heritage pleases Ramzi Abdel Gorani's doubt

controlled substances classification;
it's a matter of hysteria to escalate it to the same top category as heroin
and LSD, 'Schedule I Substances'. Even cocaine is only Schedule II.

Late 1996 / early 1997, several states, including California, passed laws
via citizen initiative ballots that legalized marijuana if a doctor prescribes
it. Usually for nausea or weight loss from chemotherapy or AIDS.

A massive Federal and State Drug War hysteria
campaign failed to stop people approving it.

* The New York Times, Oct 3, 1996, San Francisco
* "Skirmish in Anti-Drug War: California vs. 'Doonesbury'", by Tim Golden
*
* There a drug wars, and there are drug wars...
*
* Marching bravely into the cultural swamp where Dan Quayle once bogged
* down in combat with the television single mother Murphy Brown,
* California's Attorney General, Dan Lungren, has taken his fight
* against the medical use of marijuana to Zonker Harris, the laid-back
* hero of the comic strip 'Doonesbury'. Like the former Vice President,
* Mr. Lungren appears to have underestimated his adversaries' capacity
* to make fun of him.
* [snip]
*
* Mr. Lungren raided a marijuana outlet after two years in which the
* United States Attorney in San Francisco and the city's District
* Attorney had both declined to prosecute it.
* [snip]
*
/ "Zonker": I can't believe anyone would shut down the Cannabis Buyers'
/ Club! Who ordered the bust?
/ Other character responds: "Dan Lungren, the State Attorney General.
/ Local cops wouldn't do it, so they had to bring in the Republicans."
*
* "No one should be laughing," said Mr. Lungren, asking newspapers in
* the state to censor the rest of the week's cartoons as a public service.
*
* No one followed the Attorney General's request.

Other Federal and state government officia