Marijuana Update

Archive Report

New Public Perception

About-Face Begining in Late 1970s

In November 1974 Dr. Robert L. DuPont, director of the White House Special Action Office for Drug Abuse Prevention, delivered the keynote speech at the annual convention of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). Dr. DuPont, a psychiatrist and one of the nation's top drug experts, told the gathering that marijuana possession should not be a crime because criminal penalties did little to prevent abuse of the drug. Dr. DuPont continued to speak out for the decriminalization of marijuana after he became head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in 1975.1

But now Dr. DuPont has changed his position. “If you are for decriminalization, you are, in the public mind, for pot,” he ...

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