Cannabis Lecture on History and Use
Medical Marijuana Expert Dr. David Bearman Takes the Stage Wednesday
Santa Barbara is home to many interesting people, but no doubt Dr. David Bearman will be getting a lot of attention in the coming years. He is one of the leading experts on medical marijuana and recently published Drugs Are Not the Devil’s Tools. This two-volume set is an exhaustive look at our nation’s failed drug policy and the promising future for cannabis. Dr. Bearman will be speaking this Wednesday, November 4 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the UCSB MultiCultural Center. In advance of that lecture, I spoke with Dr. Bearman about his book and his experience.
How Cannabis Became Illegal
I was surprised to learn that cannabis was regularly prescribed by doctors for a wide variety of ailments well into the 1900s. In fact “Hemp was the #1 agricultural product during those days and had been for close to 1,000 years,” according to Dr. Bearman. Then along came William Randolph Hearst and his newspaper empire. It seems that Hearst was anti-Hispanic, perhaps due to Pancho Villa taking away his over 1 million-acre ranch in Mexico around 1910. While Hearst is widely credited with starting the Spanish-American War, he also started a war on marijuana. He demonized the drug in his papers and tied its use to minorities like the Hispanic community.
