By 1966, millions of young Americans had begun using marijuana. Concerned parents and government, wanting to know the dangers their children were risking, started funding dozens and later hundreds of marijuana health studies.

    Entrenched in the older generation’s minds were 30 years of Anslinger/Hearst scare stories of murder, atrocity, rape, and even zombie pacifism.

    Federally sponsored research results began to ease Americans’ fears of cannabis causing violence or zombie pacifism, and hundreds of new studies suggested that hidden inside the hemp plants’ chemistry lay a medicinal array of incredible therapeutic potential. The government funded more and more studies.

    Soon, legions of American researchers had positive indications using cannabis with asthma, glaucoma, nausea from chemotherapy, anorexia, tumors, and epilepsy, as well as a general use antibiotic. Cumulative results showed evidence of favorable results occurring in cases of Parkinson’s disease, anorexia, multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophy; plus thousands of anecdotal stories all merited further clinical study.

    Prior to 1976, reports of positive effects and new therapeutic indications for cannabis were almost a weekly occurrence in medical journals and the national press.

the authorized on-line version of Jack Herer’s “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”

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