he history of using cannabis as a medical treatment

During the closed congressional hearings of 1937, the American Medical Association openly objected the prohibition of medical marijuana. The testimony of the Association’s legal counsel, Dr. William C. Woodward, passionately criticized the hearings and their determined intent. He questioned the motives behind the act, stating that no mention has been made of any excessive use of the drug by any doctor, or its excessive distribution by any pharmacist. And yet the burden of this bill is placed heavily upon the doctors and pharmacists of the country, and may I say very heavily—most heavily possibly of all— on farmers of the country. No medical man would identify this bill with a medicine until he read it through, because marijuana is not a drug… simply a name given to cannabis.” His point was simply this: by incorporating a Mexican slang word, marihuana. the U.S. government had misrepresented a common medication that had been used for over a century and that was not over-prescribed or over- distributed by any means.