I recently found a bush of Datura Stramonium outside of the dormitory that I live in and took several pictures of the flowers and "Thorn Apples." I went to visit this bush the next day and found that the University had up rooted the entire bush and taken it away. Why had they done this? because Datura Stramonium contains a chemical called Atropine (a Tropane alkaloid) that can cause extreme hallucinations and can easily cause a hellish and painful death.
Knowing just this, most anyone would be willing to have this plant outlawed and destroyed. But wait, Atopine is not the terrible dangerous drug that I have thus far made it out to be. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) has listed Atropine as an "Essential Drug" meaning that it is needed for any basic health system. You see, among a myriad of other medical uses, Atropine can be used to treat bradycardia, pulseless electrical activity, organophosphate poisoning, and hyperhidrosis.
so, Atropine truly is a great drug with many uses in our hospitals. and thanks to our knowledge of the properties of Atropine, it has not been deemed a schedule one drug and outlawed. But is it possible that other drugs with a possible medicinal use HAVE suffered this fate?
The answer is yes. For instance, Lysergic Acid, an ergoline alkaloid. before it was banned by the U.S. Government in 1966, a study was done to review LSD as a treatment for Alcohol abuse. The study found that when subjects with a history of Alcohol abuse were given doses of LSD and given counseling, a large majority of subjects reverted from their Alcohol abuse faster, and more successively than those who received the same counseling without the psychotropic drug. Interesting when to be a schedule one drug, the drug must not have any medicinal use.
And are there other medicinal values for drugs that have simply gotten a bad name? Also yes! Morphine (which is highly addictive) has proven it's self to have an interesting property in at least one case. In a report by PBS on the inner workings of the Adult brain called "The Secret Life of the Brain," one subjects life was changed for the better by morphine. the subject had a severe addiction to cocaine and one day was shot in the lower back. After surgery, the subject was still feeling terrible pain and was given morphine. After a rehabilitation period, the pain eventually left him, though he could no longer walk. However, he realized that soon after having morphine given to him, his cravings for cocaine wained and stopped. Though the chemical reasons for this are not known, it seems that morphine may have the ability to curve and destroy an addiction without leaving its own infamous addiction.
By no means do I support the recreational use of any illegal substance, but I do support perhaps reviewing some of these substances for medical use. Who knows what cures we may have already outlawed?