Timeline for Cannabis Reform

1600-1890s Domestic production of hemp encouraged.

1812 The War of 1812 is primarily about access to Russian Hemp.

1834 Young Abe Lincoln reads by hemp oil light.

1840 In America, medicinal preparations based on cannabis become available.

1845 Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotimimetric drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of cannabis.

1850 Extract of hemp becomes one of the most widely used medicines in the USA.

1856 British government tax cannabis trade in India.

1860 First governmental commission study of cannabis and hashish conducted by Ohio State Medical Society. It catalogues the conditions for which cannabis is beneficial: neuralgia, nervous rheumatism, mania, whooping cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, epilepsy, infantile convulsions, palsy, uterine hemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.

1870 Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.

1876 Hashish served at American Centennial Exposition.

1893-94 British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report.

1898 The Spanish American War erupts. During the war, the marijuana-smoking army of Panco Villa seizes 800,000 acres of prime Mexican timberland belonging to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. The timber from this land was used to manufacture newsprint for Hearst’s publishing empire. Hearst begins a 30-year propaganda campaign denouncing Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos, portraying Mexicans as lazy pot-smoking layabouts.

1906 Pure Food and Drug Act - Required labeling of any cannabis contained in over-the-counter remedies.

1910 The white minority in South Africa outlaws cannabis ingestion in an attempt to force blacks to stop practicing ancient Dagga religions.

1916-1937 William Randolph Hearsta’s newspapers introduced the word ‘marijuana’ into English from Mexican slang. Hearst sold lots of newspapers using stories about “coloured” men using drugs to corrupt white women. Many of them allegedly carried big knives and would go wild at any provocation. New techniques for processing hemp for paper that pose a serious threat to his timber based paper businesses provide the motivation.

1923 Marijuana was first banned in Canada under the Opium and Drug Act.

1930 Creation of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN).

1930 Henry Ford makes his motor cars out of hemp with hemp paint and hemp fuel. New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre and convert the pulp or hurds into paper, plastics etc.

1931 Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (head of the Mellon Bank of Pittsburgh, one of the two banks with which DuPont did business) appoints future nephew-in-law Harry J. Anslinger to head the newly-formed Federal Bureau of Narcotics and remained in that post until 1962.

1932 Uniform State Narcotic Act.

1936 Reefer Madness - Propaganda film Reefer Madness was produced by the French director, Louis Gasnier.

1937 The Marijuana Tax Act is signed into law, initiating 60 years of cannabis prohibition and annihilating a multi-billion dollar industry. DuPont and other synthetic materials manufacturers reap vast profits by filling the void conveniently left by the criminalization of industrial hemp.

1941 Popular Mechanics introduces Henry Ford’s plastic car, manufactured from and fueled by cannabis. Hoping to free his company from the grasp of the petroleum industry, Ford illegally grew cannabis for years after the federal ban.

1942 The Japanese invasion of the Philippines cuts off the U.S. supply of Manila hemp. The U.S. government immediately distributes 400,000 pounds of cannabis seeds to farmers from Wisconsin to Kentucky. Just four short years after cannabis was outlawed as the “assassin of youth,” the government requires farmers to attend showings of the USDA pro-cannabis classic, Hemp for Victory.

1942 Marijuana was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopoeia because it was believed to be a harmful and addictive drug, causing psychotic episodes.

1942 Harry Anslinger is appointed to a top-secret committee charged with finding a “truth serum” for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency (which, in later years, investigated the applications of psychedelic drugs for mind control purposes). The group picks a cannabis-derived form of hashish oil as their truth serum of choice.

In 1943, the committee abandoned the idea because test subjects tended to laugh hysterically and get the munchies rather than spill the beans.

1944 The LaGuardia Report questions the Government’s sanity. Medicine issued an extensively researched report declaring that, contrary to earlier research and popular belief, use of marijuana did not induce violence, insanity or sex crimes, or lead to addiction or other drug use.

1961 The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. The act increased the minimum penalty for cultivation to 7 years, and the minimum for importation and exportation to 14 years. This made the marijuana laws carry the second heaviest minimum sentence in Canadian criminal law, surpassed only by that imposed for capital and non-capital murder.

1962 President Kennedy using cannabis as a pain reliever.

1964 Dr. Raphael Mechoulam of the University of Tel Aviv isolates THC Delta-9, the primary active ingredient in cannabis — and one of at least 60 compounds found in cannabis that have therapeutic value.

1967 The UK urges legalization of cannabis. The Beatles sign it. 3,000 people hold a ’smoke-in’ in Hyde Park. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones are arrested and imprisoned for cannabis. This prompts a Times editorial ‘Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?’ The convictions are quashed on appeal. In the UK 2,393 persons are arrested for cannabis offences. In the USA over 3,000 joints get mailed to addresses at random by Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies.

1968 Campaign to stop US soldiers in Vietnam from taking cannabis - they switch to heroin.

1969 The UN estimates that there are between 200,000,000 and 250,000,000 cannabis users in the world.

1970 Afghani hashish varieties introduced to North America for sinsemilla production. Westerners bring metal sieve cloths to Afghanistan. Law enforcement efforts against hashish begin in Afghanistan.

1970 Le Dain Report (Canada) recommended that serious consideration be given to the legalization of personal possession of marijuana. It finds that cannabis use increases self-confidence, feelings of creativity and sensual awareness, facilitates concentration and self-acceptance, reduces tension, hostility and aggression and may produce psychological but not physical dependence. The report recommends that possession laws be repealed. This report cost Canada 4 Million Dollars and was completely ignored by the government.

1971 Medical World News reports that Marijuana… is probably the most potent anti-epileptic known to medicine today.

1972 Shafer Commission - The bipartisan Shafer Commission, appointed by President Nixon at the direction of Congress, considered laws regarding marijuana and determined that personal use of marijuana should be decriminalized. Nixon rejected the recommendation, but over the course of the 1970s, eleven states decriminalized marijuana and most others reduced their penalties.

1973 Creation of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) - Merger of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNND) and the Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement (ODALE).

1974 Dr. Heath conducts his infamous government-funded Rhesus monkey study at Tulane University, touted for years as “evidence” that marijuana causes brain damage. Dr. Heath would put an airtight gas mask on the monkey, strap it into a chair and force-toke the equivalent of 63 Columbian-strength joints over the course of five minutes. The monkeys suffered brain damage, all right ” from suffocation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

1975 FDA establishes Compassionate Use program for medical marijuana

1976 USA New York Times (Jan 5) declares ‘Scientists find nothing really harmful about pot’.

1976 Cannabis is decriminalised in the Netherlands.

1976 DuPont declares cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and calls for its decriminalization.

1977 President Carter thinks cannabis should be legalized.

1981 The Coptic Study claims No harm to human brain or intelligence through cannabis use.

1983 The USA government (Reagan/Bush) orders American universities to destroy all 1966-76 research work on cannabis.

1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act - Mandatory Sentences - President Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, instituting mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes.

1986 Dronabinol is placed into Schedule II by the DEA.

1988 DEA chief administrative judge, Judge Young, rules the US government should allow the medicinal use of cannabis. He says “Marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man”. DEA rejects report.

1988 In the USA - a clear violation of rights to free speech - laws were passed prohibiting the right to explain how drugs are produced, advocate use of drugs or hemp, and even promoting legalization of drugs was outlawed. The penalties were $100,000 for the first offence and $300,000 for the second, with six months to a year’s incarceration.

1989 Ignoring evidence to the contrary, Drug Enforcement Agency Director John Lawn orders that cannabis remain on the Schedule One narcotics list, reserved for drugs which have no known medical use.

1991 THC receptors found in the brain.

1992 USA over 340,000 arrests for cannabis.

1992 U.S. President Clinton admits he smoked cannabis, but did not inhale. Howard Marks admits that he smoked cannabis, but never exhaled.

1994 An Ontario farmer, Joe Strobel, is granted a federal licence to grow 10 acres of marijuana for research into the plant’s industrial agricultural potential.

1995 The U.S. prison population has grown an average of 43,266 inmates per year. About 25 per cent are sentenced for drug law violations.

1997 The Controlled Drugs and Substances Act comes into force, consolidating marijuana laws previously found in the Narcotic Control Act and Parts III and IV of the Food and Drugs Act.

1997 A court in Texas, USA, sentences medical marijuana user William J. Foster to 93 years imprisonment for cultivation of one plant.

1997 An 8-year study at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine concluded that long-term smokers of cannabis do not experience a greater annual decline in lung functions than non-smokers.

1997 In the USA a $2 million study to prove cannabis smoking can cause cancer fails and announces that it does not. The release of the report is delayed due to ‘lack of supplies’.

1998 The UK Government has granted a license to grow and possess cannabis for the purposes of medical trials, to Dr. Geoffrey Guy of GW Pharmaceuticals. The crop at a secret location in south-east England is guarded by electrified razor-wire fences, security cameras and guard dogs.

1998 Italy decriminalizes possession of drugs and permits small-scale cultivation of cannabis for own use. 1999 Switzerland legalizing Cannabis.

1999 The Canadian Federal government has given permission for the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical purposes.

2000 The Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs announces that over 30,000 Canadians were charged with simple possession of marijuana.

2000 Roughly one third of voting adults in the US have acknowledged smoking pot at some time during their lives. Presently, one person is arrested every 45 seconds for simple possession.

2000 Over 90% of Canadians support decriminalizing marijuana for medicinal purposes, according to a National Post poll.

2000 The judgment in R. vs Parker declares the prohibition on the possession of marijuana in the Act “to be of no force and effect”, but suspends that declaration for a year to give Parliament time to amend the federal legislation to comply with the Charter.

2000 UK reports that cannabis is less harmful than Aspirin.

2001 Canada becomes the first country in the world to legalize the use of marijuana by people suffering from terminal illnesses and chronic conditions.

2002 The Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs reviews Canada’s current anti-drug policies and legislation and says that marijuana is not a gateway drug and should be treated more like tobacco or alcohol rather than like harder drugs.

2003 The U.S. federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $600 per second. The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars. Arrests for drug law violations in 2005 are expected to exceed the 1,678,192 arrests of 2003.

2005 In a segment of the tapes made available to CNN by ABC News, the president appears to admit to trying marijuana. Bush says he “wouldn’t answer the marijuana question … ’cause I don’t want some little kid doing what I tried.”

2005 Sativex, the world’s first cannabis derived medicine is licensed for use in Canada. The drug is developed by British Company GW Pharmaceuticals. The UK considers licensing Sativex as well.

2005 Marijuana becomes focus of drug war - The Washington Post reports that the focus of the drug war in the United States has shifted significantly over the past decade from hard drugs (namely heroin and cocaine) to marijuana, which now accounts for nearly half of all drug arrests nationwide, according to a recently released analysis of federal crime statistics.

2005 Bush administration officials said individual users have little reason to worry. “We have never targeted the sick and dying, but rather criminals engaged in drug trafficking”.

2005 The House rejects an effort to undercut a Supreme Court ruling on medical marijuana, defeating an amendment to protect people who smoke marijuana on the advice of their doctors in the 10 states where the practice is legal.

2005 The Kansas City Star reports: The government is violating federal law by obstructing medical marijuana research, scientists contend in lawsuits seeking faster action on applications to grow the drug.

2005 News10- Gannett Company reports; “The state attorney general has reviewed this concern and says that California can issue ID cards to medical marijuana users without state employees facing prosecution for assisting in the commission of a federal crime”.

2005 CBC News Marc Emery

The ‘Prince of Pot’ arrested; U.S. seeks extradition.

Source: http://www.torontohemp.com/timeline.htm, http://www.torontohemp.com/ canadian.htm, http://www.cannabishealth. com/issue_03/ index.html#time, http://www.cannabisworldwide.com/us02.html, http://www.viperrecords. com/newprohibition/timeline.shtml, http://www. drugwarfacts.org/, http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/ hottopics/cannabis/medical.shtml?tl2#events_ info, http://www.parascope.com/articles/0897/ timeline.htm, http://www.ctv.ca/generic/ WebSpecials/marijuana/index_timeline.html, http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_timeline.php, http://www.news10.net/storyfull1.asp?id=12327

Source: http://www.cannabishealth.com/site/issue-3-6/issue-3-6-timeline-for-cannabis-reform.html