How cannabis came to be banned

The origin of cannabis remains uncertain, but there is general agreement that the plant comes from Asia. The earliest traces of hemp were found in China, near Xianrendong. Here is how cannabis went from medicinal plant to prohibited drug.

China used hemp in medicine

The Shen Nung Ben Cao Jing (the Divine Farmer’s treatise on medicinal plants), dated to 2,737 BC, listed cannabis among 375 plant remedies, alongside tea.

According to Herodotus, writing in 450 BC, the Eurasian people known as the Scythians held collective fumigation sessions that left participants laughing.

Europeans and cannabis

In antiquity it was the Germanic peoples who used hemp to make clothing, rope and various kinds of sailcloth. Seeds dating from 5,000 BC have been found at Eisenberg. More surprising still, the oldest known pipe in the world was found in a tomb at Bad Abbach, in Bavaria, and dates from the Bronze Age. Cannabis was almost certainly one of the many aromatic and psychotropic plants used to reinforce the taste of beer. Queen Victoria is said to have relieved her menstrual pain with cannabis. Some of the banks of the Rhine, finally, were also fertile hemp fields.

And elsewhere in the world?

The cannabis found in the Caribbean had been brought over by Indian labourers, hence the name “Coolie weed”. In the United States, in the nineteenth century, cannabis was available in dispensaries and pharmacies and was among the best-selling medicines. Aspirin eventually displaced the plant at the end of the century. Between 1920 and 1940, in the wake of Ernst Jünger’s essay “Approaches: drugs and intoxication”, marijuana was demonised and treated as a powerful narcotic. In 1937, after a number of murders whose perpetrators were under the influence of marijuana, the United States banned its possession and use. Other countries gradually followed. In a complete reversal, pharmaceutical laboratories bought cannabis from Morocco, the main producer, for the first time in 2005.