The Cannabis sativa plant from Leonhart Fuchs' De historia stirpium (1542)

In 1938, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia commissioned the Academy to draft a report investigating the effects of marijuana usage. This was in response to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, championed by Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The law represented the culmination of a century of public and political opposition to marijuana usage based on the belief that the drug could spur addiction and compel users to commit crimes and engage in other deviant behaviors. The act imposed licensing fees on producers and prescribers and levied fines equal to the average income of a typical American worker in the 1930s.

LaGuardia called upon the Academy for a report with the intention of scrutinizing this draconian regulation regime with evidence drawn from sociology, psychology, medicine, and pharmacology. Completed in 1944, the extensive report ultimately discredited the foundational beliefs behind the Marihuana Tax Act, evoking immediate criticism from Anslinger. Though the report had little effect on the decriminalization of marijuana over the next seven-plus decades, the Marihuana Tax Act was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1969 on the grounds of self-incrimination. Nonetheless, in 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act, placing marijuana under Schedule I, the most regulated category reserved for drugs with no currently accepted medical use and considered liable for abuse even under medical supervision. Though the drug remains there today, The Marihuana Problem in the City of New York is an important touchstone in the movement to decriminalize marijuana.