History of cannabis. Part IV
Cannabis was removed from the US Pharmacopoeia and Nationwide Formulary in 1941. A reading of the hearings in which the bill was examined by the House Tactics and Means Council before its passage shows how very little info supported the judgment that marihuana was dangerous and how much mass hysteria trapped the topic. The sole dissident witness was W. C. Woodward, a physician-lawyer serving as legislative advocate for the North American Medical organisation. He supported the aims of Congress but disagreed for less limiting legislation on the grounds that future investigators might discover important medical uses for cannabis. In connection with marihuana obsession, Woodward commented : The papers have called attention to it so prominently that there has to be some grounds for their statements. It has stunned me the facts on which these statements have been based haven’t been brought before this board by competent first proof. We are referred to paper publications concerning the superiority of marihuana obsession.
We are told that the employment of marihuana causes crime. But so far nobody has been produced from the Bureau of Jails to show the amount of captives who’ve been found dependent on the marihuana habit.
An informal investigation shows the Bureau of Jails has no proof on that point. You’ve been told that college youngsters are great users of marihuana cigarettes. Nobody has been summoned from the Children’s Bureau to show the nature and extent of the habit among kids.
Investigation of the Children’s Bureau shows that they had no occasion to analyze it and know nothing particularly of it.
Investigation of the Office of Education – and they definitely should know something of the superiority of the habit among the highschool youngsters of the county, if there’s a superiority of the habit – implies that they had no occasion to analyze and know nothing of it. Flesh pressers queried Woodward closely and critically about his instructional background, his relationship to the North American Medical organisation, and his views on medical legislation of the previous 15 years. His challenges to the quality and sources of the proof against cannabis didn’t endear him to the officeholders.
Representative John Dingell’s questions are standard :
Mr. Dingell : we all know that it’s a habit that’s spreading, especially among children. We learn that from the pages of the newspapers. You are saying that Michigan has a law controlling it. We’ve got a State Law, but we don’t appear to be ready to get anywhere with it, because, as I have announced, the habit is growing. The amount of victims is steadily increasing every year.
Dr. Woodward : there isn’t any proof of that.
Mr. Dingell : I haven’t been impressed by your affidavit here as reflecting the sentiment of the high-class members of the medical profession in my State. I’m assured the medical profession in the state of Michigan, and in Wayne County especially, or in my district, will subscribe enthusiastically to any law that will suppress this thing, in spite of the indisputable fact that there’s a $1 tax imposed.
Dr. Woodward : if there had been any law that would completely suppress the thing, maybe that’s true, but when the law simply contains provisions that impose a worthless cost, and doesn’t do the result.
Mr. Dingell : ( interposing ) : that’s simply your private standpoint. That’s kindred to the opinion you entertained referring to the Harrison Drugs Act.
Dr. Woodward : If we was asked to cooperate in drafting it.
Mr.Dingell ( interposing ) : you aren’t cooperating in drafting this .
Woodward : as an important point, it doesn’t act to suppress the use of opium and cocaine.
Mr. Dingell : The medical profession should be doing its extreme to help in the suppression of this curse that’s eating the vitals of the state. Dr. Woodward : they’re.
Mr. Dingell : Are you not just piqued because you weren’t consulted in the drafting of the bill ?
Woodward was eventually cut off with the scolding : you aren’t cooperative in this. If you need to recommend us on legislation you ought to come here with some helpful offers instead of feedback, instead of attempting to throw hindrances in the way of something the central government is attempting to do. His sworn statement was futile.
The bill became law on Oct 1st, 1937. Many state laws, just as punishing and speedily conceived, followed. One of the few public officers who replied rationally to the issue of marihuana in the 1930s was New York’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. In 1938 he appointed a board of scientists to look at the medical, sociological, and mental sides of marihuana use in N. Y Town . 2 internists, 3 psychiatrists, 2 pharmacologists, a public health expert, the commissioners of Correction, Health, and Surgeries , and the director of the Division of Psychoanalysis of the Department of Surgeries made up the council. They began their investigations in 1940 and presented detailed observations in 1944 under the title The Marihuana Problem in the Town of Long Island. This principally overlooked study dispelled plenty of the legends that had spurred passage of the tax act. The board found no explanation that bad crime was associated with marihuana or that it caused assertive or antisocial behaviour ; marihuana wasn’t sexually over exciting and didn’t change character ; there wasn’t any proof of acquired toleration.
In Sep 1942 the North American Journal of Psychoanalysis released the Psychiatric facets of Marihuana Intoxication, by a couple of the study’s investigators, Samuel Allentuck and Karl M. Bowman. Among other stuff, Allentuck and Bowman wrote that habituation to cannabis isn’t as robust as habituation to tobacco or alcohol. A quarter later on in December, an editorial in the Book of the North American Medical organisation described Allentuck and Bowman’s article as a concentrated study and discussed potential healing uses of cannabis in the handling of depression, appetite loss, and opiate dependence.