National Weed Day on April 20 (aka 420), has taken on new meaning this year. Colorado and Washington have legalized nonmedical use of marijuana, and more states are considering decriminalizing pot and allowing its medical use.
Consumer Reports has never shied away from investigating and reporting on anything with an impact on public health. And that includes marijuana use, both recreational and medical, as well as the facts and the fiction surrounding its associated health risks.
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Our 1972 book, “Licit & Illicit Drugs: The Consumers Union Report on Narcotics, Stimulants, Depressants, Inhalants, Hallucinogens, and Marijuana—Including Caffeine, Nicotine, and Alcohol,” by Edward M. Brecher and the editors of Consumer Reports, was a critique of America's legal and illegal drug use.
The chapters on marijuana received much attention in the press as our organization called for the regulation—and no longer the prohibition—of marijuana. Jonathan Leff, director of Consumer Reports Books at the time, along with Edward Brecher and chief medical adviser Marvin M. Lipman, M.D., worked for several years on that comprehensive volume, which The New York Times later hailed as a "towering work of scholarship" and which was named by the American Library Association as one of the top books published in 1972. Read the full text of the book.
As I reread the book's seven recommendations regarding marijuana, I found their foresight and the general applicability of the proposals to the current situation mind boggling.
Equally compelling were the March and April 1975 Consumer Reports magazine articles about the health and legal questions surrounding marijuana (PDF).
Fast-forward to today, and April 20 in particular, marijuana continues to garner much interest from those who use weed recreationally and from those with chronic ailments. In the coming months, look for our report on the use of marijuana for pain, nausea, and other diverse medical ailments and complaints.
—Chris Hendel
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