I recently wrote a research paper for my Politics and Culture class on the influence that Marijuana has on current California politics and I came across this interesting time-line. Thought I'd share:
Cannabis Chronology [Edited]
• 2737 BC: Cannabis referred to as a "superior" herb in the world's first medical text, or pharmacopoeia, Shen Nung's Pen Ts'ao, in China
• 1400 BC : Cultural and religious use of ganga or cannabis, and charas or hashish (resin) recorded used by Hindus in India.
• 300 BC : Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in the Mediterranean.
• 70 BC : Roman Emperor Nero's surgeon, Dioscorides, praises cannabis for making the stoutest cords and for its medicinal properties.
• 100 AD : Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the plant cannabis sativa and describes various medicinal uses. Pliny reported of industrial uses and wrote a manual on farming hemp.
• 400 AD : Cannabis cultivated for the first time in the UK at Old Buckenham Mere
• 800 AD : Mohammed allows cannabis but forbids the use of alcohol.
• 1000 AD : The English word "hempe" first listed in a dictionary. Moslems produce hashish medicine and social use.
• 1150 AD : Moslems use hemp to start Europe's first paper mill. Most of the paper is made from hemp for the next 750 years, including Bibles.
• 1563 AD : English Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with more than 60 acres must grow hemp or be fined 5 pounds.
• 1611 AD : The British start growing cannabis in Virginia.
• 1621 AD : Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy claims cannabis is a treatment for depression.
• 1631 AD : Hemp used as money throughout American colonies.
• 1632 AD : The Pilgrims take cannabis to New England.
• 1763 AD : New English Dictionary says cannabis root applied to skin eases inflammation.
• 1776 AD : Declaration of Independence drafted on hemp paper.
• 1839 AD : Homeopathy journal 'American Provers' Union' publishes first report on effects of cannabis.
• 1845 AD : Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotomimetric drug treatment, Jacques-Joseph Moreau de Tours documents physical and mental benefits of cannabis.
• 1860 AD : First governmental commission study of cannabis and hashish conducted by Ohio State Medical Society. It catalogues the conditions for which cannabis is beneficial: neuralgia, nervous rheumatism, mania, whooping cough, asthma, chronic bronchitis, muscular spasms, epilepsy, infantile convulsions, palsy, uterine haemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.
• 1870 AD : Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.
• 1894 AD : British Indian Hemp Drugs Commission studies social use of cannabis and comes out firmly against its prohibition.
• 1910 AD : African-American "reefer" use reported in Jazz Clubs in New Orleans, said to be influencing white people. Mexicans smoking marijuana in Texas. South Africa prohibits cannabis.
• 1912 AD : "Essay on Hasheesh" by Victor Rolson. Possibilities of putting controls on cannabis use is first raised.
• 1912 AD : Hague Conference; second international meeting on drugs. 46 nations discuss opium, morphine, cocaine, heroin and cannabis. The Hague Convention for the Suppression of Opium and Other Drugs, was drawn up, requiring parties to confine to medical and legitimate purposes the manufacture, sale and use of opium, heroin, morphine and cocaine; Cannabis was not included. (From Mandeson, D. From Mr Sin to Mr Big, A history of Australian Drug Laws, Oxford University Press Melbourne 1995)
• 1919 AD : Texas outlaws cannabis. Alcohol is prohibited throughout the USA. Cannabis is still legal in most States.
• 1928 AD : UK Dangerous Drugs Act (September 28th) 1925 becomes law and makes cannabis illegal.
• 1929 AD : The Panama Canal Zone Report concludes that there is no evidence that cannabis use is habit-forming or deleterious, recommending no action be taken against cannabis use or sale.
• 1930 AD : Henry Ford makes his motor cars out of hemp with hemp paint and hemp fuel. New machines invented to break hemp, process the fibre and convert the pulp or hurds into paper, plastics etc. 1200 hash bars in New York City. Racist fears of Mexicans, Asians and African-Americans lead the cry for cannabis to be outlawed.
• 1937 AD : Marijuana Tax Act forbids hemp farming. The Act was based on the Machine Gun Transfer Act which made it illegal to pass on machine guns without a government stamp - there being no such stamps available. By applying this strategy to marijuana, Anslinger was able to effectively ban hemp without contravening constitutional rights.
• 1937 AD : DuPont files patents for nylon, plastics and a new bleaching process for paper. Anslinger testifies to congress that Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug known to man. The objections of the American Medical Association are ignored. The Marijuana Transfer Tax Bill (14th April) introduced to US House, Ways and Means Committee, passed December, prohibits industrial and medical uses and calls flowering tops a narcotic. Violations attract 200 dollar fines. Birdseed, rope and cordage are exempted from tax.
• 1937 AD : DuPont patents plastics, seizing the opportunity created by cannabis hemp prohibition
• 1941 AD : Cannabis dropped from USA Pharmacopoeia
• 1943 AD : Hemp for Victory program urges farmers to grow hemp to help war effort.
• 1943 AD : US Military Surgeon magazine declares that smoking cannabis is no more harmful than smoking tobacco.
• 1944 AD : Anslinger threatens doctors who carry out cannabis research with imprisonment.
• 1945 AD : USA 'Newsweek' reports over 100,000 Americans use cannabis.
• 1955 AD : Hemp farming outlawed again.
• 1970 AD : Social use of cannabis receives widespread acceptance despite illegality; policy of decriminalisation sweeps across USA and Britain.
• 1970 AD : LeDain Report (Canada) recommended that serious consideration be given to the legalisation of personal possession of marijuana. It finds that cannabis use increases self-confidence, feelings of creativity and sensual awareness, facilitates concentration and self-acceptance, reduces tension, hostility and aggression and may produce psychological but not physical dependence. The report recommends that possession laws be repealed
• 1970 AD : R. Keith Stroup founds NORML 'National Organisation for Reform of Marijuana Laws', in UDSA.
•1992 AD : USA Jim Montgomery, a paraplegic who smoked cannabis to relieve muscle spasm, busted for two ounces of marijuana in Oklahoma, arrested and sentenced to life plus 16 years.
•1993 AD : German High Court in Kruhe rules that cannabis prohibition is unconstitutional.
•1995 AD : November 11 : British journal of the medical profession, The Lancet, states that "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health".
• 1995 AD : Henrion Commission Report, the official French State Commission in charge of drug policy supports decriminalisation of cannabis and calls for a two-year trial period of regulated retail trade in cannabis. The French Government reject these proposals.
•1996 AD : Ireland announces their plans to use cannabis as fuel to replace the use of the dwindling supplies of peat
•1996 AD : California and Arizona pass Propositions allowing the use of cannabis in the treatment of certain illnesses, Clinton is re-elected and the FBI threaten Doctors with prosecution.
•1996 AD : A Swiss man, Zimmermann, is given a life sentence in the Maldives, for importing three cannabis seeds, found in his luggage as he flew in from India.
•1997 AD : An 8-year study at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, concluded that long-term smokers of cannabis do not experience a greater annual decline in lung functions than non-smokers. Researchers said: "Findings from the present long-term follow-up study of heavy, habitual marijuana smokers argue against the concept that the continuing heavy use of marijuana is a significant factor for the development of [chronic lung disease]"."No difference were noted between even quite heavy marijuana smoking and non-smoking of marijuana." Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Clinical Care Medicine 1997
•1997 AD : January16 : A court in Texas, USA, sentences medical marijuana user, William J. Foster to 93 years imprisonment for cultivation of one plant.
•1997 AD : After appeals for clemency from the Swiss Government and letters from CLCIA supporters, the Maldives releases Zimmermann, the man given life for three seeds.
•1997 AD : The Kaiser Permanente Study (USA) - "Marijuana Use and Mortality" April 1997 American Journal of Public Health concludes "Relatively few adverse clinical effects from the chronic use of marijuana have been documented in humans. However, the criminalization of marijuana use may itself be a health hazard, since it may expose the users to violence and criminal activity."
•1999 AD : February 23: UK: 55-year-old arthritis sufferer jailed for one year for using cannabis to relieve his pain
•1999 AD : March 4 : ALASKA: Medical Marijuana Law Starts
•2000 AD: December 22: CANADA: Legal Marijuana Operation Opens
•2002 AD: December: US Study Defies Gateway Theory That Cannabis Use Leads To Use Of Hard Drugs.
•2007 AD: April: Harvard university study shows that Delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in marijuana, cuts tumour growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread
•2008 AD: Medical marijuana vending machines take root in Los Angeles. The DEA is not amused.
•2008 AD: May : UK government announces cannabis will be upgraded from class C to Class B. Its scientific experts, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, recommend cannabis should remain class C.
•2009 AD: May : Marijuana in California is now "available as a medical treatment in California to almost anyone who tells a willing physician he would feel better if he smoked." (Washington Post)
(to be continued.....)
~http://www.cannabis.org.uk/marijuana-timeline.html
