As a registered cannabis practitioner in New York since 2016 (when the use of medical cannabis was legalized in the state), I’m constantly trying to make sense of why a plant with its history, whose many benefits to patients I see daily, remains classified by the DEA as a Schedule 1 narcotic (along with drugs like heroin and quaaludes).

Hemp and cannabis (nearly identical plants) were well-known and cultivated in the United States from the time the Puritans brought them over in 1645. Its fiber was used to make the first American flag1, and the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp parchment.

Cannabis sativa was a patent medicine used commonly in the United States in the 1800s and into the 20th century. It was listed in the United States Pharmacopeia from 1850 until 19372 when a combination of the E.I. Dupont Company, William Randolph Hurst, Harry J. Anslinger of the newly formed Dept of Justice, and the film Reefer Madness conspired to turn “cannabis” into “marijuana.” Using this word allowed them to demonize it, associate it with people of color, and limit or curtail its cultivation and use.

Of course, anyone who’s ever listened to Fats Waller’s “You’re a Viper (the Reefer Song)” or watched Cab Calloway’s riotous rendition of “Reefer Man” on YouTube knows how that only forced it underground. I had a patient from the South Carolina Low Country who talked about growing up with a mother and aunts who, every Fall, would harvest a certain plant in the fields and then spend days cooking up what they called “Rabbit Stew.” She realized much later that the basis of this concoction, which was used for healing and spiritual purposes, was C sativa growing in the wild.

Despite its long history as a medicine, it was only in 1964 that THC was discovered to be the major active ingredient (cannabinoid) in the plant (morphine, the active ingredient........

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