There was a time when Mary Jane was ONLY a drug. The medicinal use of it is very modern. I prob would have agreed with that statement 20 years ago. During the dazed and confused or cheech Chong days it was a running joke that unemployed bums or dropouts smoked pot. Whether true or not it was the stereotype. Things have changed.
Medicinal use of it is far from modern, the media and the big pharmaceutical industry making it out to be "the devil's lettuce", is more like it.
You know there's only one government owned Cannabis farm in the Country in Oxford, MS. They've been running tests on Cannabis since the 70s and have patented a few of the medicinal properties of Cannabis. I'm guessing so that they can produce synthetic cannabis (not going to be the same, will have horrible side effects).
Before prohibition doctors were using it to treat a number of different alignments. When Hemp became illegal, so did the rest of the plant. IMO, natural is way better than anything synthetic. Watch the prescription drug commercials, you know, the new drugs that no one has ever heard of until now, with the names that no one can pronounce. That shit is legal, and they have side effects as bad as that street drug Krokodil.