The use of marijuana in some form has occurred for 10,000 years. Records show that the Chinese cultivated "Ma" (cannabis hemp) for fiber, medicine, and herbal use by the 27th century BC. From the 8th to the 18th centuries AD, Arab physicians and scientists utilized the medicinal properties of cannabis hemp to treat wide variety of conditions and illnesses including ear and skin diseases, epilepsy, and pain.

During the mid-1800s, cannabis became an accepted therapy by Western medicine. By the beginning of the 20th Century, more than 100 papers on it had been published by physicians in Western medical literature, and it was a recognized treatment for over 100 separate ailments. Marijuana was officially removed from in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia in 1942 after passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937. This legislation severely limited the ability of physicians to prescribe the compound, and as a result, the American Medical Association became one of the most vocal opponents of the ban. In 1937, it foretold of today’s battle by saying,

Marijuana’s illegal position was solidified after Congress passed the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which placed it on Schedule 1 in the same category with heroin and LSD, drugs deemed to have high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

In 1978, after a young cancer patient named Lynn Pierson brought marijuana’s medicinal value to the attention of the New Mexico State legislature, the nation’s first law concerning medical cannabis was overwhelmingly passed. Many other states, including conservative ones like Florida and Louisiana, followed New Mexico’s lead, and by December 1991, Massachusetts Governor William Weld signed the nation’s thirty-fourth state law recognizing marijuana’s potential as medicine. All of these laws gained wide bipartisan support. Essentially, by 1991, 87% of legislators in 34 states had voted to end the prohibition of medical marijuana. However, many state efforts were effectively thwarted by federal drug agencies.

During the mid-1970s, Robert Randall, who suffered from severe glaucoma, found that cannabis relieved visual halos produced by the disease. In 1977, after painstakingly documenting the inability of conventional medicine to control his symptoms, Randall became the first patient to obtain government-supplied cannabis from what was to become known as the Compassionate IND program. Cultivated at the University of Mississippi, the marijuana was rolled and packaged at the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina under the supervision of the National Institute of Drug Abuse. By 1991, the program had 13 patients enrolled in it.

As the AIDS epidemic spread in the 1980s, patients began to find that marijuana countered wasting syndrome and the nausea and vomiting that accompanied powerful AIDS drugs. Facing an onslaught of new applications from AIDS patients, the Public Health Service under the first Bush Administration closed the Compassionate IND program to new patients in 1992. Seven surviving patients currently remain in this program and receive marijuana for their medical conditions from the Federal government each month.

Frustrated by the closure of the Compassionate IND program and the federal obstacles that were placed in the way of implementing state programs, a group of California medical marijuana activists wrote Proposition 215 and placed it on the California ballot in the fall of 1996. The initiative passed by a margin of 56%/44%. Since then, similar initiatives have been passed in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, all by significant margins. Maine, Nevada, and Oregon have successfully implemented programs.

In spite of the political battlefield, research into the medical use of marijuana is expanding. British pharmaceutical company, GW Pharmaceuticals, has several cannabis-based medicines in Phase III of clinical trails. Indications include pain from spinal cord injury, Multiple Sclerosis, cancer, and nerve damage. Approval and launch in Europe are expected in 2004, but it may be ten years or more before this medicine passes through the approval process in the United States to once again become available on prescription basis.

Cannabis is being studied for the treatment of numerous other diseases and conditions including glaucoma, dementia, Tourettes syndrome, and wasting syndrome from AIDS/HIV. Emerging research suggests that cannabis may also act as a neuro-protectant in brain injuries and safeguard the body from some malignant tumors.