Pioneering researcher on marijuana and cannabis therapeutics dies at 73.

Tod Hiro Mikuriya, MD, prominent psychiatrist and advocate for the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes, has died at the age of 73.

After earning his medical degree at Temple University he completed a psychiatric residency at San Francisco's Southern Pacific General Hospital. This was followed by service in the US Army Medical Corps and at state hospitals in California and Oregon. He was Director of the Drug Addiction Treatment Center of the New Jersey NeuroPschiatric Institute. In the 1960's he directed marijuana research for the National Institute of Mental Health's Center for Narcotics and Drug Abuse Studies (predecessor of today's National Institute on Drug Abuse) but when the research failed to support the government's view of marijuana as a dangerous drug, he believed the evidence instead of the politicians. That ended his career with the federal government.

[continues 274 words]