Marijuana Policy Project

About the author: The Marijuana Policy Project is an educational and lobbying organization that works to reform marijuana laws at the federal level.

Marijuana is a safe medicine that is useful in the symptomatic treatment of several ailments, including AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. However, marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it is officially defined as addictive and of no medicinal value. Although state legislatures can elect to remove state-level prohibitions on the use of medical marijuana, they remain restricted in their legalization efforts because of the federal government's overriding marijuana criminalization laws. The U.S. Congress should revise federal laws to allow seriously ill people access to therapeutic cannabis.

For thousands of years, marijuana has been used to treat a wide variety of ailments. Until 1937, marijuana ( Cannabis...