The Arduous Path to Legalizing Cannabis

The Boggs Act of 1952 created severe mandatory sentences for a variety of drug-related offenses, including cannabis. The final death knell for cannabis came when Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. The act created individual schedules or categories that the various drugs fit into because of the potential for their abuse. Placed in the most restrictive category, Schedule I, the government concluded that cannabis had no valid medical use and that there was an elevated potential for the herb’s abuse. Now, almost 50 years later, its plain that our society lost decades of cannabis’s curative and preventative medical treatment that cultures a thousand years ago were intelligent enough to utilize.