The day after his 92nd birthday, influential cannabis researcher and author Lester Grinspoon passed away. His son Peter reports this via Twitter. Grinspoon's books greatly influenced the debate about the cannabis ban in the United States and beyond.
Lester Grinspoon was born on June 24, 1928 in Newton, Massachussetts. For decades, he was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a 40-year psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. In 1971 he published "Marijuana Reconsidered", a groundbreaking book on the criminalization of cannabis. Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine, published in 1993, had a major impact on the social and political debate about medicinal cannabis.
Grinspoon was a true convert: when he started studying cannabis in 1967, he was convinced that “it was a very harmful drug that was unfortunately being used by more and more foolish young people who would not listen to or could not believe or understand the warnings about its dangers. ” The more research he did, the more it became clear that he, and the rest of the American public, had been lied to about the dangers of cannabis.
Lester Grinspoon was born on June 24, 1928 in Newton, Massachussetts. For decades, he was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a 40-year psychiatrist at the Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. In 1971 he published "Marijuana Reconsidered", a groundbreaking book on the criminalization of cannabis. Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine, published in 1993, had a major impact on the social and political debate about medicinal cannabis.
Grinspoon was a true convert: when he started studying cannabis in 1967, he was convinced that “it was a very harmful drug that was unfortunately being used by more and more foolish young people who would not listen to or could not believe or understand the warnings about its dangers. ” The more research he did, the more it became clear that he, and the rest of the American public, had been lied to about the dangers of cannabis.
