I am convinced that once we all know the truth about cannabis federal prohibition will be a thing of the past, just another sad chapter of U.S. history, like old Jim Crow laws…
- Cannabis was the first domesticated crop. Our ancestors grew hemp before they grew anything else!
- Cannabis was cultivated in Central Asia before people introduced the plant into Africa, Europe and eventually the Americas. Hemp seeds were used as food, its fiber was used to make clothing, paper, sails and rope
- Ancient cultures around the world used cannabis (both marijuana and hemp) to treat the body, mind, and soul
- Cannabis seeds were found in the gravesites of shamans in China and Siberia from as early as 500 BC
- Scythians, ancient Iranian nomads in Central Asia, grew special varieties of cannabis to produce higher levels of THC for use in religious ceremonies or healing practice. They inhaled the smoke from smoldering cannabis seeds and flowers
- Ancient Egyptians used cannabis to treat many physical ailments
- Greek and Roman herbalists used cannabis for nearly everything and wrote books on cannabis that would inspire the next fifteen hundred years of European herbalism
- Hashish, a concentrated form of cannabis smoked with a pipe, was widely used throughout the Middle East and parts of Asia after 800 AD and later would become the favorite of many Europeans
- America’s Founding Fathers brought hemp the the New World from Europe
- In the early 1600s, the Connecticut, Virginia, and Massachusetts colonies required farmers to grow hemp, failure to grow hemp was punishable by increased tax
- Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy, an Irish doctor studying in India in the 1830s, found that cannabis extracts could help lessen stomach pain and vomiting in people suffering from cholera
- Cannabis extracts were sold in pharmacies and doctors’ offices throughout Europe and the United States to treat many ailments throughout the 1800s
- Mexican immigrants, refugees from the Mexican Revolutionary War, were accused of bringing the practice of recreational use of cannabis to the U.S. (It seems historians forgot that George Washington smoked hemp flowers)
- The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 criminalized marijuana nationwide imposing a tax on the sale, possession or transfer of all hemp products
- The American Medical Association fought the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act in the Supreme Court and lost. The U.S. government went against medical advice and made cannabis illegal
- Hemp continued to be grown in the United States throughout World War II after the Philippines, a major source of imported hemp fiber, fell to Japanese forces
- The last U.S. hemp fields were planted in 1957
- Wild or “feral” hemp still grows in the American Mid-West
- The Controlled Substances Act of 1970, signed into law by President Nixon, repealed the Marijuana Tax Act (after LSD guru, Timothy Leary won a case against the unconstitutional Marijuana Tax Act) and listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug (along with heroine, LSD, and ecstasy, drugs with no medical use and a high potential for abuse)
- Dr Raphael Mechoulam isolated Tetrahydrocannabinol, THC- the psychoactive compound in cannabis- and began his quest to unravel the mysteries of cannabis in the 1960s
- In 1992, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Dr. Lumir Hanus along with American researcher Dr. William Devane discovered the endocannabinoid anandamide. Leading scientists to discover the endocannabinoid system… the system in your body that uses cannabis to keep you balanced, healthy and happy
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved two drugs with THC that are prescribed in pill form, Marinol and Syndros, to treat nausea and loss of appetite
- Cannabidiol, CBD is an active ingredient in an FDA approved drug for epilepsy, Epidiolex
- U.S. Patent No. 6,630,507 issued in 2003 and entitled “Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants,” is owned by the Federal Government and is at odds with the Drug Enforcement Administration continued refusal to move cannabinoids from the Schedule 1 classification
- in 2018 663,367 people were incarcerated for marijuana charges in the U.S.
- 0 people have overdosed on cannabis
Having safe access to cannabis is a human rights issue. Everyone deserves to be healthy and happy.
Happy 420!