This study examines how the United States newspaper media represents medical marijuana. The literature review highlights the history of marijuana, the social control of marijuana, the medicalization of marijuana use, the relevance of agenda-setting theory to media coverage of medical marijuana. An ethnographic content analysis of newspaper articles concerning medical marijuana revealed seven distinct typologies of media representations of the subject matter. The results reveal that (64.2%) of the overall content treated medical marijuana positively; that changes in presidential administrations appear to have had an effect on newspaper coverage of medical marijuana; and that geographical regions of the United States differ in their coverage of news and editorial content of medical marijuana articles. The policy implications of the findings are explored.