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  • 2016-10-06 (xsd:date)
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  • Did JFK Use Marijuana as President? (es)
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  • A long-circulating image seen often on social media claims that President John F. Kennedy (JFK) habitually smoked cannabis in the White House during his presidency to alleviate back pain and the symptoms of Addison's Disease: References to the rumor appeared in the New York Daily News in 1991 and the New York Times in 1984 (the latter in a letter to the editor about questionable biographical accounts of JFK's life). So prolific has the claim been that a strain of cannabis was informally named in Kennedy's honor. The rumor appeared to originate with information about Kennedy's health uncovered by biographers long after JFK's 1963 assassination. In 2002, a number of outlets reported on newly unveiled information about Kennedy's declining health in the years prior to his assassination: The most widely referenced account of Kennedy's supposed marijuana use was not primarily linked with his health or with medical treatment. Rather, it was an anecdotal account of JFK's supposedly being introduced to recreational pot use by one of his mistresses that was published in the National Enquirer tabloid in 1976 and referenced in the 1984 book The Kennedys: An American Drama by Peter Collier and David Horowitz. That latter work drew the following criticism in the aforementioned New York Times letter to the editor: The authors responded to that criticism by defending the provenance of their account of Kennedy's marijuana use: Accounts that came to light in 2002 appeared to have merged with the brief and oft-repeated anecdote involving Meyer, which was both anecdotal and did not match the assertion Kennedy had used marijuana as a medicinal purposes in treating back pain or Addison's Disease. We contacted the John F. Kennedy Library to inquire as to whether any firm information in their extensive archives substantiated the long-held rumor that JFK had medicated his largely secret medical problems with marijuana. An archivist noted that documentation supported the use of off-label or possibly illicit medications for his ailments, but that marijuana was not among those treatments: (en)
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