Marijuana's inclusion in Schedule I was at first considered temporary, pending an expected report from President Richard Nixon's National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (a.k.a. the Shafer Commission -- Nixon had chosen Raymond P. Shafer, a former Republican governor from Pennsylvania, to serve as chairman). However, the Commission's 1972 report, titled "Marijuana: a Signal of Misunderstanding," acknowledged marijuana's safety relative to other drugs and recommended decriminalization. Obviously, the Nixon administration did not implement the report's surprising recommendations.
Since 1972, several petitions to reschedule marijuana have been "considered" by the DEA. In 1986, the DEA finally held public hearings on the issue of marijuana rescheduling. After two years of hearings, DEA Chief Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young ruled in 1988 that the scheduling standards established in CSA "permit and require the transfer of marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II." He added: "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of the substance."
Unfortunately, Young was overruled by DEA administrator John Lawn. In 1994, the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed Lawn's authority to overrule Judge Young's decision. Disgusted after nearly 25 years of DEA stonewalling, seriously ill patients and their advocates decided to focus their efforts at the state level, and since 1996, 13 states have passed laws protecting seriously ill patients from arrest.
Marijuana must someday be rescheduled at the federal level, but seriously ill patients who benefit from marijuana can't afford to wait for a federal reform which more than once has seemed to be just around the corner. State medical marijuana laws do not create perfect policy, but they are the best a state can do for its citizens in light of this continued antagonism from the federal government.
To be clear, the law proposed in NH does not affect marijuana's schedule. It simply exempts seriously ill patients from penalties, provided that they receive a doctor's recommendation for marijuana and proceed in compliance with the law's tightly-crafted restrictions.
