Rethinking Cannabis Legislation: Insights from Advocacy Groups

Tramel, Christopher Hunter (2018) Rethinking Cannabis Legislation: Insights from Advocacy Groups. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Mark Frezzo from Sociology and Anthropology, University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

Prohibition and regulation of substances in the United States transformed throughout the 20th century namely through the Pure Food and Drug Act, the prohibition of alcohol, the Marihuana Tax Stamp Act, and the Controlled Substances Act, with each further expanding the number of substances regulated and the consequences of breaking the regulations. The first chapter will briefly outline major events and legislation from 1937 to the present day and how such events and legislation set the stage for grassroots initiatives on the state level seeking to take advantage of the medicinal properties of Cannabis sativa and its impact on relative incarceration rates throughout the era. The second chapter investigates the ‘three qualifiers’ necessary to be classified as a Schedule I controlled substance and challenges such with the findings of federal commissions, patents, and programs; similar medicines, and the surge in state-level acceptance as well as public support for the medicinal use of Cannabis sativa. The lack of settling of the Schedule I classification with regards to Cannabis sativa in the face of such legitimate findings has created an environment possibly violating provisions of the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Finally, this thesis will critically approximate the economic impact of the Schedule I classification of Cannabis sativa from the commencement of the Shafer Commission in 1972 to the present day. Such historic, social, and economic impacts around the “War on Cannabis sativa” are grounds proving the legitimacy of the movement of cannabis law reform seen in the modern landscape of the United States. Likewise, such findings should act as evidence that the Schedule I classification of such is unconstitutional, unethical, and thwarted medical progressivism, freedom of choice, and treatment of fellow Americans since 1937.

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