Reports of marijuana commissions

The Laguardia Commission report was compiled by the New York Academy of Medicine at the request of the mayor of New York, Fiorelle Laguardia. This study, the second in the framework of the Commission on Indian Hemp Drugs only, was essentially an interdisciplinary study. It included the coordinated conclusions of doctors, physiologists, pharmacologists and sociologists. The main statement of the report was that the use of marijuana is not particularly dangerous for the user and for society as a whole. The report provided no evidence that aggression, violence, hostility had anything to do with marijuana smoking. It was not claimed, however, that marijuana does not cause any psychoactive effects. Certain changes in a person were noted, including in more powerful forms “slowing down of thought processes and admiration for delusional reality with periods of laughter and anxiety”.

The findings of this report coincided with the findings of previously published reports. Also, subsequent studies mirrored the main conclusions. These studies include the 1968 report of Baroness Bouton from Great Britain, the Intermediate Report of 1970 to the Delayan Canadian Government Commission and the First Report of the National Commission on Mental Health and Drug Abuse of 1972. Later reports, such as the US Congressional Marijuana and Health Report (1982) and the Study on Drug Abuse (1984, the first in a series of three-year Congress reports), were both presented by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, did not have controversial discoveries, however much more carefully described the negative effects of marijuana use.