Chapter Two Historical Data

Written by Kleanthis Grivas |

Books - Cannabis: Marihuana - Hashish

Drug Abuse

Chapter Two Historical Data

The hemp plant is like a complex thread that weaves through the rich tapestry of history... It has been used for textiles, cordage, paper, seed oil, food, fuel, and more. Women, religions, music, cultures and languages all have special connections to hemp; and the herb's medical legacy stretches back thousands of years. In the words of Carl Sagan, `It would be wryly interesting if, in human history, the cultivation of marihuana led generally to the invention of agriculture and thereby to civilisation.'
Chris Conrad (47)

Cannabis has been widely used in all historically attested cultures. It has countless applications in everyday life because of its nutritional, therapeutic, and euphoriant properties and its usefulness as a building material. Throughout history, it has been a valuable commodity for the survival of the human race, and has also played a major part in the initiation and other ceremonies of religious ideologies down the ages. (48)

The earliest reference to the therapeutic uses of cannabis is found in the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung's Digest of Herbal Medicine, which dates from 2737 BC and recommends cannabis for a large number of dysfunctions and maladies.

The earliest reference to cannabis in India is found in the Atharva Veda, which was written in 2000 BC and defines it as a sacred plant used in various religious rites. Information about cannabis is also found in the Chinese Rh-Ya (1200-500 BC), the Persian Zend-Avesta, and the Assyrian and Indian Susruta (AD 400).

Many scholars maintain that the Israelites made extensive use of cannabis in the biblical period, taking their evidence from at least two passages in the Old Testament. In 1902, the British doctor

C. Creighton concluded that the Old Testament contains numerous references to cannabis, notably in the Song of Solomon 5:1 and I Samuel 14:25-45.(49) Other scholars maintain that the 'calamus' mentioned in the Song of Solomon is cannabis. (50)

Cannabis is encountered amongst the Assyrians in the tenth century BC and subsequently amongst the Jews, the Arabs, the Persians, the Celts, and the Greeks.

The Assyrians called it quonoubou qunnapu; the Jews qanneb; the Arabs quannob; the Persians quannab; the Celts quannab; and the Greeks cannabis. The Greek word cannabis was taken wholesale into Latin and then, with various modifications, into French (canvre), Spanish (canamo), Portuguese (canhamo), Italian (canapa), Albanian (canep), Russian (konopli), Polish (konopi and penek), Syrian (kanabira), and Arabic (kannabb). It came into Old English (AD 1000) as hanf, modem English as hemp, Belgian as kemp, German as hanf, Dutch as hennup, Swedish as hamp, and Danish as hampa, with the result that the plant is known as `hemp' throughout the western world.(51)

The various derivatives of cannabis are known by the names bhang, ganja, and charas or churrus in India; kif in Algeria and Morocco; takrouri in Tunisia; dagga in South Africa; djoma in Central Africa; machona or liamba in Brazil; kabak in Turkey; hashish el keif in Lebanon; and grass, pot, tea, dope, Mary Jane, marihuana, America. Ganja and bhang are widely available in India; they are sold very cheaply and are used by the poorer people instead of alcohol, which is much more expensive.

1. Antiquity

Cannabis was known in ancient Greece in the fifth century BC from Herodotus' accounts of the life of the Scythians (484-429 BC):

In this place [Thrace] is produced a type of cannabis which closely resembles flax, except for its speed of growth and its size, for in these two respects cannabis is much superior to flax. It is both self-sown and grown from seed, and the Thracians make from it clothing which is very like linen... So the Scythians take some of the seed, betake themselves under timbers covered with cloth, and cast it onto stones that are transparent with heat. As it bums, it smokes and gives off more smoke than any Greek bath. Transported by this smoke, the Scythians howl and shriek.(52)

It was their eastern neighbours who taught the Greeks how to grow cannabis and process the fibres, and from these they made strong fabric and rope.

In the Hellenistic period and in Roman antiquity, cannabis was used as a raw material for the production of sailcloth and rope, as a euphoriant, and also for medicinal purposes. There are references to it in the works of many writers of this period, including Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), the Roman author of the Historia Naturalis,(53) Dioscorides of Anazarba (1st C. AD), the founder of pharmacology and author of the Materia Medica'(54) and Claudius Galen (AD 128-201 the `father of physiology and internal medicine' and author of De Facultatibus Alimentorum.(55)

2. Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages, cannabis was grown all over Europe, where it was used for centuries as a source of food (as is attested by finds around Berlin from AD 500), and also for its therapeutic and euphoriant properties and as a raw material in the making of clothes. It played such an important part in European daily life from the Middle Ages onwards that Francois Rabelais (1490-1553) was prompted to give a detailed account of its effects in the Third Book of Pantagruel (56) and wrote:

Without it, how could water be drawn from the well? What would scribes, copyists, secretaries and writers do without it? Would not official documents and rent-ros disappear? Would not the noble art of printing perish? (57)

When the Arabs came onto the historical scene, the word hashish, which means `grass' or `herb' in Arabic, became widely known in the Western world and was associated with the cult or movement of the Hashshashin, who used cannabis in their initiation ceremonies and other rites. These were Shiite extremists, who eventually broke away in the eleventh century and formed their own movement under the Persian religious and political leader, Hassan Ibn Al Sabah.(58)

Religious factors certainly played an important part in the spread of cannabis from the Far East and India to the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe. The peoples who embraced Islam found in cannabis an ideal substitute for alcohol, which was strictly forbidden to Moslems.(59)

In 1378, the Emir of Joneima in Arabia, Soudoumi Shekhoumi, made the first recorded attempt to ban cannabis. He ordered that all the cannabis plants growing in his dominions be destroyed and that users be punished by having all their teeth drawn. But, like any ban aimed at a practice that is accepted by a broad cross-section of the population, it was ineffectual, and fifteen years later the Emir conceded that while the ban had been in effect `the use of this substance in Arabian territory had increased'. (60)

3. Modern times

From the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, the cultivation of cannabis was a means of survival for much of the rural population both in Europe and in America.

In Europe `hemp was so useful that Henry VIII required its cultivation by English farmers', (61) and in America `by 1630 half of the winter clothing of Americans and nearly all of their summer clothing was made from hemp fibre'. (62) Cannabis was introduced into America by colonists from Europe. The earliest reference to marihuana in the New World dates from 1545, when the Spanish landed in Chile.(63) Early in the sixteenth century, it had come to Brazil with African slaves, who used it as a harmless euphoriant and therapeutic agent. At the start of the seventeenth century it appeared in New England, whence it spread throughout North America. From then, until the American Civil War (1861), hemp made up a large proportion of agricultural production and played a considerable part in the economic life of the American continent.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the cultivation of cannabis in North America served a host of life's needs, and in fact was of such crucial economic importance that some states (e.g. Virginia in 1762) `awarded bounties for hemp culture and manufacture, and imposed penalties upon those who did not produce it.'(64) The cultivation and marketing of cannabis was a respectable occupation practised by hundreds of thousands of people, including George Washington (1732-99) and Thomas Jefferson.

George Washington `was actively engaged in hemp farming, and devotees of the intoxicant properties of cannabis have read much into some entries he made in his diary in 1765': (65)

1765, May 12-13. Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp. August 7, began to separate the Male from the Female hemp... rather too late.(66)

Andrews and Vinkenoog preface the entries as follows:

The entries from George Washington's Diary show that he personally planted and harvested hemp. As it is known that the potency of the female plants decreases after they have been fertilised by the males, the fact that he regrets having separated them clearly indicates that he was cultivating the plant for medicinal purposes as well as for its fiber. (67)

Thomas Jefferson `smuggled Chinese hemp seeds to America, and is credited with the phrase in the Declaration of Independence: `Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness'. (68) According to Dr Burke, `seven early presidents were cannabis smokers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce.(69)

In Europe, where cannabis had been known for centuries, there was a resurgence of public interest in its euphoriant properties in the nineteenth century. This was due to two main factors. One was the return to France after the Egyptian campaign (1800) of Napoleon's soldiers, many of whom had been introduced to this aspect of cannabis while abroad and brought their experiences and new habits home with them. The other was the discovery of cannabis' euphoriant effects by a number of artists and writers, who established the famous Club des haschischins: its members included Honore de Balzac,(70) Charles Baudelaire, Henri de Boisdenier, Georges Boissard, Alexandre Dumas (pere), Gustave Flaubert, Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours, Gerard de Nerval, and many others..

Moreau de Tours, who was a psychiatrist, wrote about his experiences with hashish in a monograph titled Du haschisch et de I'alienation mentale (1845);(71) Gautier (1811-72) described his own experiences in 'Le Club des haschischins'(72) published inLe Revue des Deux Mondes (1844); and Baudelaire (1821-67) gave his own point of view in his Poeme du haschisch.(73) It was accompanied by the note:

The uninitiated who are curious to experience exceptional delights should know that they will find nothing miraculous in hashish, absolutely nothing but an excess of the natural. The brain and the body under the influence of hashish will give none but their normal, individual phenomena, enhanced, it is true, in number and energy, but always in accordance with their provenance. Man will not escape the fate of his natural and moral idiosyncrasy. Hashish is a magnifying mirror for man's private impressions, and thoughts, but nonetheless a mirror. (74)

The Club des haschischins had a considerable impact on the intellectual set in Europe, and also in North America, where it sparked off a certain amount of literary output. One of the most notable of these works was Fitz Hugh Ludlow's The Hashish Eater (1857).(75)

In the last decade of the nineteenth century, alarmed at the increasing use of cannabis amongst its troops in India, the British government appointed a special scientific body, the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission, to investigate the biological and social effects of cannabis use.

In 1894 the Commission published its report, a unique scientific document of 1,281 pages in seven volumes, whose findings have repeatedly been corroborated by subsequent investigations. Its value endures to the present day.(76) Having exhaustively examined and described in detail all the aspects of the issue, the writers of the report drew the following conclusions:

1) Occasional use of cannabis can be beneficial.

2) Moderate use has no negative biological or psychological effects.

3) Moderate use is the rule, abuse is the exception.

4) The damage caused by abuse affects the user and no one else.

In the circumstances, as the nineteenth century drew to a close, who would have imagined that a few decades later cannabis would occupy pride of place in the chorus line of scapegoat substances, and that its users would be faced with merciless treatment at the hands of the law, with penalties ranging from a few years to life in prison, or even the death sentence in some cases?

61 L. Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered (1977), p.11.

62 J. Rosevear (1967), p.20, quoted in L. Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered 1977), p.11.

63 J. Bouquet, `Cannabis', United Nations Bulletin on Narcotics, 3 (1951), p.36.

64 S. Boyce, Hemp (1902), p.403, quoted in E. Brecher, Licit and Illicit Drugs 1972), p.403.

65 L. Grinspoon, Marihuana Reconsidered (1977), p.12.

66 G. Washington, `Diary Notes', in G. Andrews and S. Vinkenoog, eds., The Book of Grass: An Anthology of Indian Hemp (1967), p.34.

67 G. Andrews and S. Vinkenoog, eds, The Book of Grass: An Anthology of Indian Hemp (1967), p.34.

68 C. Conrad, Hemp: Lifeline to the Future (1993), p.193

69 C. Conrad, Hemp: Lifeline to the Future (1993), p.1934. Dr Burke is president of the American Historical Reference Society and a consultant for the Smithsonian Institute.

70 According to Baudelaire, Balzac never used hashish.

71 It was later included as a chapter in La Psychologie morbide dans ses rapport avec la philosophie d'histoire (Paris, 1859). It is also to be found in Hashish and Mental Illness.

72 It was published in the medical journal La Presse medicale (1844), and also as a separate edition in Paris in 1846. It is also to be found in Solomon (1966), p.122, and Strausbaugh (1990), p.198.