The LaGuardia Committee report was an official scientific report published in 1944 that questioned the prohibition of cannabis in the United States.[1] [2] The report contradicted claims by the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana deteriorates physical and mental health, assists in criminal behavior and juvenile delinquency, is physically addictive, and is a "gateway" drug to more dangerous drugs.
The report was prepared by the New York Academy of Medicine, on behalf of a commission appointed in 1939 by New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who was a strong opponent of the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act.[3]
After more than five years of research the members of the committee drew up a catalog of 13 salient points with the conclusions they reached.[4]
Therefore, according to the LaGuardia Report, the gateway drug theory is without foundation (points 7 and 9).
This 1944 report offended Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, who claimed it was "unscientific".[1] [3] Anslinger denounced Mayor LaGuardia, the New York Academy of Medicine and the doctors who had worked for more than five years on the research. Anslinger said that they should not conduct more experiments or studies on marijuana without his personal permission. Anslinger interrupted each current research project on derivatives of cannabis between 1944 and 1945, and personally commissioned the American Medical Association to prepare a report which would reflect the position of the government.[5]
The study conducted by AMA between 1944 and 1945 on Anslinger's personal request, having as objective to disprove the statements of the LaGuardia Report, leveraged again on racism, asserting that "of the experimental group, thirty-four men were black, and only one was white", and "those who smoked marijuana, became disrespectful of white soldiers and officers during military segregation".[6]
Only in 1972, the same institutional source that spread the series of scientifically unfounded rumors about the dangers of cannabis admitted that "these stories were largely false" and that "with careful consideration of the documentation there is no confirmation of the existence of a causal relationship between marijuana use and the possible use of heroin".[7] Thus, it was declared that the ban on cannabis was imposed and still subsisted "without any serious and comprehensive research had been conducted on the effects of marijuana".[7]