Passing of a Medi-Pot Pioneer – Dr. Tod Hiro Mikuriya

By Paul Armentano

Dr. Tod Hiro Mikuriya, one of the world's foremost authorities on the therapeutic use of cannabis, died on Sunday after a multi-year battle with cancer. He was 73-years-old.

Dr. Mikuriya spent the better part of the past 40 years investigating the medical utility of pot, beginning with an appointment as the Director for Marijuana Research for the National Institute of Mental Health in 1967. In the late 1960s, he began publishing some of the first 'modern' scientific papers documenting cannabis' extensive medicinal value, including Marijuana in Medicine: Past, Present and Future (California Medicine, 1969) and Historical Aspects of Cannabis Sativa in Western Medicine (The New Physician, 1969). Around this time, he also began archiving dozens of historical texts examining the drug's therapeutic use in Western cultures in the decades prior to its prohibition. He later republished much of this work in his 1972 self-published book, Marijuana: Medical Papers 1839 – 1972.

Tod remained active in the 1970s as a board member of the west coast based pot legalization group Amorphia (which merged with NORML in 1973) and as a spokesperson for the 1972 California Marijuana Initiative. Though the CMI failed to garner majority public support, Mikuriya and Amorphia successfully followed up their effort by persuading the California legislature to decriminalize cannabis possession in 1975.

Tod Mikuriya gained prominence among a new generation of marijuana activists in the 1990s because of his willingness to speak out in favor of the medical use of pot for a wide variety of psychosomatic indications, such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and alcoholism. Dr. Mikuriya worked along side longtime San Francisco activist Dennis Peron to co-author California's Proposition 215 initiative, and is credited with drafting the language that authorizes physicians to recommend cannabis for "any other illness for which marijuana provides relief," a clause which remains unique to California's medical marijuana law.

After Proposition 215’s passage in 1996, Dr. Mikuriya became one of the most outspoken and most prolific recommenders of medicinal cannabis - a stance that made him a frequent target of both the California Medical Board and the federal government. In the decade since the law’s enactment, Dr. Mikuriya recommended marijuana to an estimated 9,000 patients.

“Tod's training as a psychiatrist made him especially sensitive to the medical value of cannabis to treat many conditions still largely ignored by other physicians,” said California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer. “Tod was a true pioneer of cannabis medicine. At a time when its medical use had been abandoned, he rediscovered the forgotten medical literature on cannabis and agitated to restore it to the pharmacopoeia. Tod later campaigned to make this a reality by helping to draft Prop. 215, and after its passage, he went on to found the modern practice of cannabis medicine."

Though he'd recently been diagnosed with adenocarcinoma, Dr. Mikuriya continued to work diligently on the medical cannabis issue - founding The California Cannabis Research Medical Group and contributing scientific reports to the northern California medical marijuana journal O'Shaugnessy's. In 2006, he was bestowed with well-deserved lifetime achievement awards from both NORML and the Virginia-based medical marijuana advocacy group Patients Out of Time.

Writing in reaction to Mikuriya’s passing, fellow California physician Dr. David Bearman posted the following remembrance to the Drug Policy Forum of California:

“[Dr. Tod Mikuriya] committed his life to a cause and made a difference. … He deserves to be remembered and honored. Tod … struggled long and hard in his fight for legal sanity for the medicinal use of cannabis. The best memorial for Tod [and for his] work [is for] us to soldier on and win the so-called war on drugs. May we all remember Tod fondly for his hard pioneering work and honor his memory by not only getting the Medical Board of California to stop persecuting doctors, but [also] by getting Congress to legalize cannabis.”

There’s little doubt that Dr. Tod would expect nothing less.

Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for NORML and the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC.