According to time.com (May, 2001), marijuana can be used to help patients with cancer, AID's, multiple sclerosis, epilpsy, and glaucoma. It is reported that marijuana's active ingredient, THC reduces vomiting and nausea caused by chemotherapy. For AID's patients, it improves appetite, and forestalls the loss of lean muscle mass. For people with multiple sclerosis, marijuana reduces the muscle pain and spasticity caused by the disease. Marijuana may also prevent seizures in some patients with epilpsy. Finally, smoking marijuana reduces pressure within the eyes caused by glaucoma. 
               Marijuana was legal in the United States until 1937, until the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 established the federal prohibition of the drug in America. Marijuana's medicinal uses were rediscovered as a result of the increase in the number of recreational users in the 1970s. 
                   In 1970, The Controlled Substance Act established five categories or schedules into which all illicit and prescription drugs were placed. Marijuana was placed in Schedule I, which defines the substance as having a high potential for abuse with no currently accepted medical use for treatment in the United States. In 1975, The Compassionate Investigative New Drug (IND) program was created through which patients could obtain marijuana from the government. In 1982, the IND was shut down. In 1988, The Drug Enforcement Agency's (DEA) Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled that "marijuana in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known and should be reclassified as a prescriptive drug." Judge Young's ruling was rejected and the DEA refused to reschedule. In 1995 U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, of Massachusetts, introduced legislation in Congress to amend the federal law to allow physicians to legally prescribe marijuana as medicine to patients. In 1996, Arizona and California approved  ballot initiatives for the us...