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(Washington Stand) America has a surprisingly long history debating marijuana. Long before Mexico prohibited the sale of the drug in the 1920s and the U.S. imposed a tax on the sale and possession in 1937, communities in both countries were raising the alarm on the ways recreational marijuana use was harming individuals and the public overall.
In the 1970s, the federal government classified it as a Schedule I drug under the newly minted Controlled Substances Act. At the same time, tobacco giant Philip Morris entered into an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to study the toxicity and carcinogenesis of inhaled marijuana without the public’s knowledge, and this information was forced into the light during the litigation of Big Tobacco in the late 1990s.
When a small handful of states began testing the waters by “legalizing” this federally illegal drug, President Obama opened the floodgates to mass commercialization in 2012 by announcing his administration would not enforce federal law. Since then, the carte blanche rescheduling of high-potency marijuana for therapeutic purposes by the Trump administration this past spring has only made a chaotic legal issue even more murky.