Psychiatrist who championed legal medical marijuana dead at 73

Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya died from complications of cancer Sunday, May 20, in his Berkeley, California, home. Mikuriya, a member of Mensa, was born in 1933 to a German immigrant and a Japanese samurai. He attended Quaker schools as a youth, and became an Army medic in the 1950s after receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology from Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 1962, he received a medical degree from Temple University. Beginning in the 1960s, Mikuriya studied marijuana's therapeutic potential, and helped draft California Proposition 215, legalizing marijuana for the seriously ill. Since the proposition's passage in 1996, Mikuriya has written approvals for almost 9,000 patients. In 1999, he founded the Society of Cannabis Clinicians to educate fellow doctors about the plant's medical uses. Mikuriya believed 285 ailments, including insomnia and stuttering, could be eased through the use of medical marijuana. Mikuriya briefly directed marijuana research at the National Institute of Mental Health, but quit when he realized the U.S. government only "wanted bad things found out about marijuana." Mikuriya was 73.

Sources: latimes.com, mikuriya.com