accepted medical use in the United States, and a lack of accepted safety for use even under medical supervision. Lisa Stein in U.S. News & World Report writes that since 1996, a majority of voters in Alaska, California, Colorado, the District of Columbia, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington voted in favor of ballot initiatives to remove criminal penalties for seriously ill people who grow or possess medical marijuana. In 1997, a panel of experts convened by the National Institutes of Health recommended additional tests to determine the medical benefits of smoking marijuana, in contrast to consuming certain active ingredients of marijuana in pill form (Stein, 2002, 20).

Elizabeth Frater writes in National Journal that in response to these ballot initiatives, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy commissioned a study to determine whether marijuana has legitimate medical applications in late 1997. The study released in March of 1999 confirmed that marijuana has medical uses for a number of serious medical conditions including reduction of intra-ocular pressure that can result in glaucoma, relief from

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Approximate Word count = 832
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page)

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