History of the Food and Drug Administration
In June 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed into law the Food and Drug Act, also known as the "Wiley Act" after its chief advocate. The Act prohibited, under penalty of seizure of goods, the interstate transport of food which had been "adulterated," with that term referring to the addition of fillers of reduced "quality or strength," coloring to conceal "damage or inferiority," formulation with additives "injurious to health," or the use of "filthy, decomposed, or putrid" substances. The act applied similar penalties to the interstate marketing of "adulterated" drugs, in which the "standard of strength, quality, or purity" of the active ingredient was not either stated clearly on the label or listed in the "United States Pharmacopoeia" or the "National Formulary". The act also banned "misbranding" of food and drugs. The responsibility for examining food and drugs for such "adulteration" or "misbranding" was given to Wiley's USDA Bureau of Chemistry.
Medical cannabis in the United States
The classification of cannabis as a Schedule I drug was first challenged by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) in a 1972 petition to the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (which was merged with other agencies to form the DEA in 1973). After a decade of legal battles in which the DEA refused to consider the petition, public hearings were finally held on the matter beginning in 1986. In September 1988, after two years of extensive public hearings, DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young ruled in favor of moving cannabis to a Schedule II classification, finding that "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Young concluded: "The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record." As Young's ruling was only a non-binding recommendation, however, it was rejected by DEA Administrator John Lawn in December 1989. In February 1994, a final ruling on the original 1972 petition was issued when a U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the decision to keep cannabis a Schedule I drug.