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Meds Cannabis History

Five Times Marijuana Contributed to the Banning of a Book


Did you know that this is Banned Books Week? Every year, the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read, and promotes the value of free and open access to information. The Association states, “By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.”

Typically, books are challenged or banned by parents, school districts, and those associated with public libraries. Books can be banned for reasons as specific as criticising the lumber industry and promoting witchcraft, but far more typically it is because of sex, drugs, and profanity. This list will specifically focus on books where subject matter involving marijuana resulted in the book being banned.

While NORML advocates individuals should wait until they are adults to consider consuming cannabis, that’s no reason to lie and exaggerate its relative risks and dangers to children who can see through this over-the-top rhetoric. Ironically, most of these books are at least underlyingly anti-drug, and portray marijuana (or specifically marijuana abuse) in a highly negative light. You would think that parents would want their kids to read about the consequences of drug abuse (no matter how fantastical some of these books portray it), not hide them from it.

Here are five times that marijuana contributed to a book being banned!

Paperback The Perks of Being a Wallflower Book

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

“After a week of not talking to anyone, I finally called Bob. I know that’s wrong, but I didn’t know what else to do. I asked him if he had anything I could buy. He said he had a quarter ounce of pot left. So, I took some of my Easter money and bought it. I’ve been smoking it all the time since.”
You will see that every fictional book on this list will share many of these same features.

  1. Innocent teen protagonist enters a new school and meets new people.
  2. Teen protagonist is pressured to try marijuana, usually by a love interest. This also acts as a metaphor for losing their virginity, and thus their innocence.
  3. Not-so-innocent teen protagonist tires of marijuana and gets hooked on much harder drugs.
Throughout The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the high school characters use various substances (mostly marijuana) to try to quiet their respective demons, i.e., being gay in a homophobic high school and in love with the closeted quarterback, abused by your boyfriend, in love with a girl who sees you as a little brother, suicidal thoughts, etc. Because this is a Young Adult novel (albeit a very good one), the drug use only makes their problems worse. It also plays into the myth that there is a culture of peer pressure related to trying marijuana, which just isn’t the case. To give the book some credit though, the resulting fallout from their light drug use never gets into too harsh a territory. No overdoses or crack parties.

Author Stephen Chbosky expertly sums up why the book is so often banned and challenged. “Perks (of Being a Wallflower) was banned for reasons of teenage sexuality, drug use, and alcohol. Or as kids call it… going to high school.”

Hardcover Looking for Alaska Book

Looking for Alaska by John Green

“‘Studies show that marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes,’ Hank said.

Alaska swallowed a mouthful of French fries, took a drag on her cigarette and blew smoke across the table at Hank. ‘I may die young,’ she said, “but at least I’ll die smart.”
Sorry Alaska, but this isn’t true. Studies have shown that cannabis exposure, even among young people, is not associated with causal, long-term changes in brain morphology. Nonetheless, Looking for Alaska has been high on the American Library Association’s Top Ten Challenged Books list almost every year since its publication in 2005. One Kentucky parent called the novel “filth” and insists it will tempt students “to experiment with pornography, sex, drugs, alcohol, and profanity.”

The coming-of-age novel revolves around a teenager entering a new boarding school, meeting a diverse group of fellow students that introduce him to drugs, sex, and other mind-expanding elements. The titular character Alaska, acts as the resident manic-pixie-dream girl. The second half of the story switches genres, becoming darker and more introspective. Unlike some of the other books on this list, Looking for Alaska neither demonizes nor praises marijuana. It simply is something that is present in the lives of certain characters. No one is peer pressured, no one “overdoses”, and no one starts smoking meth. In terms of realism regarding teen marijuana use, I personally feel it rings pretty true. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to something as alien to real life like Go Ask Alice.

Paperback Marijuana Grower's Guide Deluxe : 1990 Edition Book

Marijuana Grower’s Guide by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal

“When cannabis becomes legal, commercial seed houses will develop varieties to suit each gardener’s requirements: ‘Let’s see, I’d like something thai grows about six feet in six weeks, develops a giant cola, matures in sixty days, smells like cheap perfume, tastes like heady champagne, and takes me to the moon.’”
If books like this were more mainstream, maybe more people would be interested in STEM fields. First published in 1974, Marijuana Grower’s Guide has been called “the bible of basic cultivation”. Out of the pack, this book has obviously the most straightforward stance on marijuana, with no need for literary interpretations. In 2004, a man from Jackson, Wyoming took serious issue with the Teton County Public Library carrying Marijuana Grower’s Guide, comparing it to “books on bomb-making, assassination, how to make methamphetamine and child pornography.”

Wyoming has some of the strictest marijuana laws in the country. Possession of under three ounces of cannabis is a misdemeanor that can be punished with up to a year in jail and a $1000 fine; possession of over three ounces is a felony. Still, there hasn’t been an amendment yet to prohibit cannabis related books. At the time of the challenge, the book was checked out. The Teton County Commission promised it would put the book on hold when it was returned. 17 years later, there has not been an update on if it was returned to the shelves.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is go-ask-alice.jpg

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

“Oh damn, damn, damn, it’s happened again. I don’t know whether to scream with glory or cover myself with ashes and sackcloth, whatever that means. Anyone who says pot and acid are not addicting is a damn, stupid, raving idiot, unenlightened fool! I’ve been on them since July 10, and when I’ve been off I’ve been scared to death to even think of anything that even looks or seems like dope. All the time pretending to myself that I could take it or leave it!”
20 pages later…

“The subject of this book died three weeks after her decision not to keep another diary. Her parents came home from a movie and found her dead. They called the police and the hospital but there was nothing anyone could do. Was it an accidental overdose? A premeditated overdose? No one knows, and in some ways that question isn’t important. What must be of concern is that she died, and that she was only one of thousands of drug deaths that year.”
Go Ask Alice was basically the literary equivalent of Reefer Madness for the 70’s set – with the same level of artistic merit. In summary, Alice (a pseudonym) is a nice and otherwise typical 15-year-old keeping a diary, from the years 1968 to 1970. She moves to a new school where she meets a girl who pressures her to smoke pot. She likes it so much that she figures all drugs are fine. The aptly-named Alice then goes down a rabbit hole of unprotected sex, intravenous drugs, and other hippie horrors. The diary’s last entry is from the book’s editor, Dr. Beatrice Sparks, who claims she received the diary from an actual teenage girl she knew.

Although Go Ask Alice is militantly anti-drug and pro-chastity, it has constantly been challenged and banned since its publication.

After its massive success, it led to a series of “anonymous” teen diaries edited by Sparks, all focusing on the dangerous the all-American teen faces everyday. Things like sacrificing yourself to Satan (Jay’s Journal) or getting impregnated by your teacher (Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager) were commonplace in the universe of Go Ask Alice. Just as an archaeologist might dig up a previously undocument prehistoric tooth, Dr. Sparks was extremely adept at tracking down diaries of dead teenagers. These stories served not only as titillation for suburban kids to vicariously live more interesting lives than their own, but also to suburban parents to affirm their own confirmation bias that terrible things happen when kids visit big cities and/or stop going to church.

Eventually, people began getting suspicious when Dr. Sparks – purportedly just the editor – began to try to be somewhat of a literary celebrity. People also noted that “Alice” didn’t really speak like a real teenager, but more in the linguistic vein of a Mormon youth counselor. A Mormon (purported) youth counselor like Beatrice Sparks. After more investigation, it came out that Sparks was a fraud. Not only did none of the diaries come from real people, but she didn’t have a PhD, and most likely was never even a legitimate counselor at all.

If you read Sparks’ books as the fiction they are, they aren’t a bad way to kill a few hours. Again they share the “so bad, it’s good” appeal of Reefer Madness. Unfortunately though, there are still people who take these sorts of wild accounts as fact, and use that false information to advocate against marijuana legalization.

Hardcover Crank Book

Crank by Ellen Hopkins

“Been smokin’ pot since I was 13,
couldn’t quit if I tried. Besides,
why try? It keeps me happy,
mellow…”
Written entirely in verse, Crank is like Go Ask Alice for the teen-intellectual set. I actually really enjoyed Hopkins’ books when I was a young teen. The grittiness and unique narrative style felt like a nice reprieve to the Twilight and the Gossip Girl books, which were the other popular YA series of the mid-aughts. With that being said, even someone “educated” about drugs by public school curriculum under a conservative Florida government, could surmise that the average teen doesn’t jump from weed to crystal meth at the drop of a hat.

A major trope of YA fiction, specifically books geared towards girls, is the drug-pushing straw man (usually in the form of a mysterious new boy in school) that simply won’t take no for an answer. Not only is this insulting the intelligence and strength of teenage girls, but it also just isn’t very accurate. Teens are waiting until they are older to try marijuana, especially in places where it is legalized.

It joins the same club as Go Ask Alice, as a vehemently anti-drug book that is still deemed a bad influence to teens. Go figure.
 

Five Times Marijuana Contributed to the Banning of a Book


Did you know that this is Banned Books Week? Every year, the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week celebrates the freedom to read, and promotes the value of free and open access to information. The Association states, “By focusing on efforts across the country to remove or restrict access to books, Banned Books Week draws national attention to the harms of censorship.”

Typically, books are challenged or banned by parents, school districts, and those associated with public libraries. Books can be banned for reasons as specific as criticising the lumber industry and promoting witchcraft, but far more typically it is because of sex, drugs, and profanity. This list will specifically focus on books where subject matter involving marijuana resulted in the book being banned.

While NORML advocates individuals should wait until they are adults to consider consuming cannabis, that’s no reason to lie and exaggerate its relative risks and dangers to children who can see through this over-the-top rhetoric. Ironically, most of these books are at least underlyingly anti-drug, and portray marijuana (or specifically marijuana abuse) in a highly negative light. You would think that parents would want their kids to read about the consequences of drug abuse (no matter how fantastical some of these books portray it), not hide them from it.

Here are five times that marijuana contributed to a book being banned!

Paperback The Perks of Being a Wallflower Book

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky


You will see that every fictional book on this list will share many of these same features.

  1. Innocent teen protagonist enters a new school and meets new people.
  2. Teen protagonist is pressured to try marijuana, usually by a love interest. This also acts as a metaphor for losing their virginity, and thus their innocence.
  3. Not-so-innocent teen protagonist tires of marijuana and gets hooked on much harder drugs.
Throughout The Perks of Being a Wallflower, the high school characters use various substances (mostly marijuana) to try to quiet their respective demons, i.e., being gay in a homophobic high school and in love with the closeted quarterback, abused by your boyfriend, in love with a girl who sees you as a little brother, suicidal thoughts, etc. Because this is a Young Adult novel (albeit a very good one), the drug use only makes their problems worse. It also plays into the myth that there is a culture of peer pressure related to trying marijuana, which just isn’t the case. To give the book some credit though, the resulting fallout from their light drug use never gets into too harsh a territory. No overdoses or crack parties.

Author Stephen Chbosky expertly sums up why the book is so often banned and challenged. “Perks (of Being a Wallflower) was banned for reasons of teenage sexuality, drug use, and alcohol. Or as kids call it… going to high school.”

Hardcover Looking for Alaska Book

Looking for Alaska by John Green


Sorry Alaska, but this isn’t true. Studies have shown that cannabis exposure, even among young people, is not associated with causal, long-term changes in brain morphology. Nonetheless, Looking for Alaska has been high on the American Library Association’s Top Ten Challenged Books list almost every year since its publication in 2005. One Kentucky parent called the novel “filth” and insists it will tempt students “to experiment with pornography, sex, drugs, alcohol, and profanity.”

The coming-of-age novel revolves around a teenager entering a new boarding school, meeting a diverse group of fellow students that introduce him to drugs, sex, and other mind-expanding elements. The titular character Alaska, acts as the resident manic-pixie-dream girl. The second half of the story switches genres, becoming darker and more introspective. Unlike some of the other books on this list, Looking for Alaska neither demonizes nor praises marijuana. It simply is something that is present in the lives of certain characters. No one is peer pressured, no one “overdoses”, and no one starts smoking meth. In terms of realism regarding teen marijuana use, I personally feel it rings pretty true. It’s a breath of fresh air compared to something as alien to real life like Go Ask Alice.

Paperback Marijuana Grower's Guide Deluxe : 1990 Edition Book's Guide Deluxe : 1990 Edition Book

Marijuana Grower’s Guide by Mel Frank and Ed Rosenthal


If books like this were more mainstream, maybe more people would be interested in STEM fields. First published in 1974, Marijuana Grower’s Guide has been called “the bible of basic cultivation”. Out of the pack, this book has obviously the most straightforward stance on marijuana, with no need for literary interpretations. In 2004, a man from Jackson, Wyoming took serious issue with the Teton County Public Library carrying Marijuana Grower’s Guide, comparing it to “books on bomb-making, assassination, how to make methamphetamine and child pornography.”

Wyoming has some of the strictest marijuana laws in the country. Possession of under three ounces of cannabis is a misdemeanor that can be punished with up to a year in jail and a $1000 fine; possession of over three ounces is a felony. Still, there hasn’t been an amendment yet to prohibit cannabis related books. At the time of the challenge, the book was checked out. The Teton County Commission promised it would put the book on hold when it was returned. 17 years later, there has not been an update on if it was returned to the shelves.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is go-ask-alice.jpg

Go Ask Alice by Anonymous


20 pages later…


Go Ask Alice was basically the literary equivalent of Reefer Madness for the 70’s set – with the same level of artistic merit. In summary, Alice (a pseudonym) is a nice and otherwise typical 15-year-old keeping a diary, from the years 1968 to 1970. She moves to a new school where she meets a girl who pressures her to smoke pot. She likes it so much that she figures all drugs are fine. The aptly-named Alice then goes down a rabbit hole of unprotected sex, intravenous drugs, and other hippie horrors. The diary’s last entry is from the book’s editor, Dr. Beatrice Sparks, who claims she received the diary from an actual teenage girl she knew.

Although Go Ask Alice is militantly anti-drug and pro-chastity, it has constantly been challenged and banned since its publication.

After its massive success, it led to a series of “anonymous” teen diaries edited by Sparks, all focusing on the dangerous the all-American teen faces everyday. Things like sacrificing yourself to Satan (Jay’s Journal) or getting impregnated by your teacher (Treacherous Love: The Diary of an Anonymous Teenager) were commonplace in the universe of Go Ask Alice. Just as an archaeologist might dig up a previously undocument prehistoric tooth, Dr. Sparks was extremely adept at tracking down diaries of dead teenagers. These stories served not only as titillation for suburban kids to vicariously live more interesting lives than their own, but also to suburban parents to affirm their own confirmation bias that terrible things happen when kids visit big cities and/or stop going to church.

Eventually, people began getting suspicious when Dr. Sparks – purportedly just the editor – began to try to be somewhat of a literary celebrity. People also noted that “Alice” didn’t really speak like a real teenager, but more in the linguistic vein of a Mormon youth counselor. A Mormon (purported) youth counselor like Beatrice Sparks. After more investigation, it came out that Sparks was a fraud. Not only did none of the diaries come from real people, but she didn’t have a PhD, and most likely was never even a legitimate counselor at all.

If you read Sparks’ books as the fiction they are, they aren’t a bad way to kill a few hours. Again they share the “so bad, it’s good” appeal of Reefer Madness. Unfortunately though, there are still people who take these sorts of wild accounts as fact, and use that false information to advocate against marijuana legalization.

Hardcover Crank Book

Crank by Ellen Hopkins


Written entirely in verse, Crank is like Go Ask Alice for the teen-intellectual set. I actually really enjoyed Hopkins’ books when I was a young teen. The grittiness and unique narrative style felt like a nice reprieve to the Twilight and the Gossip Girl books, which were the other popular YA series of the mid-aughts. With that being said, even someone “educated” about drugs by public school curriculum under a conservative Florida government, could surmise that the average teen doesn’t jump from weed to crystal meth at the drop of a hat.

A major trope of YA fiction, specifically books geared towards girls, is the drug-pushing straw man (usually in the form of a mysterious new boy in school) that simply won’t take no for an answer. Not only is this insulting the intelligence and strength of teenage girls, but it also just isn’t very accurate. Teens are waiting until they are older to try marijuana, especially in places where it is legalized.

It joins the same club as Go Ask Alice, as a vehemently anti-drug book that is still deemed a bad influence to teens. Go figure.
ED is the real deal! (Great influence)
 
So, apparently there is a First Church of Cannabis, founded in the state of Indiana on March, 2015 by Bill Levin. They hold services over facebook live.

Fine pinnacles of Cannabis:
Live, love, laugh, learn, create, grow, teach.

The Deity Dozen are a set of guidelines put forth by the Church.
  1. Treat everyone with love as an equal.
  2. The day starts with your smile every morning. When you get up, wear it first.
  3. Help others when you can. Not for money, but because it's needed.
  4. Treat your body as a temple. Do not poison it with poor quality foods and sodas.
  5. Do not take advantage of people. Do not intentionally hurt anything.
  6. Never start a fight… only finish them.
  7. Grow food, raise animals, get nature into your daily routine.
  8. Do not be a "troll" on the internet, respect others without name calling and being vulgarly aggressive.
  9. Spend at least 10 mins a day just contemplating life in a quiet space.
  10. Protect those who can not protect themselves.
  11. Laugh often, share humor. Have fun in life, be positive.
  12. Cannabis, "the Healing Plant" is our sacrament. It brings us closer to ourselves and others. It is our fountain of health, our love, curing us from illness and depression. We embrace it with our whole heart and spirit, individually and as a group.
 

Research Traces Cannabis Plant Origins to the Tibetan Plateau 28 Million Years Ago


A fascinating new study published in the journal Vegetation History and Archaeobotany , on May 14, details the work of a team of researchers from the University of Vermont who present their evidence that the cannabis plant “evolved 28 million years ago at a specific area on the Tibetan plateau.”

Titled, “Cannabis in Asia: its center of origin and early cultivation, based on a synthesis of subfossil pollen and archaeobotanical studies”, the study aimed at establishing the oldest common ancestors of the cannabis plant . Led by John McPartland from the University of Vermont the team of investigators analyzed ‘wild-type plant distribution’ data including ‘155 fossil pollen studies.’

Striving to determine the unknown origins of the modern cannabis plant they revealed that it thrived in arid steppe-like conditions caused by the tectonic formation of the northeastern Tibetan Plateau in the general vicinity of Qinghai Lake around “28 million years ago.” This co-localizes with the first steppe community that evolved in Asia, said the team, and while cannabis pollen is visually similar to hop pollen the researchers managed to distinguish the two species and established that hops and cannabis shared a common ancestor.

cannabis-plant.jpg


Left; cannabis plant, Right; Hop plant. Both are part of the same flowering plant family ( Cannabaceae). Soucre: ( Dmytro Sukharevskyi /Adobe; CC BY-SA 2.0 )

Where Did The Cannabis Plant Take Root?​

Humans have utilized cannabis plants for at least 27,000 years and this new study provides a richer understanding of not only ‘when’ the first cannabis plants evolved but also about ‘when’ humanoids first began to use them as medicines and within ritual environments. A Live Science article said that “While this medicinal and psychotropic plant was long thought to have first evolved in central Asia, scientists were hazy on the precise location.”

The cannabis origin site which is central in this new paper is situated only a few hundred kilometers from Baishiya Karst Cave which researchers recently announced, in a New Scientist article, that was once inhabited by an ancient relative of Homo sapiens - Denisovans. DNA testing showed that a jawbone found in this Tibetan cave came from a Denisovan and so showing the species was more widespread than had been known. And now the oldest traces of cannabis have been found in or around that same area.

It is thought that because “the earth was in the midst of ice age they may have transported cannabis seeds from another place” which is supported by cannabis pollen having been discovered in other caves inhabited by Denisovans.

cannabis-seeds.jpg


Denisovans could have transported cannabis seeds. ( CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 )

Modern Flowers With Ancient Origins​

From the Tibetan Plateau, according to another Live Science article, Cannabis reached Europe approximately 6 million years ago and had spread as far afield as eastern China by 1.2 million years ago. Over the millennia cannabis migrated all over the world, and through Africa it reached South America in the 19th century penetrating the United States at the beginning of the 20th century with Mexican immigrants fleeing the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1911.

After 28 million years of growth and almost 30 thousand years of evidential use by humans both Cannabis sativa L . and Cannabis sativa were outlawed in Utah in 1915, and by 1931 it was illegal in 29 states. By 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act put cannabis under the regulation of the Drug Enforcement Agency, criminalizing possession of the plant throughout the country.

However, the beginning of this century has seen these laws collapse under the pressure of the American people, and as 2018 Business Insider report states, “Marijuana Legalization Is Sweeping Across The States”. It looks like, while the richest and most technologically equipped country in the world brings in our future there remains a hardcore population that prefer the old ways, the Denisovan way, in which the magic plant was a dietary and social staple.
 

Pliny the Elder: Ancient Pioneer of Medical Marijuana


Historians of the cannabis plant have long contended that Pliny the Elder was among the first to make note of its curative and psychoactive properties.


plinytheelder.jpg


It’s rare when new cannabis discoveries concern someone who died nearly 2,000 years ago, but that’s what happened, when a scientific team in Italy reported results of their study finding that the skull in a Rome museum really is that of Pliny the Elder, the immortal naturalist of the ancient Roman world.

As the New York Times reported, the skull had been sitting for decades in the Museo Storico Nazionale Dell’Arte Sanitaria, or National Historical Museum of Medical Arts, described as a “treasure trove of medical curiosities.” It had been unearthed in an excavation in 1900 on the shore of the Bay of Naples near the ruins of Pompeii, along with some Roman-era jewelry and regalia. As Pliny was killed in the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, and was said to have met his death on that fabled shoreline, there was inevitably speculation.

The landowner who discovered the skull seems to have leveraged it for personal notoriety as the man who found the remains of Pliny. After changing hands a few times, it wound up in the museum some 70 years ago, It was first plugged as “Pliny the Elder’s skull,” then, less ambitiously, as “skull from the excavations of Pompeii and attributed to Pliny.”

The forensic study, which was launched in 2017, used DNA sequencing and an analysis of cranial shape to determine that the skull fits what we know from history about Pliny’s general profile. Andrea Cionci, leader of the study, dubbed Project Pliny, told the Times: “It is very likely that the skull is Pliny, but we cannot have 100% security. We have many coincidences in favor, and no contrary data.”

The identity of the skull remains a matter of some controversy. The Times ironically quoted a line from Pliny himself: “In these matters, the only certainty is that nothing is certain.”

There is, however, a greater degree of certainty about Pliny’s role as one of history’s first scholars to document the medicinal properties of the cannabis plant.

Admiral, Adventurer, Naturalist​

Gaius Plinius Secundus, born around 23 CE, led military campaigns for Imperial Rome in Germany before being assigned as a naval admiral in the Bay of Naples to fight piracy. In between such adventures he wrote his classic work, “Naturalis Historia,” or Natural History (sometimes rendered in the plural as “Naturae Historiae”).

“Natural History” was, in the words of one historian, a “compendium of ancient knowledge and misinformation.” Amid a massive 37-volume review of flora and fauna from across what was for Rome the known world are such fanciful creations as griffins and cyclopes. But it was the first such compendium of its kind in the Western world and became the standard reference work throughout the Middle Ages.

And his intellectual curiosity seems to have played a role in his demise. This episode was recorded in letters by his nephew and adopted son, who witnessed it and survived. This was Pliny the Younger, then 17, who would go on to become a statesman, serving as governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor (contemporary Turkey).

From his command post on the Bay of Naples, he witnessed a giant cloud rising from Mount Vesuvius.

“Having seen the cloud, Pliny the Elder decided he wanted to get closer to it to investigate,” Daisy Dunn, author of the Pliny biography “The Shadow of Vesuvius,” told the New York Times. “He was, after all, author of a 37-volume book of natural history.”

But as his ship crossed the bay toward Pompeii, it became clear that many were trapped on the shore as lava descended on the city from the volcano and ash rained down from the sky. According to another work on Pliny — “Indagine sulla Scomparsa di un Ammiraglio,” or “Inquiry on the Death of an Admiral,” by military historian Flavio Russo — what began as a personal investigation of a natural phenomenon became “the oldest natural disaster relief operation.”

It was, alas, in vain. By the time his craft had reached the stricken shore, Pliny the Elder had asphyxiated to death on the toxic fumes.

The Pharmacopeia of Cannabis​

Despite the dubious or fantastical elements of his work, Pliny has had a huge influence. As Daily Beast notes, some have speculated that he even helped inspire Charles Darwin, a member of the Plinian Society, to develop Darwin’s theory of inheritable traits.

Pliney’s influence on the pharmacopeia of cannabis has only recently come to be recognized, and may also be considerable.

There are numerous references in “Natural History” to what English translators have rendered as “hemp.” Pliny clearly makes note of its industrial applications, calling it “a plant remarkably useful for making ropes.”

The footnotes for the hemp references in the most authoritative translation by British scholar John Bostock, published in 1856, read: “The Cannabis sativa of Linnæus.” This is a reference to Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist known as the father of modern taxonomy, who invented the system of plant classification still in use today.

Given that the Latin word for hemp is cannabis, there is little controversy here.

The likely references to medicinal and ecstasy-inducing (“recreational,” in contemporary parlance) use of the plant are somewhat more ambiguous.

In his book “Cannabis and the Soma Solution,” the Canadian chronicler of ancient cannabis use Chris Bennett notes that Pliny cited references in an earlier work by the Greek philosopher Democritus (c. 460 – c. 370 BCE), himself the central figure in development of the atomic theory of the universe (dramatically vindicated by science in the 20th century).

The lost earlier work by Democritus made note of an herb called theangelis that “grows upon Mount Libanus in Syria” (contemporary Lebanon), and “at Babylon and Susa in Persia.” Democritus, in a passage quoted by Pliny, wrote: “An infusion of it imparts powers of divination to the Magi.” The Magi, of course, were the sages and priests of the ancient Persian religion, Zoroastrianism.

Pliny also noted Democritus’ reference to geolotophyllis, “a plant found in Bactriana” (contemporary Afghanistan) and “on the banks of the Borysthenes” (the Dnieper River, in contemporary Russia and Ukraine). “Taken internally with myrrh and wine, all sorts of visionary forms present themselves, excite the most immoderate laughter.”

As Bennett notes, Bostock’s footnotes for both these esoteric terms identified them as “Indian hemp, cannabis sativa.”

Christian Rätsch in his “Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants” lists theangelis and geolotophyllis in his section “Psychoactive Plants That Have Not Yet Been Identified.” However, Pliny’s geographic references are in line with what we know about the origin of the cannabis plant in Central Asia (the Tibetan plateau, by the most recent research), and its diffusion from there across the steppes to Europe and the Middle East.

This makes Pliny one of the earliest writers to mention cannabis use. Earlier ones include the Greek historian Herodotus, who noted its use by the Scythians, and the herbal compendiums in India’s Athrava Veda and the Pen Ts’ao of the legendary Chinese emperor Shen Nung (c. 2800 BCE).

On a less esoteric tip, Pliny also noted that an infusion of cannabis root boiled in water “eases cramped joints, gout too, and similar violent pain.” He also recommended hemp seed oil as a treatment for ear infections (“worms”). This was noted in the December 2017 edition of the peer-reviewed quarterly journal Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, in an article entitled “Cannabis Roots: A Traditional Therapy with Future Potential for Treating Inflammation and Pain.” The article, written by a team led by Vancouver physician and cannabis therapeutics practitioner Natasha R. Ryz, stated: “In the first century, Pliny the Elder described in ‘Natural Histories’ that a decoction of the root in water could be used to relieve stiffness in the joints, gout and related conditions. By the 17th century, various herbalists were recommending cannabis root to treat inflammation, joint pain, gout, and other conditions.”Although the plant’s root contains few cannabinoids, this points to a link between Pliny and the later medicinal use of cannabis tinctures and the like in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This tradition came to an abrupt halt in the United States with federal prohibition in 1937, and has only been rediscovered since the emergence of the medical marijuana movement a little more than a generation ago.

The works of Pliny the Elder certainly demonstrate that cannabis use is not some recent innovation, but deeply rooted in human culture.
 

Flashback Friday: Hemp in Australia—A Secret History

Learn about hemp in Australia and behold the Weed Raiders, aka Australia’s first marijuana hipsters.

The discovery in 1964 of 500 acres of cannabis growing wild along the banks of the Hunter River inspired a new generation of pot smokers in Australia. But the history of the crop is much older, dating back to the early 1800s, when Britain sent debtors and convicts to start the first hemp colony Down Under. From the November, 1995 issue of High Times comes an excerpt of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer and John Jiggens, about the little-known history of hemp in Australia.

The Secret History of Hemp in Australia

When a giant patch of cannabis sativa was discovered growing wild in hunter valley, about 100 miles north of Sydney, it sparked the birth of pot counterculture in Australia. But the roots of the crop were much older, dating back to the founding of Australia as Britain’s first hemp colony.

On the morning of November 16, 1964, startled residents of the Australian town of Maitland awoke to the news that the Indian hemp plant—which the newspapers called “the dreaded sex drug, marihuana” had been discovered growing wild along the banks of the Hunter River.

A great mystery was here. The hemp plant is not believed to be native to Australia, yet the sheer size of the Hunter Valley crop seemed to indicate otherwise. The plant was growing along a 40 mile stretch of the river not just in isolated clumps, but in huge infestations covering hundreds of acres.

The radio and TV were swamped with reports about the wild hemp crop. The TV news showed government workers standing in huge paddocks of marijuana, spraying furiously. All the lurid publicity had a powerful effect on the areas young people, who began organizing expeditions to the river.

The time was ripe for the emergence of pot smoking in Australia. The Beatles had just toured the country. For a whole generation waiting to turn on, the only question was, how? The Maitland Mercury was good enough to provide the answer. The plant does not need any special preparation,” the newspaper reported. “Flowering tops of the female plant or the leaves can be cut and dried and used immediately.”

Unlike American ditchweed, Hunter Valley’s wild hemp was a good smoke. Those who ventured there became known in Australian folklore as “the Weed Raiders”—the first pot smokers—legendary characters who came back from expeditions with sleeping bags brimming with reefer and wild tales of monster plants 12 feet high. Both police statistics and popular folklore confirm that the wave of marijuana smoking that was to engulf Australia over the next three decades had its origins among the Weed Raiders of Hunter Valley.

Ultimately, the Customs Department would estimate that 500 acres of the Hunter Valley were heavily infested with cannabis: the largest patch was over 80 acres. The Mercury’srival, the Newcastle Morning Herald, showed a farmer standing waist deep in a 12-acre paddock of marijuana on his East Maitland property. “Since the presence of the marihuana was made public,” the paper reported, “the Department of Agriculture has been receiving constant telephone calls from people who want to know how to produce the drug from the plant.” Like the Mercury, the Morning Herald did not leave its readers guessing for long. Its article the next day informed readers that marijuana merely had to be dried before smoking.

A grapevine of knowledge about good locations soon spread among the young and hip along the coast, from Noosa Head to Melbourne. By 1966, many were becoming wealthy selling herb on Hunter Street. “What happened then changed many people’s lives and led to the hippie generation,” one old surfer reports. “The grass was the catalyst. Those in the know turned many people on, and they turned others on. It spread very fast.”

For locals, the game of Cops and Raiders was lots of fun. “Getting back to the highway with a sugar-bag full of heads and the cops on the prowl could be pretty nervy,” recalls a former Raider. “Some guys used to fill their hubcaps with grass. Others went quietly on moonlit nights and took their time to pick pounds and pounds of herb. From then on, all our lifestyles started to change.”

Along with the weed, rumors spread among the surfers. One was that marijuana had been seen growing in the flower beds of the Maitland police station. Another had it that local farmers were being paid bounties for turning in Weed Raiders. This last rumor was later confirmed by farmers and by published reports of the Department of Customs and Excise. The first busts of any size in Australia happened at Hunter.

“Sure we told the police if we saw them. We had young ones. too, you know.” an old farmer recalls. “Some of these young [Raiders] were pretty blatant. They used to come up to me and ask, ‘Have you seen any of this marijuana round here?’ I used to direct them to a paddock filled with Stinking Roger [a kind of wild Australian marigold which looks similar to marijuana]. ‘There’s tons over there,’ I’d say. Some of the others were a bit more sneaky, and pretended they were only fishing.”

Meanwhile, locals in the valley speculated about the mystery appearance of this crop that had begun to transform their lives. Where had it sprung from? How long had it been there?

According to the Department of Agriculture, this was the first reported case of marijuana growing wild in Australia. The plant was not indigenous and usually had to be cultivated. Yet the sheer size of the crop seemed proof enough that the infestation had occurred naturally.

Some speculated the plants had sprouted from bird seed, which often contains cannabis. But the drug squad discounted this theory, since the hemp seed in birdseed mixtures is generally sterilized. The most popular theory held that the hemp had been planted by Chinese market gardeners—a predictable target. Australia’s first drug laws, against opium smoking, were fueled by virulent, anti-Chinese racism.

Australia As Hemp Colony

In fact, the roots of this wild Australian hemp crop can be traced back to the founding of New South Wales, the first British colony in Australia. The Hunter Valley crop was first described by Dr. Francis Campbell in his book A Treatise on the Culture of Flax and Hemp, published in 1846:

I found [hemp] growing wild in the greatest luxuriance on the sandy bank of the river Hunter, near Singleton. But whether it had been originally introduced into that part of New South Wales by some settler, or whether the plant be indigenous, I have not yet been able to ascertain. This spontaneous crop appeared to cover about an acre of an extremely loose sandy loam, in a small flat which had been formed by the dislocation of the high bank into the bed of the river…. The plants were all vigorous and healthy, and upon the whole the crop looked dense and evenly.

Dr. Campbell experimented with the seed of this wild hemp and was impressed by its prolific growth rate—as were the farmers in the 1960s, who claimed the plants had one of the fastest growth rates they’d ever encountered.

Current research indicates that the Hunter Valley crop probably originated with the Bell brothers—Archibald and William Sims Bell—the first white settlers of Singleton, in the Upper Hunter, in 1823. Their father, Archibald Bell, had lobbied the British Royal Commission to make Australia a hemp colony for the UK.

Bell’s campaign was hardly heretical. In the 18th century, hemp was as important as oil is in our day. Britain’s wealth and power relied on its navy, and every sailing ship in its vast fleet required half a square mile of hemp every two years for rope, rigging and sails. Thus the cultivation of hemp was, as Dr. Francis Campbell remarked, “a patriotic proposition,” and the British government encouraged the hemp industry with bounties, land grants and free seed to all its colonies.

The period of 1781 to 1786, when the plans were laid for colonizing Australia, was a time of severe crisis in the British hemp industry. Britain relied on Russia for most of its hemp. But in 1781, the Baltic states formed an alliance to cut off British trade with Russia. At war with the American colonies, Britain could no longer get hemp from the USA, either. Britain lost the War of Independence largely because of the crisis in naval supplies.

To overcome this hemp shortage, the British Parliament tried to encourage domestic cultivation with an educational campaign similar to the US Hemp For Victory campaign. This proved unsuccessful, and the government began promoting hemp in Canada, India, Ireland and its newest colony, New South Wales. In 1786, the Cabinet approved a plan for a settlement of convicts and debtors that would grow into a commercial colony, its primary enterprise being hemp.

The first hemp seeds arrived in Australia in 1788 at the beginning of British settlement. They were sent by Sir Joseph Banks, a gentleman explorer and “Father of Australia,” and were marked “for commerce.”

Thus the Hunter Valley crop was intimately linked with the founding of Australia. Its historical significance alone should have guaranteed its preservation. But marijuana prohibition in Australia brought with it a kind of amnesia about the importance of hemp.

The Reefer Madness Campaign of 1938

One of the surprising things about marijuana prohibition in Australia was how swiftly it happened. America’s Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was barely a month old when the US consul to Australia, Albert Doyle, wrote to Australia’s prime minister explaining its purpose and requesting copies of all Australian laws regulating cannabis. Barely six months later, the Australian Reefer Madness campaign was launched.

“Drug That Maddens Victims!” shrieked the April 23, 1938 front page of the Australian newspaper Smith’s Weekly. The article was subtitled “WARNING FROM AMERICA,” and informed readers (in capital letters) that the “PLANT GROWS WILD IN QUEENSLAND”—the Australian state due north of New South Wales.

“Under the influence of [this] drug, the addict becomes at times almost an uncontrollable sex-maniac, able to obtain satisfaction only from the most appalling of perversions and orgies,” the paper reported. Although the article was attributed to Smith’s Hawaiian correspondent, its tone and content were remarkably similar to the marijuana hysteria fostered by the infamous U.S. Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger.

Seven weeks later, Smith’s Weekly delivered its second screed: “Drugged Cigarettes: G-Man Warns Australia: FIRST DOPED PACKETS SNEAKED IN.” According to this article, “A few cigarettes containing marihuana—the drug which causes its victims to behave like raving sex maniacs, and has made pathetic slaves of thousands of young Americans—have been smoked at recent parties in Sydney.”

The G-man in question was A. M. Bangs, the head of the Bureau of Narcotics in Hawaii and one of Anslinger’s deputies. The article ends with a series of direct quotes from Anslinger’s Marihuana—Assassin of Youth, establishing beyond any doubt the Anslinger connection. Not surprisingly, during the Reefer Madness period, Smith’s Weekly was backed by Australian Newsprint Mills, which was buying full-page ads to promote its new woodchip paper mill in Tasmania.

Because of the hysteria whipped up by Anslinger, Indian Hemp was quickly added to the list of plants banned by the Local Government (Noxious Weed) Act of 1938. Immediate destruction was to be the rule. But obviously, the authorities missed a few plants, as the re-emergence of the crop in 1964 proves.

The day after the Hunter Valley crop was discovered, the NSW Agriculture Department began a new campaign of eradication. The department confidently predicted that “the bulk of the infestation should be cleared in a fortnight.” In fact, it was to take five years. During the late ’60s, many university students were initiated into the wonderful world of weed during summer holiday stints, when they were hired by the government to clear, burn, poison and essentially exterminate this breed of wild cannabis sativa which had made its home in Australia for over 150 years.
 

Flashback Friday: Hemp in Australia—A Secret History

Learn about hemp in Australia and behold the Weed Raiders, aka Australia’s first marijuana hipsters.

The discovery in 1964 of 500 acres of cannabis growing wild along the banks of the Hunter River inspired a new generation of pot smokers in Australia. But the history of the crop is much older, dating back to the early 1800s, when Britain sent debtors and convicts to start the first hemp colony Down Under. From the November, 1995 issue of High Times comes an excerpt of The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer and John Jiggens, about the little-known history of hemp in Australia.

The Secret History of Hemp in Australia

When a giant patch of cannabis sativa was discovered growing wild in hunter valley, about 100 miles north of Sydney, it sparked the birth of pot counterculture in Australia. But the roots of the crop were much older, dating back to the founding of Australia as Britain’s first hemp colony.

On the morning of November 16, 1964, startled residents of the Australian town of Maitland awoke to the news that the Indian hemp plant—which the newspapers called “the dreaded sex drug, marihuana” had been discovered growing wild along the banks of the Hunter River.

A great mystery was here. The hemp plant is not believed to be native to Australia, yet the sheer size of the Hunter Valley crop seemed to indicate otherwise. The plant was growing along a 40 mile stretch of the river not just in isolated clumps, but in huge infestations covering hundreds of acres.

The radio and TV were swamped with reports about the wild hemp crop. The TV news showed government workers standing in huge paddocks of marijuana, spraying furiously. All the lurid publicity had a powerful effect on the areas young people, who began organizing expeditions to the river.

The time was ripe for the emergence of pot smoking in Australia. The Beatles had just toured the country. For a whole generation waiting to turn on, the only question was, how? The Maitland Mercury was good enough to provide the answer. The plant does not need any special preparation,” the newspaper reported. “Flowering tops of the female plant or the leaves can be cut and dried and used immediately.”

Unlike American ditchweed, Hunter Valley’s wild hemp was a good smoke. Those who ventured there became known in Australian folklore as “the Weed Raiders”—the first pot smokers—legendary characters who came back from expeditions with sleeping bags brimming with reefer and wild tales of monster plants 12 feet high. Both police statistics and popular folklore confirm that the wave of marijuana smoking that was to engulf Australia over the next three decades had its origins among the Weed Raiders of Hunter Valley.

Ultimately, the Customs Department would estimate that 500 acres of the Hunter Valley were heavily infested with cannabis: the largest patch was over 80 acres. The Mercury’srival, the Newcastle Morning Herald, showed a farmer standing waist deep in a 12-acre paddock of marijuana on his East Maitland property. “Since the presence of the marihuana was made public,” the paper reported, “the Department of Agriculture has been receiving constant telephone calls from people who want to know how to produce the drug from the plant.” Like the Mercury, the Morning Herald did not leave its readers guessing for long. Its article the next day informed readers that marijuana merely had to be dried before smoking.

A grapevine of knowledge about good locations soon spread among the young and hip along the coast, from Noosa Head to Melbourne. By 1966, many were becoming wealthy selling herb on Hunter Street. “What happened then changed many people’s lives and led to the hippie generation,” one old surfer reports. “The grass was the catalyst. Those in the know turned many people on, and they turned others on. It spread very fast.”

For locals, the game of Cops and Raiders was lots of fun. “Getting back to the highway with a sugar-bag full of heads and the cops on the prowl could be pretty nervy,” recalls a former Raider. “Some guys used to fill their hubcaps with grass. Others went quietly on moonlit nights and took their time to pick pounds and pounds of herb. From then on, all our lifestyles started to change.”

Along with the weed, rumors spread among the surfers. One was that marijuana had been seen growing in the flower beds of the Maitland police station. Another had it that local farmers were being paid bounties for turning in Weed Raiders. This last rumor was later confirmed by farmers and by published reports of the Department of Customs and Excise. The first busts of any size in Australia happened at Hunter.

“Sure we told the police if we saw them. We had young ones. too, you know.” an old farmer recalls. “Some of these young [Raiders] were pretty blatant. They used to come up to me and ask, ‘Have you seen any of this marijuana round here?’ I used to direct them to a paddock filled with Stinking Roger [a kind of wild Australian marigold which looks similar to marijuana]. ‘There’s tons over there,’ I’d say. Some of the others were a bit more sneaky, and pretended they were only fishing.”

Meanwhile, locals in the valley speculated about the mystery appearance of this crop that had begun to transform their lives. Where had it sprung from? How long had it been there?

According to the Department of Agriculture, this was the first reported case of marijuana growing wild in Australia. The plant was not indigenous and usually had to be cultivated. Yet the sheer size of the crop seemed proof enough that the infestation had occurred naturally.

Some speculated the plants had sprouted from bird seed, which often contains cannabis. But the drug squad discounted this theory, since the hemp seed in birdseed mixtures is generally sterilized. The most popular theory held that the hemp had been planted by Chinese market gardeners—a predictable target. Australia’s first drug laws, against opium smoking, were fueled by virulent, anti-Chinese racism.

Australia As Hemp Colony

In fact, the roots of this wild Australian hemp crop can be traced back to the founding of New South Wales, the first British colony in Australia. The Hunter Valley crop was first described by Dr. Francis Campbell in his book A Treatise on the Culture of Flax and Hemp, published in 1846:

I found [hemp] growing wild in the greatest luxuriance on the sandy bank of the river Hunter, near Singleton. But whether it had been originally introduced into that part of New South Wales by some settler, or whether the plant be indigenous, I have not yet been able to ascertain. This spontaneous crop appeared to cover about an acre of an extremely loose sandy loam, in a small flat which had been formed by the dislocation of the high bank into the bed of the river…. The plants were all vigorous and healthy, and upon the whole the crop looked dense and evenly.

Dr. Campbell experimented with the seed of this wild hemp and was impressed by its prolific growth rate—as were the farmers in the 1960s, who claimed the plants had one of the fastest growth rates they’d ever encountered.

Current research indicates that the Hunter Valley crop probably originated with the Bell brothers—Archibald and William Sims Bell—the first white settlers of Singleton, in the Upper Hunter, in 1823. Their father, Archibald Bell, had lobbied the British Royal Commission to make Australia a hemp colony for the UK.

Bell’s campaign was hardly heretical. In the 18th century, hemp was as important as oil is in our day. Britain’s wealth and power relied on its navy, and every sailing ship in its vast fleet required half a square mile of hemp every two years for rope, rigging and sails. Thus the cultivation of hemp was, as Dr. Francis Campbell remarked, “a patriotic proposition,” and the British government encouraged the hemp industry with bounties, land grants and free seed to all its colonies.

The period of 1781 to 1786, when the plans were laid for colonizing Australia, was a time of severe crisis in the British hemp industry. Britain relied on Russia for most of its hemp. But in 1781, the Baltic states formed an alliance to cut off British trade with Russia. At war with the American colonies, Britain could no longer get hemp from the USA, either. Britain lost the War of Independence largely because of the crisis in naval supplies.

To overcome this hemp shortage, the British Parliament tried to encourage domestic cultivation with an educational campaign similar to the US Hemp For Victory campaign. This proved unsuccessful, and the government began promoting hemp in Canada, India, Ireland and its newest colony, New South Wales. In 1786, the Cabinet approved a plan for a settlement of convicts and debtors that would grow into a commercial colony, its primary enterprise being hemp.

The first hemp seeds arrived in Australia in 1788 at the beginning of British settlement. They were sent by Sir Joseph Banks, a gentleman explorer and “Father of Australia,” and were marked “for commerce.”

Thus the Hunter Valley crop was intimately linked with the founding of Australia. Its historical significance alone should have guaranteed its preservation. But marijuana prohibition in Australia brought with it a kind of amnesia about the importance of hemp.

The Reefer Madness Campaign of 1938

One of the surprising things about marijuana prohibition in Australia was how swiftly it happened. America’s Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 was barely a month old when the US consul to Australia, Albert Doyle, wrote to Australia’s prime minister explaining its purpose and requesting copies of all Australian laws regulating cannabis. Barely six months later, the Australian Reefer Madness campaign was launched.

“Drug That Maddens Victims!” shrieked the April 23, 1938 front page of the Australian newspaper Smith’s Weekly. The article was subtitled “WARNING FROM AMERICA,” and informed readers (in capital letters) that the “PLANT GROWS WILD IN QUEENSLAND”—the Australian state due north of New South Wales.

“Under the influence of [this] drug, the addict becomes at times almost an uncontrollable sex-maniac, able to obtain satisfaction only from the most appalling of perversions and orgies,” the paper reported. Although the article was attributed to Smith’s Hawaiian correspondent, its tone and content were remarkably similar to the marijuana hysteria fostered by the infamous U.S. Bureau of Narcotics Commissioner, Harry J. Anslinger.

Seven weeks later, Smith’s Weekly delivered its second screed: “Drugged Cigarettes: G-Man Warns Australia: FIRST DOPED PACKETS SNEAKED IN.” According to this article, “A few cigarettes containing marihuana—the drug which causes its victims to behave like raving sex maniacs, and has made pathetic slaves of thousands of young Americans—have been smoked at recent parties in Sydney.”

The G-man in question was A. M. Bangs, the head of the Bureau of Narcotics in Hawaii and one of Anslinger’s deputies. The article ends with a series of direct quotes from Anslinger’s Marihuana—Assassin of Youth, establishing beyond any doubt the Anslinger connection. Not surprisingly, during the Reefer Madness period, Smith’s Weekly was backed by Australian Newsprint Mills, which was buying full-page ads to promote its new woodchip paper mill in Tasmania.

Because of the hysteria whipped up by Anslinger, Indian Hemp was quickly added to the list of plants banned by the Local Government (Noxious Weed) Act of 1938. Immediate destruction was to be the rule. But obviously, the authorities missed a few plants, as the re-emergence of the crop in 1964 proves.

The day after the Hunter Valley crop was discovered, the NSW Agriculture Department began a new campaign of eradication. The department confidently predicted that “the bulk of the infestation should be cleared in a fortnight.” In fact, it was to take five years. During the late ’60s, many university students were initiated into the wonderful world of weed during summer holiday stints, when they were hired by the government to clear, burn, poison and essentially exterminate this breed of wild cannabis sativa which had made its home in Australia for over 150 years.

So it takes 5 years for students to drunk drive to remote areas of Australia to eradicate (smoke) weed?!
Guess the math makes sense, actually in stoner time that's light speed
Late night vape has me......... :smug:
 

Flashback Friday: Drugs In The White House

How our heads of state who lived in the White House got high.

Drugs-In-The-White-House-800x500.jpg


From the April, 1980 issue of High Times comes Jeff Goldberg’s brief survey of drug-using, White House-living, American presidents.

May 12-13: sowed hemp at muddy hole by swamp.
August 7: began to separate the male from the female hemp—rather too late.


While it is unlikely that George Washington, who penned these diary notes 200 years ago. smoked any of the scraggly rope-dope he was growing on his Mount Vernon plantation, he certainly dreamed of hemp as a cash crop. After all, it had a solid foreign market and was perfect for cottage industry, basket-making and such. He won over Thomas Jefferson, who began importing hemp seeds to Monticello, but failed to win the support of early American farmers, who favored tobacco cultivation. If, by some historical quirk, they had instead followed Washington’s advice, early U.S. history might have been considerably headier.

As it turned out not until the 19th century did Americans—including presidents—really turn on. The patent-medicine boom in the mid 1800s was largely responsible: Virtually everyone sampled various opium-, cannabis- and cocaine-based remedies and elixirs. If the president had the flu, a stomach ache, piles or a hangover, the prescribed remedy was tincture of opium: laudanum. Also prescribed for all manner of “female complaints,” laudanum found its way into first ladies’ medicine chests too. A century before Betty Ford got strung out on Valium and vodka, Mary Todd Lincoln was portrayed by presidential biographer William H. Herdon as a virtual patent-medicine junkie.

On the whole, however, records of bummers on these 19th-century elixirs are far outweighed by the good trips. Ulysses S. Grant, burned out by years of boozing, was miraculously revitalized near the end of his life by daily doses of Mariani tea, one of chemist Angelo Mariani’s delightful cocaine-based products. It so bolstered the aging ex-president that he was able to put in hours of work a day on his memoirs, valued as one of the finest accounts of the Civil War.

During the 1880s, coca wine, another Mariani tonic, enjoyed unsurpassed popularity on the patent-medicine market. The enterprising Mariani eventually rounded up glowing endorsements from the prince of Wales, the czar and czarina of Russia, the kings of Norway and Sweden, and Pope Leo XIII. In the United States, Pres. William McKinley’s secretary noted that a case of Vin Mariani had received an enthusiastic reception from the president.

Anti-Drug Propaganda Directly from the White House​

All this came to an end—sort of—with the election of Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, under whose “progressive” administration the first federal controls on what people drank, swallowed and smoked were instituted and the stage was set for Prohibition. Still, the rough-riding, trust-busting Teddy may not have been the straight arrow he claimed to be.

One day in 1912, according to the account of one Herford Cowling, a 91-year-old retired newsreel cameraman, the retired president halted a motorcade on its way to the Roosevelt Dam when he spotted a stand of “cactus fruits” growing in the middle of the Arizona desert. According to Cowling, reporters watched bewildered as he rushed to the site and commenced “pulling off the little green bulbs and eating them.”

Still, by the time Teddy Roosevelt left office in 1909, the nation’s first antidrug campaign was really rolling. First came the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, prohibiting over-the-counter sales of opiates and cocaine. However high-minded their pitch to save children from Mother Baily’s Soothing Syrup and other kiddie narcotics, and to regulate the quality of medicine, some of the prohibitionists concealed darker motives.

This country’s first official drug policy was instituted against a background of Hearst-syndicate “yellow peril” journalism, portraying Chinese as shifty, no-good dope fiends. The hidden objective was racial and financial: to halt the flood of Chinese immigrants into the U.S. labor pool. Racism also underscored cocaine prohibition, as characterized by Dr. Christopher Koch’s statement before Congress in 1910 that “most attacks upon white women in the South are the direct result of a cocaine-crazed Negro brain.”

Hysteria and hypocrisy have all too often characterized drug policy since then. The Volstead Act (passed 1919, repealed 1933) banned alcohol, but didn’t prevent Pres. Warren Harding from hosting regular booze parties. And 50 years later, Richard Nixon launched his “war on drugs” while the CIA was actually running shotgun for opium traders in Southeast Asia to prevent the well-armed opium dealers from supporting the Communists. There was a reassuring note of cosmic justice as the curtain fell on Tricky Dick, stoned on downs, talking to the presidential portraits in the White House. Even his spiritual adviser, Billy Graham, had to lament that it was “sleeping pills and demons” that caused Nixon’s decline and fall in 1974.

Among other recent presidents, chemical preferences have been varied. According to William Burroughs, Dwight Eisenhower swore by the rejuvenative qualities of placenta serum, a compound “rich in endorphins (natural body opiates) derived from the placentas of sheep.

John Kennedy’s favorite tonics are by now widely documented. He received regular injections of megavitamins and amphetamines from Dr. Max Jacobson (“Dr. Jake”), who has since—many ex-patients feel, unfairly—been barred from practice. According to other accounts, JFK was also fond of the procaine-novocaine derivative “gerovital” (CH3), which advocates tout as a dandy antidepressant, libido stimulator and longevity drug. (The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve it for general use.) And in 1962, according to Judith Exner’s account, he became the first president to smoke dope in the White House.

No less enlightened was brother Bobby. Psychedelic pioneer Dr. John Beresford (writing in the introduction to Peter Stafford’s Psychedelic Encyclopedia) notes that in the spring of 1963, Bobby was known to be taking LSD or psilocybin and providing psychedelic entertainment for foreign dignitaries. This at a time when the CIA was organizing its own secret acid tests.

Once upon a time none of this would have been considered at all shocking. Among primitive peoples, the heads—shamanic healers and prophets—have always been among the most highly regarded tribal members. The pharaohs revered opium so much they took jarfuls of it with them on their journeys to the land of the dead.

Not only were the leaders in ancient Greece familiar with the many healing and mind-expanding properties of drugs, their gods and goddesses turned on too: According to Greek myth. Demeter was the first opium eater. And in the 11th century, Hasan-i-Sabah, the Old Man of the Mountain, rose to lead the Moslem faithful against the Crusaders. According to legend, his fabled Assassins (Hashashans) topped off their battle-weary days by smoking hashish in lovely pleasure gardens. So why not presidents?

The point is simply this: While attitudes regarding specific highs may change, the turn-on goes on, right on up to the top.
 

Study Shows Cannabis was Food Staple for Ancient Chinese Dynasty

A recent study reveals that cannabis was a part of life for an ancient Chinese civilization, and that they used it for food, medicine and textiles.

Researchers studying an ancient tomb in China have found direct evidence that cannabis was a staple food crop during the Tang dynasty more than 1,000 years ago.

Previous research into the civilizations of ancient China has shown that cannabis was an important crop for thousands of years, with historical texts showing that the plant’s seeds were a staple food consumed in a type of porridge. And now archaeological evidence from central China is confirming the significance of cannabis during the Tang dynasty, which ruled the country from 618 to 907 A.D.

Cannabis Found in Ancient Tomb​

In 2019, workers at an elementary school playground construction site in Taiyuan, Shanxi province discovered an ancient tomb buried underground. Escaping discovery for more than 1,320 years, the remarkably dry environment of the tomb had preserved the wall paintings and artifacts found inside.

The researchers determined that the discovery was the tomb of Guo Xing, a cavalry officer who had fought with Tang emperor Li Shimin, or Taixzong, in a series of fierce battles on the Korean peninsula. Among the artifacts discovered in the tomb was a jar containing staple foods, which included cannabis seeds and the remnants of their husks, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

“The cannabis was stored in a pot on the coffin bed amid other staple grains such as millet. Obviously, the descendants of Guo Xing buried cannabis as an important food crop,” said Jin Guiyun, a professor with the school of history and culture at Shandong University and a co-author of the study published last month by the peer-reviewed journal Agricultural Archaeology.

The cannabis seeds were significantly larger than those of today’s varietals, suggesting that a cultivar of cannabis had been bred specifically for grain. They were so well preserved that some still showed their original color. The researchers noted that the seeds still had their husks, which can contain the psychoactive cannabinoid THC. According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, a book written by herbalist Li Shizhen about 500 years ago, eating too many cannabis seeds that still had their husks could “make a person run about like mad.”

“Cannabis seeds with husks are not only related to the high lignin content of the husk and its hard texture, which can reduce the chance of mold and prolong the storage time, it may also stimulate the nerves and cause hallucinations due to the consumption of husk for religious and medical purposes,” researchers with the Taiyuan Municipal Institute of Archaeology wrote in a report on the study.

Study Reveals Cannabis Use as Food, Fiber and Medicine​

Cannabis was an important crop during the Tang dynasty, providing food, fiber and medicine for the ancient civilization. But the Taiyuan region was wetter and warmer at that time, making rice the most common grain in the area.

However, the artifacts placed in the tomb by the family of Guo Xing did not include rice as would be expected. Instead, the researchers found cannabis seeds, perhaps reflecting the personal food preference of the ancient warrior, who lived to the age of 90.

In ancient Chinese texts, cannabis was known as one of the five staple food crops known as wu gu. Archaeologists have discovered cannabis in tombs found across the country, some as old as 6,600 years old. Previously, researchers have theorized that the presence of cannabis in tombs indicated the use of the plant for spiritual and funerary purposes. But the evidence discovered in Guo Xing’s tomb illustrates the importance of cannabis as a staple food crop as well.

“The cannabis was buried as food for the tomb owner’s feast and health in the afterlife,” the researchers wrote.
 

Cannabeginners: The History of Acapulco Gold

How a counterculture music crusade was funded by smuggled cannabis.

One of High Time’s 25 Greatest Strains of All Time, Acapulco Gold is a legendary cultivar that is so rare these days the gold in the name might as well be a reference to its scarcity, rather than its color. Yet it was once one of the most commonly found cultivars in the hippie days of the 1960s on the West Coast of the U.S., and later was a crucial lifeline to funding the growth of the early punk scene in the 1980s.

History of Acapulco Gold

As legend has it, Acapulco Gold (also called Mexican sativa) originated high up in the Guerrero Mountains, east of the port city of Acapulco. Not only was this warm, wet, coastal climate ideal for cannabis cultivation, the location on the Pacific coast made it primary territory for Californian surfers searching for big waves and strong bud. It would only be a matter of time before those surfers and others would bring Acapulco Gold back home with them.

According to Royal Queen Seeds, “Acapulco Gold first showed up in the United States back in 1964,” which tracks with the history of Romulan, where Mexican genetics first appeared in the 1960s. If that timeline is accurate, Acapulco Gold would have arrived in San Francisco just in time for the birth of the hippie movement and 1967’s Summer of Love, a perfect time and place to become a cultural icon. Cementing its status as a connoisseur-grade cultivar, Cheech and Chong immortalized Acapulco Gold by featuring it in Up in Smoke and creating a slogan for it, “No sticks no seeds that you don’t need. Acapulco Gold is….Bad Ass Weed.”



Gary Tovar: From Acapulco Gold to Goldenvoice

When you scour the internet for information about Acapulco Gold, while some finer details of stories might be a bit different, they all tend to mention the same man, smuggler and concert promoter, Gary Tovar. Tovar smuggled a variety of goods over the years, but in the late 1960s he began to smuggle cannabis into the U.S., both seeds and bud, which became “California’s largest marijuana operation.” The most notable cultivars that Tovar smuggled were Afghani, Thai Stick, and Acapulco Gold. Eventually, he would earn millions of dollars before being arrested for drug trafficking in 1991, and imprisoned the followingyear until 1999.

In 1978, Tovar entered a new phase of his life, with the hippie movement long dead, the counterculture sought a new music to define the era, and Tovar found that in punk rock at a Sex Pistols concert. Three years later, Tovar founded the concert promotion company Goldenvoice (named for a different cannabis cultivar) to bring punk to the masses. The 1980s was a very different time than 2023, and many venues were afraid to host punk shows out of fears of violence; punk also faced law enforcement crackdowns.

According to a profile on Tovar, “Punk’s lifeline was cash from cannabis, and music provided a way to wash the proceeds from the trade.” By his own estimation, Tovar spent over $4 million promoting punk music and bringing major British bands to the U.S., which all came from his cannabis business. “When I was doing both my things – smuggling and concerts – I considered them crusades,” Tovar said, adding “Now I think we won on both ends. Our music won – you can hear a Ramones song in an elevator – and we won on the marijuana front.” It wasn’t just punk music though, Tovar was an early booster of goth, industrial, and all sorts of alternate music, and he worked with artists including Siouxsie and the Banshees, GBH, Public Image LTD, Nirvana, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Guns N’ Roses, and Jane’s Addiction, just to name a few. Even though Tovar stepped away from Goldenvoice in 1991 when he went to prison, Goldenvoice has thrived and their flagship festival, Coachella, is one of the most well-known music festivals in the world.


As the history laid out by Royal Queen Seeds says Acapulco Gold came to the U.S. earlier than Tovar was smuggling it, chances are, he may not have been the first person to bring Acapulco Gold to the U.S., but the identity of that person is lost to the ages. The other name mentioned in connection to Gary Tovar is an associate of Tim Leary known as LaRue, who was Tovar’s connection for Afghani seeds, but no sources clearly connect LaRue to Acapulco Gold.

Flavor/Terpene Profile

True Acapulco Gold is a pure sativa, which makes sense given how close it originated to the equator. As we have discussed, the terms indica and sativa aren’t the most scientifically accurate terms for predicting the effects of a cultivar. That being said, Acapulco Gold is known to be a very energizing cultivar, as one would expect from a sativa. Some sources online have it listed as a hybrid with some indica genetics in the mix, though most refer to it as being a sativa landrace, this discrepancy may be a result of the lack of clarity over what denotes a “pure sativa” cultivar.

The flavor and scent of Acapulco Gold ranges in description from “an intense fruit cocktail flavor,” to “earthy overtones mixed with hints of spice, citrus, and rich toffee/honey-like sweetness.” From my past experience smoking it, nearly a decade ago, it was very fruity, more of a tropical than citrus sweetness, with some spice to balance it out. This makes sense given that its terpene profile tends to be dominated by myrcene (which is found in mangos and would impart a tropical sweetness) and beta-caryophyllene (which would give it that spiciness), there also are notable amounts of limonene (which is responsible for the citrus flavor often noted).

Is Real Acapulco Gold Actually Gold?

As we discussed in the last section, there is some debate over the exact genetics of Acapulco Gold (how sativa-leaning it is), which could be because it is so rare you have people claiming something is Acapulco Gold when it is not (similar to what some have claimed about Blue Dream). Royal Queen Seeds has this caveat emptor, “Nowadays, many seed banks sell their own version of Acapulco Gold. Some of them can trace the genetics back to Mexican origins, whereas others have slapped the title on unrelated hybrids.”

One of the most notable characteristics of Acapulco Gold, the source of its namesake, is its color. So does that mean that all Acapulco Gold should be golden in color? According to Tovar, the golden color was from the wind burning the bud yellow, and the older it was by the time it got to the US, the more the color faded to gold. That means the color really was due more to environmental factors and poor storage practices during smuggling than a result of genetics, and perhaps Acapulco Gold grown in a different climate would not be gold.
 

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