'' Smoking in Panama'' is the title of a 1933 report created by

United States Army Medical Corps The Medical Corps (MC) of the U.S. Army is a staff corps (non-combat specialty branch) of the U.S. Army Medical Department (AMEDD) consisting of commissioned medical officers – physicians with either an M.D. or a D.O. degree, at least one ye ...

Colonel

Joseph Franklin Siler Colonel Joseph Franklin Siler, MD (1875–1960) was a U.S. Army physician noted for investigations of mosquito transmission of dengue fever in the Philippines and for ''Marijuana Smoking in Panama'', one of the first experimental reports on can ...

(J.F. Siler) for the Commanding General of the Army's Panama Canal Department concerning cannabis (marijuana) use by U.S. military members. Use at that time in the

Panama Canal Zone The Panama Canal Zone ( es, Zona del Canal de Panamá), also simply known as the Canal Zone, was an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the Isthmus of Panama, that existed from 1903 to 1979. It was located within the terr ...

, then a U.S. territory, was a concern for military discipline and health. The report has been called "one of the earliest semi-experimental studies" of cannabis. The report on Siler's research, going back to 1925, found that cannabis was "not habit forming in the same way as opiates and cocaine" and military delinquencies due to its use were "negligible in number" compared to alcohol.

Citations

By other reports and research

The 1933 report has been cited by other reports and research including the Surgeon General's 1988 ''Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction'', the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's 1972 report to Congress, ''

Licit and Illicit Drugs ''Licit and Illicit Drugs: The Consumers Union Report on Narcotics, Stimulants, Depressants, Inhalants, Hallucinogens, and Marijuana–including Caffeine, Nicotine and Alcohol'' is a 1972 book on recreational drug use by medical writer Edward M. ...

'' by Consumers Union (1972), medical studies on human appetite, and others.

By legal defenses

In 1964,

Lowell Eggemeier In the United States, the non-medical use of cannabis is legalized in 21 states (plus Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the District of Columbia) and decriminalized in 10 states (plus the U.S. Virgin Islands) as of November 2022. ''Dec ...

's legal defense cited the 1933 government report, in the nation's first protest against what was called irrational drug control policy.

References

Sources

* * * * * * *

Citations

By other reports and research

By legal defenses

See also

References

Sources

Further reading