**3. Short history subsection**

So starts Marijuana's long process down a road of a predetermined discrimination without proper fundamental scientific representation to mandate it as an illicit drug starting as early as the 1900s in America.

This repetitive historical adolescent or fearful behavior can date back to the early 1500s in Mexico during the Spanish occupation when Christianity was introduced, and hemp was promoted over the indigenous crop of cannabis. Together these factors inhibited native people from cultivating their own spiritual plants that were used for ceremonial purposes fighting their own prohibition centuries ago (Santiago Guerra). Mexico's reestablishment in 1810 "Rosa Maria" or "Mariguana" was added to the 1846 Mexican Pharmacopeia from the Mexican Medicinal Academy for medicinal purposes. For the next 172 years, Mexico will go through various political agendas, upper and lower-class segregation, and racism along with its own battle for the legalization of marijuana. By October 31, 2018, the Supreme Court of Mexico declared prohibiting its use was unconstitutional, therefore deeming cannabis as a recreational, legal medicine within the confines that constitute the law making it legal.

#### *Marijuana, a Journey through the Endocannabinoid System: Unmasking the Paradoxical Effect… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101555*

Circa 1910, the word marijuana begins to spread across the America via returning US soldiers and legal immigrant Mexicans fleeing the Mexican Revolution who also brought the term marijuana back with them. By 1930, prohibitionists and a handful of people in power such as FBN's (Federal Bureau of Narcotics which would eventually become the DEA) very own narcotics commissioner Harry Jacob Anslinger, who was unfortunately and constantly self-submerged into trying to put an end to the relentless violent and gruesome human behaviors of the international trafficking or smuggling of booze and later more known for taking on the narcotics circuit. Harry would later draft the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act. Harrys' mindset and perspective at the time can be understood from his article called "Marijuana, Assassin of Youth" about a "marijuana addict" who was hung for a criminal assault of a 10-year-old girl, as Harry explains, "Those who first spread its use were musicians. They brought the habit northward with the surge of "hot" music demanding players of exceptional ability, especially in improvisation. Along the Mexican border and in southern seaport cities it had long been known that the drug has a strangely exhilarating effect upon the musical sensibilities. The musician who uses it finds that the musical beat seemingly comes to him quite slowly, thus allowing him to interpolate improvised notes with comparative ease. He does not realize that he is tapping the keys with a furious speed impossible for one in a normal state" [27].

With this manipulated perspective among the many others, this fear aimed to sway the masses, demonizing the term "marijuana" and anything or anyone that could be associated with cannabis (two prevalent examples would be Mexican workers or jazz musicians of the time like Billie Holiday, which Anslinger personally went after) as a pro-racism (i.e., separation of unity of the people) scare tactic to manipulate the masses for political purposes. Scare tactics such as movies like Reefer Madness, countless publications, and government reporters would continue to justify without representation and slander this medication for the next 110 years regardless of Marijuana's appearance in the 1851 US Pharmacopeia [28].

Contradictory to the laws and discrimination explained above, the US government started what was called the Investigational New Drug (IND) program. This program's itinerary seized marijuana all across America via the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and housed marijuana cigarettes and plants at a highly secure facility called the Coy W. Waller Laboratory Complex to have approved researchers of the FDA conduct studies. The IND government-run program also consisted of subsidizing a large marijuana grow called the "Medicinal Plant Garden" located at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, since the late 1970s wherein was responsible for running test on genetics, bioavailability, and THC extraction from the harvested plants. The "Medicinal Plant Garden" in 2007 would produce 880 pounds worth of marijuana for the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). This facility would also send their research and the facilities grown marijuana to the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina for the "Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program." A 1976 federal case involving a glaucoma patient by the name of Robert Randall, who was found not guilty on the charge of growing marijuana at home for the treatment of glaucoma. As a result, the federal government cooperatively allowed Mr. Robert Randall marijuana under FDA regulation creating the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program.

By 1992, the IND program, the 35 patients and all its constituents were shut down due to the high frequency of new applicants and consequently by the W. H. Bush Administration. In 2018, under the Trump administration, attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo that effectively overturned the Cole memorandums guidance allowing prosecutors to include the law enforcement propriety set by the attorney general along with other relevant considerations when privatizing federal cannabis law enforcement. This allows federal law to out rank state policy and US federal government may now prosecute businesses and individuals for legal cannabis State-related activities under federal law at any time. The same Jeff Sessions was quoted in 2016 saying, "Good people don't smoke marijuana." Fear, ignorance, and the adolescent state of mind it creates can be guided in any direction and have been demonstrated at numerous points in this subsection to have a negative effect on mental health, society, and individual rights. The American governments' carelessness with the frailty of life can be referenced back to the CIA's MK-ULTRA program, which ran from 1953 to 1964 consisting of extremely unethical drug testing and LSD experiments; from mentally impaired boys at a state school, to American soldiers, to "sexual psychopaths" at a state hospital, MK-Ultra's programs often preyed on the most vulnerable members of society. The CIA considered prisoners especially good subjects, as they were willing to give consent in exchange for extra recreation time or commuted sentences [26].

To conclude this section, in the case of new developing medicines, the FDA should be the main deciding agency and the medicine be researched by all and not regulated by any law enforcement agency. Law enforcement should deal with illegal trafficking, as it does with opioids, methamphetamines, cocaine.

In the end, the study of cannabis and its medicinal use is critical. To limit this apple of Eden or any medicine in this garden is to hinder ones right for healing, knowledge, choice, and the choice of medical care on this "pale blue dot" [29].
