Pubdate: Thu, 31 May 2007
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2007 New York Times News Service
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Mikuriya (Dr. Mikuriya)

Obituaries

DR. TOD MIKURIYA: 1933 - 2007

Advocate for Use of Medical Marijuana

California Psychiatrist Helped Create State Ballot Measure That 
Legalized Cannabis Use for Seriously Ill Patients

NEW YORK -- Dr. Tod Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist widely 
regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the 
United States, died May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.

The cause was cancer complications, his family told California news 
organizations.

Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal 
purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades advocating 
its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject.

He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that 
in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana 
for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California 
Cannabis Research Medical Group and the Society of Cannabis Clinicians.

As a result of his work, Dr. Mikuriya was considered a savior by 
some, a public menace by others. For years, a stream of patients with 
cancer and AIDS made their way to his private practice in Berkeley, 
Calif. Dr. Mikuriya sometimes wrote a dozen or more recommendations 
for marijuana each day.

Elsewhere, Dr. Mikuriya's work found little favor. In 1996, Gen. 
Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control 
Policy under President Bill Clinton, publicly derided the doctor's 
medical philosophy as "the Cheech and Chong show."

In 2000, the Medical Board of California accused him of gross 
negligence, unprofessional conduct and incompetence for failing to 
conduct proper physical examinations on 16 patients for whom he had 
recommended marijuana. In 2004, the board gave him 5 years' probation 
and a $75,000 fine. Dr. Mikuriya, who appealed the ruling, was 
allowed to continue practicing under supervision.

Tod Hiro Mikuriya was born in Bucks County, Pa., on Sept. 20, 1933. 
His mother, an immigrant from Germany, was a special-education 
teacher. His father, a descendant of a Japanese samurai family, was a 
civil engineer. Tod Mikuriya received a bachelor's degree in 
psychology from Reed College in Oregon in 1956. From 1956 to 1958, he 
was a medic in the U.S. Army.

Dr. Mikuriya earned his MD from Temple University in 1962. There, he 
became intrigued by a reference in a pharmacology textbook to the 
medical use of marijuana, the first stirrings of his future.

Among doctors who support the therapeutic use of marijuana, many are 
publicly circumspect when asked if they ever take a taste of their 
own medicine. Not so Dr. Mikuriya. As The Los Angeles Times reported 
in 2004, "He willingly acknowledges, unlike most of his peers in 
cannabis consulting, that he does indeed smoke pot, mostly in the 
morning with his coffee." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake