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Cannabis, or marijuana, has proven medical benefits and few, if any, toxic side-effects. Why, then, has it beena prohibited medicine for over fifty years? edicinal cannabis, also known as medical marijuana, is beginning to receive attention worldwide. Unfortunately, scare tactics and misinforma- tion surrounding the international 'war on drugs' continue to dominate in the political and medical arenas, leaving many unwilling or unable to think for themselves. Despite this, more people are discovering the ability of marijuana, or cannabis, to relieve symptoms surrounding many medical conditions. One of the pioneers of medicinal cannabis research is Dr Lester Grinspoon, a profes- sor at Harvard Medical School. In the last 30 years Dr Grinspoon has researched and written many articles along with two books on the cannabis controversy. Marihuana Reconsidered and Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine introduced many to the posi- tive uses and benefits of one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. In this interview with Dr Grinspoon, many topics are discussed concerning the role of medicinal cannabis use in today's society. J. Ray: What got you interested in marijuana/cannabis? Dr Grinspoon: In 1967, I had some unexpected time so I thought I would look into marijuana to see what all the fuss was about. I was convinced at the time that marijuana was a terribly dangerous drug. | didn't understand why young people were ignoring the government's warnings about its danger in using it. So, I spent the next three years doing research and looking into it. I learned I had been brainwashed just like so many other citi- zens in the United States. While marijuana is not harmless, it is so much less harmful than alcohol or tobacco that the only sensible way to deal with it is to make it legally available in a controlled system. We can see this with alcohol which is legally available to people over the age of 21 in the United States. I put all this together in a book called Marihuana Reconsidered. It was published in 1971 by Harvard University Press and was quite controversial at the time. It has just been republished as a classic with a new introduction, 25 years later. JR: In your research you found marijuana/cannabis to be less harmful than tobacco or alcohol? Dr G: I think cannabis is not harmless. There is no such thing as a harmless drug. Cannabis is, by any criterion, less harmful than either alcohol or tobacco. For example, tobacco costs the US about 425,000 lives every year; alcohol, perhaps 100,000 to 150,000 lives, not to speak of all the other problems caused by alcohol use. With cannabis there has not been a single case of a documented death due to its use. Now, of course, death is not the only toxicity. It is the most profound one and certainly a permanent one. If you look at it from the point of view of other toxicities, again it comes out much better than either alcohol or tobacco. In fact, the subject of our latest book, Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine, \ooks at cannabis from the point of view of a medicine. When cannabis regains the place it once had in the US Pharmacopoeia it will be among the least toxic substances in that whole compendium. JR: It was in the US Pharmacopoeia in the early 1900s? Dr G: That is correct. Cannabis was a very much used drug up until 194] when it was dropped from the US Pharmacopoeia. This was after the passage of the first of the dra- conian US anti-marijuana laws in 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act. This Act made it so dif- ficult for physicians to prescribe cannabis that they just stopped using it. JR: Cannabinoid receptors were recently discovered in the human brain. Are these cannabinoid receptors related to cannabis and its medical uses? Dr G: Very definitely. Some years ago it was discovered by Dr Solomon Snyder that there are endogenous opioids; that is to say, substances like opium that we produce in our Dr Lester Grinspoon interviewed by Jana Ray © 1996 ¢/- B.C. Anti-Prohibition League PO Box 8179. | Victoria, British Columbia, V8W 3R8 Canada NEXUS © 15 AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996