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."