One day after celebrating his 9nd birthday, marijuana legalization pioneer Dr. Lester Grinspoon passed away on June 5.

Grinspoons breakthrough 9 book Marihuana Reconsidered, written while he worked at Harvard, opened the door to a discussion about the plants benefits during a time when it had already been prohibited for years.

Grinspoon called for legalization in the book:

&#;

“We must consider the enormous harm, both obvious and subtle, short range and long‐term, inflicted on the people, particularly the young, who constitute or will soon constitute the formative and critical members of our society by the present punitive, repressive approach to the use of marijuana. And we must consider the damage inflicted on legal and other institutions when young people react to what they see as a confirmation of their view that those institutions are hypocritical and inequitable. Indeed the greatest potential for social harm lies in the scarring of so many young people and the reactive, institutional damages that are direct products of present marijuana laws. If we are to avoid having this harm reach the proportion of a national disaster with in the next decade, we must move to make the social use of marijuana legal.”

&#;

Born on June , 98 in Newtown, MA, Grinspoon attended Tufts University and Harvard Medical School. He eventually worked at Harvard Medical School in the psychiatry department and at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center.

When he started researching cannabis, Grinspoon considered it a harmful drug. But eventually his opinion changed. 

Carl Sagan as Mr. X

Many years after the publication of Marihuana Reconsidered, Grinspoon revealed that the chapter written by Mr. X was actually famed astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who passed away in 99.  

Sagan concluded in the book:

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

Read Carl Sagan: From Cannabis to Cosmos 

Defending Lennon

At the NORML Conference, Grinspoon discussed his relationship with John Lennon:

I met John Lennon after Attorney General John Mitchell, under Nixon, wanted to get Lennon out of the country because he was effectively protesting the Vietnam War. They started an exportation proceeeding on the basis of hash being found by a Scotland Yard policeman who was determined to get the Beatles. John said it was planted. He was convicted.

Grinspoon testified at Lennons exportation trial in 9 as a marijuana expert. Asked if hash and marijuana were the same thing, he said that was incorrect. I wasnt going to do their work, Grinspoon noted. Theyre going to have to fish for it. The government dropped the case when it couldnt prove hash was the same as marijuana. 

Later in His Career

Grinspoons marijuana activism stunted his career at Harvard where he was never given a full professor position despite his accomplishments. He believed an undercurrent of unscientific prejudice against cannabis among [Harvard] faculty and school leaders doomed his chances.

In 99, Grinspoon was tapped to head NORMLs Board of Directors. The organizations founder Keith Stroup recently wrote that Grinspoon was the intellectual leader of the marijuana legalization movement and a major player within NORML, adding: He made it possible for us to have an informed public policy debate leading to the growing list of states legalizing the responsible use of marijuana.

Grinspoon is survived by his wife Betsy (they were married for years) and three children. One of his sons Danny died of cancer. Please check out the website Marijuana Uses.

 

Bibliography

Grinspoon wrote (with his co-author James B. Bakalar) the following books:

• Marihuana Reconsidered (9)

• Speed Culture: Amphetamine Use and Abuse in America (95, written with Peter Hedblom)

• Cocaine: A Drug and Its Social Evolution (9)

• Psychedelic Drugs Reconsidered (99)

• Psychedelic Reflections (98)

• Drug Control in a Free Society (985)

• The Long Darkness: Psychological and Moral Perspectives on Nuclear Winter (98, written with the American Psychiatric Association)

• Marijuana: The Medicine (99)

comments powered by