1. A Description of Cannabis

In China it was called 'the Liberator of Sin'. An American described it as the Lullaby of Hell'. The Hindus gave it many names —usually more sympathetic, such as the Heavenly Guide, the Poor Man's Heaven, the Soother of Grief'. One Indian described its use as so grand a result, so tiny a sin'. There are hundreds of descriptions of cannabis. Max Glatt, a British representative at the World Health Organization, says that more has been written about -Cannabis than is known about it. In fact cannabis is a weed, a commercial product, until recently a medicine, and now a recreational drug.

Weed

Cannabis is the generic name for Indian hemp. The species cannabis sativa is taken by modern botanists to include Cannabis • ica (the form native to India) and Cannabis americana (the form itost commonly found in the United States and Mexico). The best conditions for the growth of cannabis are high temperatures and low humidity. The plant grows for a season, dies down, then springs up again the following year from its own seed. Both male and female are necessary for reproduction. When the male plant blossoms it produces flowers that open wide, from which pollen is blown to the female plant. Cannabis is propagated only by the wind, as bees and other insects are not attracted to the plant.

The female produces seeds which are very hardy. As long as the seeds can be protected by a small covering of soil or even leaves, cannabis will spread like a wild weed. It is as hardy and spreads as easily as thistles and dandelions, or the stinging nettle which it resembles.

Cannabis grows as high as twenty feet with a hollow stalk three to four inches thick. The leaves are made up of five to eleven smaller leaflets, two to six inches in length and pointed at both ends. The upper surface of the leaflet is dark green and the underside is a lighter green with long hairs running along the bottom. When it is grown in a hot, dry climate, it has a heavy resin content Which makes it sticky and gives it a distinctive odour, something like the smell of hemp rope. The flowers appear as an irregular cluster of golden-green seeds.

This bushy green plant is quite ornamental and makes a pleasant hedge if the plants are grown close together. But it is illegal to grow it in Britain or America. Laurie (1969) writes that 'it is cultivated under glass in several parts of England, notably round Windsor', but British growers have found that the resin from the local plants is not very potent. Most of the cannabis found in this country comes from the Middle East and North Africa, and the best quality comes from the Himalayan foothills of India and Pakistan; both of these countries have agreed to stop cultivation by 1986.1

Hemp

- Under its most common name, hemp, cannabis has a long history a commercial use. For many hundreds of years it was grown all over the world, not for its resin, but for its fibre content, which is -a basic substance in the production of twine, rope, bags and - - clothing.

Industrial users prefer cannabis grown in temperate regions where there is more rain, which makes the plants soft and fibrous and therefore of greater commercial value. The fibre content is greater when the plants are crowded together, whereas sparse planting will increase the resin content. So the best conditions for commercial hemp production are quite different from those required for the copious resin which induces the maximum amount of intoxication. In temperate climates the plant is tall with strong fibres, but in hot and dry areas it is smaller and covered in a sticky igolden-brown resin.

The cultivation of hemp in America was due to British initiative.
The ropes needed by the British navy depended upon the supplies of hemp from the Dutch East Indies. Early in the seventeenth century this supply was curtailed, following a series of disagreements with the Dutch. To remedy this England decided to make use of its new colony in America and in 1611 the cultivation of hemp was first started in Jamestown, Virginia. By 1630, hemp had become a staple of the colonial clothing industry. But as steam power replaced sail on ships and the cotton industry was developed in Lancashire, the demand for hemp declined and by the nineteenth century its cultivation was abandoned in America.

Medicine

Cannabis has been used as a medicine throughout recorded history. It is believed that in 2737 ac the Emperor Shen Nung wrote a book which gave accurate pharmacological details about the hemp plant. For centuries hemp was the main source of clothing for the Chinese, but they also used cannabis as a medicine. Shen Nung prescribed it for 'female weakness, gout, malaria, constipation and absent-mindedness'.

In the middle of the nineteenth century various European doctors2 noted that cannabis was used in India and Egypt to relieve and soothe restlessness. Before long it was welcomed as a valuable therapeutic agent. Walton (1938) reported: 'During the period from 1840-1900 there were something like over 100 articles published which recommended cannabis for one disorder or another:' Russell Reynolds (1890) wrote that 'when pure and administered carefully it is one of the most valuable medicines we possess'.

Its main use was for relieving pain, but it was also found to be effective in the treatment of tetanus, chorea and strychnine poisoning. It was considered useful as a remedy for headaehesmigraine, and as a sedative. It has also been recommended for easing labour pains during childbirth and the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that a baby born of a mother intoxicated with cannabis will not become abnormal in any way.

More recently it has been suggested that cannabis may be used in psychiatric analysis as a means of removing barriers to the subconscious. But unlike LSD, amytal, and other drugs which are used to elicit subconscious memories and feelings which the patient cannot otherwise communicate, cannabis tends to make the patient more absorbed in his euphoric world and less interested in the analysis or the psychiatrist and so less communicative.

The new synthetic analgesics have gradually replaced cannabis; they are more effective and reliable, and are more intensely exploited by commercial firms. Cannabis preparations were used less and less, and eventually they were removed from the British Pharmaceutical Codex in 1954. One reason for this was the fear that patients might become addicted, but this cannot be justified. There is no evidence to indicate that cannabis used as a medicine may lead on to drug abuse. In the Home Office returns on narcotic addicts, each year there are some so-called 'therapeutic addicts'-. patients who become morphine or heroin addicts as a result of being given the drug as a medicine. Cannabis was prescribed as a medicine for a hundred years without producing any therapeutic addicts.

Today there are a few doctors who are experimenting with tincture of cannabis in the treatment of disturbed adolescents, heroin and amphetamine dependence and even alcoholism. It is too early to say if any of these experiments are successful. Now that the chemical structure is being determined and synthetic variations of cannabis are being developed (see chapter 3), it is possible that some of these might prove to be valuable therapeutic agents. Synthetic cannabis may have medical attributes that are as yet unknown and, for all we know, may be quite beneficial.

Pot

Although the market for hemp is declining and the medical uses of the drug are now considered to be obsolete, as everyone knows. there is a large and growing demand for the resin of this plant. The leaves, flowers and top of the plant are covered with this sticky resin which is the source of the substance which can affect the normal working of the mind and which is most often called pot, although it is said to have more than 350 nicknames.

Most of these names are simply synonyms for cannabis and they include: Indian hemp, hashish, marihuana (marijuana), bhang, ganga, charas. Cannabis is known among its users as pot, hash, grass, tea, weed, charge, etc., and is smoked in cigarettes known by users as joints, and by non-users and the press as reefers.

The ever-changing vernacular of the drug scene holds a strange fascination for some investigators. One of the very first acts of the newly formed Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence was to make a long list of all the words in the vernacular. It is not known how they intend to make use of this list when it is complete. In Social Problems of Drug Abuse (1968), ten of the hundred pages are used to list medical, trade and slang terms in drug lore and literature. Those listed for cannabis include: boo, sausage, dagga, herb, jingo, kif (cief), rope, shit, stick.

Keeping up with the underground vocabulary is of limited value, but the Indians have made a useful distinction in the three words they use. Bhang is a smoking mixture derived from the cut tops of uncultivated female hemp plants. The resin content is usually low. Ganja is harvested from a specially cultivated grade of the female plant. The tops are used for making a stronger smoking mixture. Charas comes from the same specially grown plants and consists of pure resin extracted from the tops. In England the extracted resin is usually known as hashish; it is made into small blocks, looks rather like an Oxo cube and is used crumbled into cigarettes. Marihuanais a Mexican—Spanish word, derived perhaps from the word mariguana (intoxicant), or perhaps from Maria y Juane', (Mary and Jane). It was first used by the Mexicans for a poor grade of tobacco. Americans use this term when they refer to cannabis, and it usually indicates a preparation made from the flowering tops, similar to bhang. Most of these words are used in this country, but pot is the word most readily accepted and understood by everyone.

Every sort of cannabis can be obtained quite easily in Britain, Although a certain amount is smuggled into the country by well-organized criminal gangs, most of it comes into the country in small amounts, either carried by persons returning from holidays abroad  or sent to immigrants by post from their home countries. Most of it is hashish, but there is a wide variety in quality and quantity, and some users complain of a glut of inferior pot each September brought in by ' amateur ' smugglers.

1. Both India and Pakistan signed the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs in 1961 which binds them to discontinue the cultivation of cannabis within twenty-five years.

2. Particularly O'Shaughnessy (1842) and Moreau (1857).