ndoned fields and along roadsides. Indeed, the plant readily spreads to additional territory. The area of Nebraska land infested with "weed" marijuana was estimated in 1969 at 156,000 acres. * * One acre of good land yields about one thousand pounds of marijuana, enough for almost one million marijuana cigarettes. The medicinal use of marijuana in the United States. It has often been alleged that American marijuana, cultivated primarily as a fiber, has little or no psychoactive effect. Nineteenth-century observers knew better. Dr. Walton sums up: Hemp grown for fiber in Kentucky has been shown to contain a substantial degree of ... potency. H. C. Wood, in 1869, prepared an alcoholic extract of hemp grown near Lexington and proceeded to test the product himself. A large [oral] dose (20 to 30 grains) produced marked effects and, on subsequent occasions, milder but definite effects were obtained with doses as low as 1/4 grain. This latter dose is lower than the usual dose of the Indian extract and was probably the result of a more than usually selective extraction. Houghton and Hamilton in 1908 concluded from animal experiments that the Kentucky hemp was fully as active as the best imported Indian product. In any event, it is clear that the potentiality of hashish abuse has always existed with this type of hemp production. Comparative studies made by the National Institute of Mental Health on marijuana experimentally grown at the University of Mississippi in 1969 and 1970 indicate that primarily the seed planted determines the relative low potency of American-grown marijuana. Marijuana grown in Mississippi from high-quality Mexican seed proved to contain much more of the psychoactive substance (THC) than marijuana from domestic seed grown on the same plot and harvested and processed in the same way. The NIMH studies also refute the widespread belief that the female marijuana plant yields more potent leaf. Flowers and leaves of male plants ...
