Harvard psychiatrist and pioneering cannabis activist Dr. Lester Grinspoon died at 92.
In the late 1960s, Grinspoon, a friend of celebrity astronomer and cannabis user Carl Sagan, set out to write a book on the dangers of marijuana. As David Bienenstock explains in Leafly, it didn’t work out that way:
Grinspoon sought to “compile an authoritatively researched argument against cannabis that would definitively demonstrate the medical and scientific basis for the plant’s prohibition.
But instead of encountering the hard data he’d expected, Grinspoon had an epiphany—he’d been “brainwashed about cannabis.”
Grinspoon’s 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered, was a bestseller, annoyed President Nixon and “savaged the U.S. government’s case for keeping cannabis illegal.” It also may have blocked him from ever obtaining a full professorship.
Boston Globe (2018)
- Grinspoon’s son Dr. Peter Grinspoon, is a primary care physician, Harvard professor and board member at Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. Peter published a memoir, Free Refills, about his opioid addiction.
- Grinspoon’s has another son, David, who’s an astrobiologist. Carl Sagan would surely approve.
