Medical Marijuana Trials

In the decades following the 1944 LaGuardia Report, which stated that marijuana use was not linked to violence, addiction, or insanity; the U.S government hoped to reverse this narrative through a series of marijuana trials. Many of which would be considered ethically questionable today. These experiments disproportionately targeted Black and Puerto Rican men, particularly those incarcerated or institutionalized in mental health facilities. One of the most infamous testing sites was the U.S Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where Dr. Harris Isbell led experiments on imprisoned Black men under the excuse of them being in addiction treatment. 

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Those men were promised parole and better living conditions in exchange for participating in studies where they were force-fed or injected with dangerously high doses of THC (the component in cannabis responsible for the “high” or altered state of perception). Researchers aimed to induce psychosis, aggression, or catatonia, hoping to produce outcomes that justified criminalizing marijuana and controlling marginalized populations. Most participants were not given informed consent and had little understanding of the risks. Though their names are absent from the official record, lost to the surrounding medical racism, their bodies were used in a campaign that was not not for healing, but for social control. These trials helped lay the groundwork for the War on Drugs and the mass incarceration of people of color, a legacy that continues to shape drug policy and public perception of cannabis to this day.

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References: 

The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York: The LaGuardia Report. Mayor’s Committee on Marihuana, 1944.https://druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/lag/lagmenu.htm

"Chronic Administration of Marihuana to Man." Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, vol. 81, no. 5, 1969, pp. 606–610. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Research Findings on Marijuana: Summary of NIDA-Funded Research 1976–1981. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1981. https://archives.nida.nih.gov/sites/default/files/monograph31.pdf

Marijuana and Youth: Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, 1974–1976. U.S. Government Printing Office. https://www.govinfo.gov/