The New York Times Editorial Staff - Marijuana

JIM WILSON/THE NEW YORK TIMES

The flowering buds of the cannabis plant are often ground and smoked, though a variety of preparations exist for both recreational and medicinal use of marijuana.

In the 1960s, however, cultural attitudes began to shift as the counterculture came to reject establishment values, and Bohemian scenes flourished in large urban centers. The beatniks and hippies of the 1960s opposed the Vietnam War and supported the Civil Rights Movement and the womens liberation movement, and many experimented with marijuana and lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). The values of the counterculture became pervasive on college campuses, and marijuana became increasingly common among affluent youth.

In 1970, the cultural embrace of cannabis met its enemy in the Nixon administration, which declared drug abuse public enemy number one and sought to combat the distribution of cannabis and other substances via the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970. The act made cannabis a Schedule I drug, claiming it had no legitimate medical use and was prone to abuse. In 1973, the Drug Enforcement Agency was created to enforce these regulations.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s, the United States continued to engage in a costly war on drugs consisting of foreign aid to governments battling drug cartels, education campaigns focused on deterring schoolchildren and teenagers from trying drugs, and the incarceration of drug traffickers.

Beginning in the late 1990s and continuing until today, states have gradually embraced the legalization of cannabis, initially for only medicinal use but more recently for recreational use as well. Federal classification of cannabis has not changed, though enforcement has been inconsistent in the face of growing legalization in individual states and more relaxed cultural attitudes.

Today, as cannabis becomes increasingly available and its use less stigmatized, studies of the beneficial and adverse effects of its use are changing our understanding of its potential. One risk previously unidentified is cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome, a condition triggered by heavy cannabis use and characterized by recurrent vomiting and nausea. Though cured by abstinence, the adverse effects observed in patients suffering from the syndrome stand in sharp contrast to its therapuetic effects in patients with cancer or other chronic illness.

On the cultural front, the social justice movement has brought attention to the widely varying discrepancies in arrest and incarceration rates based on race as well as the big money behind the private prison system, which is heavily invested in increasing prison population size.

Now, as several states (such as California, Washington and Colorado, to name a few) and Canada have made recreational marijuana legal, cannabis is a multibillion-dollar business, and it would seem the tide would be difficult to turn back.

The articles that follow bear witness to the changing perspectives on cannabis through the ages and offer various lenses through which to view the current trend toward legalization and its impact. While this trend is still developing, much research is yet to be done on the longterm effects of cannabis and the full scope of its applications.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Americans predominantly associated cannabis with Mexico and Latin American immigrants. This belief manifested in racist attitudes toward Latinos in the United States and demands for tighter border patrol on the Mexico-United States border. In these decades, the first laws were passed classifying cannabis as a narcotic and establishing sentences for its trafficking, though sentencing varied vastly from state to state. Meanwhile, medical researchers began to study the risks and possible benefits of cannabis use.