Dr. Tod Mikuriya played a crucial role in the successful and groundbreaking effort to legalize medical marijuana in California during the 1990s. His papers are now available to researchers through a newly archived collection at the National Library of Medicine. As a Berkeley psychiatrist, Mikuriya was known as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement, using his scholarly expertise to support activists and challenge the Drug War establishment. His credibility was difficult to dispute, as he had previously led the National Institute of Health’s cannabis research program in the 1960s before switching sides to advocate for the people being studied.
Mikuriya was born in a rural area of Pennsylvania’s Bucks County in 1933 to a mixed German and Japanese immigrant family. Growing up during World War II, he experienced prejudice due to his heritage, which he later credited for his rebellious nature. After earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Reed College in Oregon in 1956, Mikuriya served as a medic in the Army. He then attended medical school at Temple University in Philadelphia, where his life took a significant turn. In 1959, while on summer break, Mikuriya read an unassigned chapter in a pharmacology textbook that mentioned the widespread medicinal use of cannabis in the United States before it was criminalized in 1937. This sparked his curiosity, and he overcame his fear to travel to Mexico and try the substance for himself. This experience would shape the rest of his life.
In 1966, Mikuriya became the director of the drug addiction treatment center at the New Jersey Neuropsychiatric Institute in Princeton. That same year, he traveled to Morocco’s Rif Mountains, the heartland of hashish production, where he smoked kif with Berber tribesmen who resisted French colonial efforts to eradicate cannabis use. It was during this time that Mikuriya discovered the works of Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, an Irish physician who researched the long history of medicinal cannabis use in India in the 19th century. Mikuriya considered O’Shaughnessy a personal hero and was one of the first scholars to revisit the findings of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report, a 1894 study commissioned by British colonial authorities to investigate the supposed cannabis problem in India. The report ultimately concluded that cannabis use was either harmless or even beneficial.
In 1967, Mikuriya joined the Center for Narcotics & Drug Abuse Studies at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He continued to study and advocate for the medicinal use of cannabis, earning a reputation as a pioneer in the field. His papers, now available for research, provide valuable insight into the history and benefits of medical marijuana. Mikuriya’s legacy lives on, and his contributions to the medical marijuana movement will not be forgotten.
