Cannabis was first employed in the Chinese and Indian cultures countries as an antiseptic and analgesic. The oldest known therapeutic description of cannabis was by the Chinese Emperor Shen-Nung in the 28th century B.C. in China, where the plant had long been grown for fiber. Its use as a medicine was well documented and, according to the world's oldest known (first?) pharmacy book, Shen-Nung prescribed cannabis for beriberi, constipation, "female weakness," gout, malaria, rheumatism and absentmindedness (Bloomquist, 1968: 19).). Hoa-Glio, an Chinese physician and herbalist of the second century A.D.,, recommended a mixture of Hemp resin and wine as an analgesic during surgery (Mikuriya, 1969: 34).

It seems most likely that the cultivation of hemp may have originated in north-east Asia (north and north-east China and south-eastern Siberia). It is the only fibre plant of any great importance in the region and, as such, must have been eagerly sought out for its numerous technological uses. The earliest indirect evidence of hemp use is from decorated Chinese Neolithic pottery having cord impressions on it (see below for similar pottery from prehistoric Europe). Painted pottery from Honan province belonging to the Neolithic Yang-shao culture (c. 4200-3200 BC) also indicates the probably presence of cultivated hemp. Pieces of what are thought to be hemp cloth have been found on the inside of a jar belonging to a Neolithic culture at a site in the western province of Gansu (2150-1780 BC). Other probably finds of hemp fragments dated to the Chinese Neolithic period have been discovered at a site in Chekiang province. The earliest uncontroversial find of fibre cloth is from the Western Chou era. The indications are that in early China hemp seeds were also a significant foodstuff. North-east Asia is still associated with shamanism today and it was surely important throughout the North, Central and East Asia during prehistoric times. If the cannabis plant was practically important as a fibre plant to these early societies then it was probably equally important in their spiritual life. Direct and incontrovertible evidence for this comes from a later prehistoric period of southern Siberia (see below). In Chinese hemp is known as ta-ma, meaning 'great fibre' (ma being 'fibre'). In the ancient Chinese script 'ma' is supposed to represent fibres placed on a rack inside a roofed shelter. (Learn more >>)

In contrast to the history of hemp in China, cannabis (bhang, ganja) has been widely used in India throughout its history and down to the present day. In the ancient text Artharvaveda, cannabis is described as one of a number of herbs that 'release us from anxiety'. Various psychoactive preparations containing cannabis were sacred to the gods, particularly Shiva and Indra. One of Shiva's epithets was 'Lord of Bhang'. Cannabis has been widely used in the Tantric tradition as an aphrodisiac incorporated into ceremonial practices. Cannabis seems to have been introduced into south-east Asia around the sixteenth century. Since almost all the common terms for the plant have their etymological root in the Sanskrit word ganja (in Laos hemp is kan xa, in Vietnam can xa, in Thailand kancha or kanhcha, and in Cambodia kanhcha), it is clear that it was under Indian influence that cannabis spread into the region. (Learn more >>)

It was in ancient India that this “gift of the gods” founded excessive use in folk medicine, entire systems of medicine were built up around it. The medical work Sushruta, compiled sometime before BC 1000, claimed that it cured leprosy. From the 10th century B.C. up to 1945 (and even to the present time), cannabis has been used in India to treat a wide variety of human maladies. The drug is highly regarded by some medical practitioners in that country.

Variations of cannabis were used to treat dysentery, sunstroke, indigestion, reduced appetite, speech impediments and to bring "alertness to the body and gaiety to the mind," as noted in the famous book called the Sustra. The herb's intoxicating effect was very closely tied to its remedial use. Because of its psychoactive properties it was prized more than ordinary medicines. It was prescribed for a variety of ailments, including dandruff, headaches, mania, insomnia, venereal disease, leprosy, whooping cough and tuberculosis.

The Bharaprakasha of about A.D. 1600 described it as antiphlegmatic, digestive, bile affecting, pungent, and astringent, prescribing it to stimulate the appetite, improve digestion, and better the voice. The spectrum of medicinal uses in India was very broad (see above) and it was also believed to prolong life, improve judgement, lower fevers, induce sleep. Because of its psychoactive properties it was more highly valued than medicines with only physical activity.

Prior to the 10th century B.C., Bhang, a cannabis preparation, was used as an anesthetic and antiphlegmatic in India. The Hindus spoke of the drug as the "heavenly guide," "the soother of grief." Considered holy, it was described as a sacred grass during the Vedic period (Fort, 1969: 15). A reference to cannabis in Hindu scriptures is the following:

"To the Hindu the hemp plant is holy. A guardian lives in Bhang ... Bhang is the joy giver, the sky filer, the heavenly guide, the poor man's heaven, the soother of grief ... No god or man is as good as the religious drinker of Mang.

"The students of the scriptures of Benares are given Bhang before they sit to study. At Benares, Ujjain and other holy places, yogis take deep draughts of Mang that they may center their thoughts on the Eternal.

"By the help of Mang ascetics pass days without food or drink. The supporting power of Mang has brought many a Hindu family safe through the miseries of famine." (Snyder, 1970: 125).

Although cannabis drugs are generally regarded as obsolete and rarely used in "western" medicine today, cannabis is "still used extensively in the Ayruvedic, Unani and Tibbi systems of medicine of the Indian-Pakastani subcontinent" ("The Cannabis Problem, 1962: 27).

The Pharmacopoeias of India mention cannabis use in the recent past. Two preparations of cannabis, a liquid extract and a tincture, are listed in the 1954 and 1966 Pharmacopoeias of India which contain descriptions of cannabis and its extract and how it is made (Chopra & Chopra, 1957: 9).

A more recent source makes reference to the fact that "in contemporary India and Pakistan, there continues to be widespread indigenous medical, 'quasi-medical,' and illicit use of both opium and cannabis" (Chopra & Chopra, 1957: 12-13).

Bouquet notes that hemp resin is occasionally used in the native medicines of the countries where it is collected. He points especially to India where, "the medical systems . . . make much use of cannabis as a sedative, hypnotic, analgesic, anti-spasmodic and anti-hemorrhoidal" (Bulletin on Narcotics, 1962:27).

Although news about the properties of this drug spread from very early times, this information did not become general knowledge in the Near and Middle East until after the fifth century A.D., when travelers, traders and adventurers began to carry knowledge of the plant westward to Persia and Arabia.

Cannabis was also widely used in the ancient Near East. It was used by the Assyrians as a fumigation to relieve sorrow and grief, which is surely an indication of psychoactive use. Hemp was widely used in Ancient Egypt as a rope fibre. Remains of hemp have been discovered in the eighteenth-dynasty tomb of Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) at el-Amarna and cannabis pollen was found on the mummy of Rameses II (nineteenth dynasty). The suggestion that cannabis was kaneh bosm (one of the ingredients of the Holy Oil which God instructed Moses to prepare; see Exodus 30:23) has been rejected by most authorities. (Learn more >>)

GREECE and ASIA

Hemp moved westward out of its Central Asian home at a very early date. Evidence for its use in eastern Europe as a psychoactive substance can be traced to the later part of the third millennium BC. Two archaeological finds are of particular interest. The first was found in a pit-grave burial in Romania and is an artefact known as a 'pipe cup'. This particular pipe cup and another one, roughly contemporaneous, from a north Caucasian early Bronze Age site, both contained the charred remnants of cannabis seeds. This evidence, in conjunction with other finds across Europe (such as the great number of hemp seeds found in Neolithic contexts in central Europe) has been interpreted by the Oxford archaeologist Andrew Sherratt as foreshadowing the later ritual use of cannabis. There is further prehistoric evidence that cannabis was widely used as a psychoactive substance on the steppes. Russian archaeologists have discovered large-scale Iranian fire temples in the Kara Kum desert region of western Central Asia which contain the remains of cannabis, opium and Ephedra in ritual vessels. These ancient temples are dated to the first millennium BC.

In the fifth century BC the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the use of cannabis by the Scythian people of the Black Sea region:

On a framework of tree sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woollen cloth. Inside this tent they put a dish with hot stones on it. Then they take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed on the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapour unsurpassed by any vapour bath one could find in Greece. The Scythians enjoy it so much they howl with pleasure.

Amazingly, almost identical hemp-smoking equipment was found by the Russian archaeologist Rudenko at the Pazyryk site in southern Siberia at the other end of the vast stepped of Asia. Not only was the equipment the same but the dating of the site makes it contemporary with the report of Herodotus from the Black Sea area thousands of miles from Pazyryk. No clearer proof could be found to indicate that the ritual use of cannabis was widespread in prehistoric Asia and Europe. (Learn more >>)

The fame of Cannabis as a medicine spread with the plant. Soon after its introduction to India, it began to spread to other countries such as Assyria, where it was referred to as "azallu" in BC 650. The progression of marijuana across the Middle and Near East was accompanied by tales of a plant that grew taller and thicker than flax and whose seeds, when burnt, cleansed the body and mind. The Greeks and the Romans cultivated hemp mainly for medicinal use, In ancient Greece, cannabis was used as a remedy for earache, edema, and inflammation (Robinson, 1946: 382-383).

Many physicians have recognized its diverse uses over time, so some of cannabis' therapeutic uses can be traced back to early classical physicians such as Diosco-rides. Near the time of Christ, the renowned physician Galen extolled the recreational uses of cannabis and recommended its use in curing gas pains, earaches and other ailments.

About 500 B.C. the Greek writer Herodotus described a marvelous bath of the Scythians, aggressive horsemen who swept out of the Transcaucasus eastward and westward. He reported that “they make a booth by fixing in the ground three sticks inclined toward one another, and stretching around them woollen plets which they arrange so as to fit as close as possible: inside the booth a dish is place upon the ground into which they put a number of red hot stones and then add some Hemp seed … immediately it smokes and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy….”

Recently, archaeologists have excavated frozen Scythian tombs in central Asia, dated between 500 and 300 B.C., and have found tripods and pelts, braziers and charcoal with remains of Cannabis leaves and fruit. It has generally been accepted that it was the Scythians who spread it westward to Europe.

EGYPTIAN PAIN RELIEVER

In Egypt, in the 20th century B.C., cannabis was used to treat sore eyes. Based on ancient Egyptian medical writings from the 3rd millennium B.C., researchers believe opium and hashish - a smokable drug that comes from the concentrated resin from the flowers of hemp plants - were used during surgery and to treat aches and pains and other ailments. Hashish was also used to ease menstrual cramps and was even offered to women during childbirth. The drugs are part of a medical record that shows the ancients were far more advanced than most people realize, Zias said, noting evidence that European people did cranial surgery as long as 10,000 years ago, while the Romans left records of 120 surgical procedures.

“We know for sure these things were used for medical purposes,” Zias told a recent conference in Israel on DNA and archaeology.

“It’s a window to the past that many people are unaware of. Here’s something used in prehistoric times, and it’s used until today.”

In an archaeologically rich area of central Israel, Zias found another clue. While excavating a tomb from the late Roman period in the town of Beit Shemesh 10 years ago, he found the skeleton of a 14-year-old girl who died in childbirth around A.D. 390. On her stomach was a fleck of a burnt brownish-black substance.

“I thought it was incense,” Zias said. But when he had it analyzed by police and chemists at Hebrew University, it turned out to be a 7-gram mixture of hashish, dried seeds, fruit and common reeds.

Seven glass vessels containing traces of the drug were found near the skeleton. She probably used them to inhale the smoky cocktail to aid her delivery. Medical researchers have found that other than relaxing the user, hashish increases the force and frequency of contractions in women giving birth; and it was used in deliveries until the 19th century, after which new drugs were developed. The drug was an extremely rare find. Organic compounds quickly decay, but because this one had been burned it was carbonized and preserved.

“It’s the first time it’s ever been found in terms of direct evidence in an archaeological dig,” Zias said. “You rarely find direct evidence of drugs in antiquity.”

The drug and its uses reached the Middle and Near East during the next several centuries. Other medical uses were later developed and spread throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and then moved across North Africa, appeared in Latin America and the Caribbean, and finally entered the United States in the early decades of this century (Snyder, 1970: 129).

While there is no direct mention of Hemp in the Bible, several obscure passages may refer tangentially to the effects of Cannabis resin or Hashish. According to researchers, Jesus Christ and his apostles may have used a cannabis-based anointing oil to help cure people with crippling diseases. They suggest the extract, which is absorbed into the body when placed on the skin, could have helped cure people with a variety of physical and mental problems.

"The holy anointing oil, as described in the original Hebrew version of the recipe in Exodus, contained over six pounds of keneh-bosum - a substance identified by respected etymology, linguists anthropologists, botanists and other researchers as cannabis extracted into about six quarts of olive oil along with a variety of other fragrant herbs."

AFRICA

Cannabis was used in Africa to restore appetite and to relieve pain of hemorrhoids, its antiseptic uses were also known to certain African native tribes (O'Shaughnessy, 1842: 431). Cannabis extended early and widely from Asia Minor into Africa, partly under the pressure of Islamic influence, but the use of Hemp transcends Mohammedan use. It is widely believed that Hemp was introduced also with slaves from Malaya. Commonly known in Africa as Kif or Dagga, the plant has entered into primitive native cultures in social and religious contexts In parts of Africa, it was valued in treating dysentery, malaria, anthrax, and fevers. Sotho women induce partial stupefaction by smoking Hemp before childbirth. The Bushmen, and Kaffirs used Hemp for centuries as a medicine and as an intoxicant and, even today, the Hottentots and Mfengu claim its efficacy in treating snake bites.

In a source cited by Brian Du Toit, the famous explorer David Livingstone describes the use of matokwane (cannabis) by the Makololo people:

we had ample opportunity for observing the effects of this matokwane smoking on our men. It makes them feel very strong in body, but it produces exactly the opposite effect upon the mind. Two of our finest young men became inveterate smokers, and partially idiotic. The performances of a group of matokwane smokers are somewhat grotesque; they are provided with a calabash of pure water, a split bamboo, five feet long, the great pipe, which has a large calabash of kudu's horn chamber to contain the water, through which the smoke is drawn Narghille fashion, on its way to the mouth. Each smoker takes a few whiffs, the last being an extra long one, and hands the pipe to his neighbour. He seems to swallow the fumes; for, striving against the convulsive action of the muscles of the chest and throat, he takes a mouthful of water from the calabash, waits a few seconds, and then pours water and smoke from his mouth down the groove of the bamboo, The smoke causes violent coughing in all, and in some a species of frenzy which passes away in a rapid stream of unmeaning words, or short sentences, as, 'the green grass grows', 'the fat cattle thrive', 'the fish swim'. (Learn more >>)

Potted histories of cannabis often imply that hemp's intoxicating properties were virtually unknown in Europe until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when travellers to Egypt and other parts of the East 'discovered the drug'. Such versions of events are built on the false premise that alcohol is and always has been the inebrient par excellence of European culture and that other substances like cannabis and opium are recent arrivals. The evidence for the use of hemp in prehistoric Europe has already been mentioned and there is no shortage of early historical references to its use throughout European history. Palaeobotanical studies have shown that hemp was cultivated (presumably as a fibre first and foremost) in eastern England by the Anglo-Saxons from AD 400 onwards. A cloth made of hemp was found in the late sixth-century tomb of the Merovingian queen Arnegunde in Paris. Its use among the Vikings is known from the discovery of plant remains at a castle in Denmark, fishing line and cloth made of hemp from Norwegian graves and cannabis seeds found in one of their ships.

Antoine Rabelais, who was the father of François Rabelais (c. 1494-1553), the famous doctor and writer of the immortal Gargantua and Pantagruel, is known to have cultivated hemp on a large scale at his property at Cinais, south-west of Chinon in France. It was perhaps in helping out on his father's property that the young Rabelais first gained knowledge of cannabis. In the aforementioned work he dedicates three chapters to hemp, which he calls 'the herb Pantagruelion'. Under King Henry VIII of England a law was passed that instructed all subjects having arable land to put aside some of it for the cultivation of hemp or flax to provide sufficient fibre for the making of rigging for ships. In England, as elsewhere in Europe, hemp was indispensable as a fibre plant; its use permeated all spheres of life. William Bulleyn (1500-76), who was related to Anne Boleyn, Henry's second wife, extolls it thus: 'no Shippe can sayle without hempe … no Plowe, or Carte, can be without ropes … the fisher and fouler muste have hempe, to make their nettes. And no archer can wante his bowe string: and the Malt man for his sackes, with it the belle is rong, to service in the Church.' The word canvas is derived from cannabis on account of its use as a fibre. (Learn more >>)

Several years after the return of Napoleon's army from Egypt, cannabis became more widely accepted by Western medical practitioners. Previously, it had had limited use for such purposes as the treatment of burns. The scientific members of Napoleon's forces were interested in the drug's pain relieving and sedative effects. It was used during, and to a greater extent, following his rule in France, especially after 1840 when the work of such physicians as O'Shaughnessy, Aubert-Roche, and Moreau de Tours drew wide attention to this drug.

Of these, W.B. O'Shaughnessy, a surgeon with the British East India Company, and professor at the University of Calcutta, is the most famous. In 1839, after investigating its use in India and validating many of its applications, he documented its properties as an analgesic in the treatment of rheumatism, and as a remedy for severe convulsions. The next year physicians, such as O'Shaughnessy and Aubert-Roche began to call attention to the drugs uses in treating rheumatism and increasing appetite. Their contemporary, Jean Joseph Moreau de Tours, a French psychologist, proposed it as a means to treat or mimic mental illness.

Even before O'Shaughnessy, marijuana was familiar to European and American homeopathy practitioners. By 500 AD cannabis was in wide use throughout most of Europe, save for the western and northern extremities. Medieval herbalists distinguished “manured hempe” (cultivated) from “bastard hempe” (weedy), recommending the latter “against nodes and wennes and other hard tumors,” the former for a host of uses from curing cough to jaundice. Sir John Russell Reynolds prescribed it to Queen Victoria for menstrual cramps.

Documents of the 19th century report on the use of cannabis to control diarrhea in cholera and to stimulate appetite. In his reports of the late 1830's and early 1840's, O'Shaughnessy (1842: 431) stated that tetanus could be arrested and cured when treated with extra large doses of cannabis.

The India Hemp Commission (1894: 174) likewise was informed of similar medicinal uses for cannabis. Specific reports included the use of cannabis as an analgesic, a restorer of energy, a hemostat, an ecbolic, and an antidiaretic. Cannabis was also mentioned as an aid in treating hay fever, cholera, dysentery, gonorrhea, diabetes, impotence, urinary incontinence, swelling of the testicles, granulation of open sores, and chronic ulcers.

Other beneficial effects attributed to cannabis were prevention of insomnia, relief of anxiety, protection against cholera, alleviation of hunger and as an aid to concentration of attention.

The first cultivation of hemp in the Americas seems to have been in Nova Scotia in 1606 and it subsequently became widely grown across North America for its use as a fibre. It seems, however, that there was no awareness of its psychoactive properties until the middle of the nineteenth century. In two books published in the 1850s the popular writer Bayard Taylor wrote of his hashish experiences in Egypt in a manner not unlike that of some members of the Parisian Hashish Club. Although rarely read today, his books were, for many of his numerous readers at the time, the first they had heard about the psychoactive effects of the hemp plant. The author of The Hasheesh Eater: Being Passages from the Life of a Pythagorean (1857), Fitz Hugh Ludlow, who is often considered to be one of the best writers on the subjective effects of hashish, never reached the contemporary audience that Taylor did, despite his posthumous fame. (Learn more >>)

Official Interest in cannabis as a medicine spread from Europe to America. The earliest American documentation of the therapeutic properties of marijuana was in the homeopathy journal "American Provers' Union" in 1839. Very quickly after O'Shaughnessy's paper in 1840, preparations such as Brown Sequard's Antineuralgic Pills, and Ely Lilly's Dr Brown Sedative Tablets, became widely available in the shops.

John Bell, M.D., Boston, reported enthusiastically in 1857, about the effects of cannabis in the control of mental and emotional disorders as opposed to the use of moral discipline to restrain the mentally ill. Similarly, in 1858, Moureau. de Tours reported several case histories of manic and depressive disorders treated with hashish (Walton, 1938: 3).

The medicinal potential of marijuana was recognized by the rest of the medical community soon after. The Ohio State Medical Society's Committee on Cannabis Indica, convened in 1860, reported that their respondents claimed cannabis successfully treated neuralgic pain, dysmenorhea, uterine hemorrhage, hysteria, delirium tremens, mania, palsy, whooping cough, infantile convulsions, asthma, gonorrhea, nervous rheumatism, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, tetanus, epilepsy and appetite stimulation (McMeens, 1860: 1).

Between the years of 1840 and 1860, more than 100 articles were published in the medical community recommending it for various disorders. Cannabis sativa was officially in the United States Pharmacopoeia until 1937, recommended for a wide variety of disorders, especially as a mild sedative.

Concern about cannabis as an intoxicant led the government of India to establish the India Hemp Commission of 1893-94 to examine the entire question of cannabis use in India. Paralleling the question over cannabis use in the latter half of the 19th century was the growing medical use of other medications superior to cannabis in their effects and more easily controlled as to dose. Consequently, medical use of cannabis declined and cannabis began to be neglected by the medical profession. During the years between 1856-1937, cannabis lost its image as a medicine and was left with a disreputable image as an intoxicant.

The natural product's variability in potency and instability over time are among the factors which have led to its disfavor in Western 20th century medicine ... cannabis has often been employed in the past, and is currently used illicitly in North America, to reduce the secondary symptoms and suffering caused by the flue and the common cold.

It was not just the media but also the medical profession that were becoming increasingly aware of cannabis. Although doctors used it in treating many disorders (ranging from epilepsy and hysteria to alcoholism and asthma) the demonisation of drugs that began with opium was soon to spread to other psychoactive substances, including cannabis. As the anti-opium movement was intertwined with bigotry against the Chinese so with marijuana it was to be the turn of the Mexicans and then the Blacks. In 1915 California became the first state to make it illegal to possess cannabis. By the 1920s marijuana (called muggles or moota and later mezz, sassfras or tea; marijuana cigarettes or joints were known, as they still sometimes are, as reefers) had become a major 'underground drug'.

It was the first psychoactive substance (apart from alcohol) that became a common subject in modern popular music, with jazz classics from the 1930s such as Louis Armstrong's Muggles and Cab Calloway's That Funny Reefer Man topping the bill of marijuana-inspired fare. In opposition to the positive portrayal of cannabis in the jazz scene were wildly sensational accounts – supposedly based on fact – of the intimate connection of the drug with violence (drawing on the tradition of the Assassins, an Islamic sect who were supposed to take cannabis before committing murders) and sexual promiscuity. Finally, in 1937, through the considerable persuasive powers of Harry J. Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, the Marihuana (Marijuana) Tax Act became federal law and in 1956 the drug was incorporated into the more comprehensive Narcotics Act.

Although the most well-known anti-marijuana film, Reefer Madness, was designed to shock young people with its vivid portrayal of the drug menace, it seems to have had little effect. Today it is something of a cult movie (mainly among cannabis smokers!) since its plot of moral and social decline is so utterly unconvincing and ludicrous. A less well-known film about hemp was made by the US Department of Agriculture and was entitled Hemp for Victory (1942). It was made as a propaganda film to encourage the growing of the plant for its fibre by American farmers during the Second World War as, due to the conflict, sufficient overseas supplies were unavailable. Due to the controversy surrounding the psychoactive use of cannabis the very existence of the film was later officially denied; having seen it myself I can attest to its existence. (Learn more >>)

In 1925, the Dangerous Drugs Act became law, and cannabis was made illegal in Britain, just thirty years after the Indian Hemp Commission (commission.html) declared that "absolute prohibition is out of the question". Strong public reaction coupled with a campaign in the public press led to an American federal anti-marijuana law in 1937. (The drug was illegal in many states before 1937).

The issue of medical use remained active, however, and Dr. William C. Woodward, Legislative Counsel to the AMA, an opponent of cannabis use and the only physician to be a witness at the Taxation of marijuana hearings, stated:

"There are exceptions in treatment in which cannabis cannot apparently be successfully substituted for. The work of Pascal seems to show that Indian Hemp has remarkable properties in revealing the subconscious; hence, it can be used for psychological, psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic research" (Hearings, House of Representatives, 1937: 91).

In 1937 the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act effectively ended marijuana's medical usage in the United States. It is no longer an official drug. Preparations are rarely available (cannabis preparation and synthetic THC are obtainable only for research purposes), and prescriptions are regulated by special tax laws.

Despite the continued government statements discounting cannabis' therapeutic usefulness, some authorities maintain that its medical value might be reborn through further research and/or use. David Solomon, in his foreword to The marijuana Papers (1968: xxi) argues that:

" … marijuana should be accorded the medical status it once had in this country as a legitimate prescription item. After 1937, with the passage of the marijuana Tax Act and subsequent federal and state legislation, it became virtually impossible for physicians to obtain or prescribe marijuana preparations for their patients."

So, even though many more discoveries of its benefits have been found and documented since then, they have not been able to be used, due to its current legal status. (legal.html) There is no currently allowed federal medical use of cannabis in North America outside of an experimental context. Although cannabis has been reported to produce an array of possibly useful medical effects, these have not been adequately investigated. Thus, the medical profession was denied access to a versatile pharmaceutical tool with a history of therapeutic utility going back thousands of years.

Meanwhile, the result of marijuana prohibition has been a host of social and health problems that are growing daily - not only due to the suppression of it's medicinal use but it's environmental value as industrial hemp. And the greatest risk from cannabis use is still due to its illegality. The intoxicant properties of Cannabis continue to be used as an excuse by law-enforcement and special interests who then play upon the apprehensions of parents. Much more research is necessary in connection with this experimental clinical finding before the absolute ban should continue on such a possible therapeutic asset.