History of medical marijuana policy in US (1999)

The medical use of marijuana has been subject to a long, contentious policy debate since the mid-1970s when Robert Randall became the first person to succeed in defending himself against marijuana charges using a medical necessity defence.2 He later filed suit seeking access to medical marijuana and in a settlement with the federal government was granted access under the Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) program of the Food and Drug Administration.
Randall's success highlighted an issue that had been simmering since 1972 when the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) filed a petition with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the predecessor to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), to reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). When the Act was created in 1970 marijuana was placed in Schedule I of the CSA, a classification reserved for drugs with 'no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States'. Marijuana remains a Schedule I drug today. During the nearly 30-year history of the CSA, legal, regulatory, research and legislative battlegrounds over medical marijuana have emerged. Unfortunately, the losers thus far have been the sick and dying patients who have been denied by the federal government legal access to a legitimate and often highly effective medicine. [Introduction]