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Marijuana has been used throughout history in many different cultures
to change mood, perception, and consciousness - in other words, to get
high. Its effects range from increasing creativity to provoking mystical
experiences, to heightening the capacity to feel, sense and share. After
alcohol, it is the most popular of what are called "recreational drugs."
It has been used around the world for other purposes. In some primitive
tribes of South America, Africa, and India, "cannabis" is used in religious
ceremonies and for medical purposes. African mine workers have used it
to ease the drudgery of their work and many Jamaicans use it at the end
of the day to relieve fatigue. It has been used as an intoxicant in various
parts of the world for centuries and in the United States mostly in the
20th century. Marijuana was first described in print in a Chinese book
of medicine, "Herbal," in the 2nd century B.C., and was used in China as
an anesthetic 5,000 years ago. The ancient Assyrians, Persians, Greeks,
Romans, and East Indians used the drug to control muscle spasms, reduce
pain, and to treat indigestion. It was commonly used in folk medicines
in Africa and Asia. The Assyrians began using it as an incense in the 9th
century. As early as 1611, marijuana was cultivated for its fiber in Jamestown,
Virginia. In 19th century America, it was used by the medical profession
for treating spastic conditions, headaches, labor pains, insomnia, and
menstrual cramps. It is still used as a medicine in the Middle East and
in Asia.
Marijuana, cannabis sativa, or hemp, is one of the oldest psychoactive
plants known to humanity.Cannabis has become one of the most widespread
and diversified of plants. It grows as weed and cultivated plant all over
the world in a variety of climates and soils. Cannabis preparations have
been used as remedies for thousands of years and the active ingredients
of the hemp plant (THC) can be put to use in a multitude of medical conditions.
A native of central Asia, cannabis may have been cultivated as long as
ten thousand years ago. It was certainly cultivated in China by 4000 B.C.
and in Turkestan by 3000 B.C. It has long been used as a medicine in India,
China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa, and South America.
Today, people all over the world are beginning to use the cannabis plant
for its unique medicinal properties. Neolithic archaeology grounds in China
include cannabis seeds and plants. The first known mention of cannabis
was in a Chinese medical text of 2737BC. It was used as medicine throughout
Asia and the Middle East to treat a variety of conditions. In India particularly,
cannabis was associated with Shiva. Cannabis was well known to the Scythians.
Germans have grown hemp for its fibres--used to make nautical ropes and
material for clothes--since ancient times. In the Elbing Prussian vocabulary
from around 1350, hemp is recorded as knapis (derived from cannabis). Large
fields of hemp along the banks of the Rhine are featured in 19th-century
copper etchings. The hemp plant has to be soaked to harvest the fibre.
This liquid was used as a drink. In today's Germany there are bars that
serve hemp beer and hemp wine. Cannabis was used medicinally in the western
world (usually as a tincture) around the middle of the 19th century. It
was famously used to treat Queen Victoria's menstrual pains, and was available
from shops in the US. By the end of the 19th century its medicinal use
began to fall as other drugs such as aspirin took over. It was outlawed
in the USA in the 1930s. It has a prominent religious role in the Rastafarian
religion. Although it has probably been used as a recreational drug thoughout
its history, it came to prominence in the jazz scene during the fifties,
its use taking off in the 1960s. It is now one of the most widely used
illicit drugs in the world.
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