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When you think of medicine, you probably picture pills, tablets or capsules filled with God knows what, some chemical fabricated in a science lab somewhere. But these manufactured pharmaceuticals are a fairly recent invention. They didn’t exist, basically, until the early 1800s, when chemical analysis became a thing. At that point, scientists started to extract and modify the active ingredients in plants that had been used as medicine for millennia. Later, they forgot the plants all together and began making their own chemical compounds to achieve the same results. When this happened, herbal remedies, plant medicine mostly fell out of favor in the west. Lost in the fall was medical cannabis which had been used in Asia and the middle east since ancient times as an effective medicine to treat all kinds of ailments. But that doesn’t quite explain it. Because cannabis didn’t just fall out of favor in the US, it was crucified, demonized as a dangerous, violent drug that caused a quote “lust for blood.” A drug so vilified, simply possessing it carries up to a one year prison sentence, selling it up to 60 years in some states. But cannabis has more than medicinal uses. For thousands of years, it was grown as a fiber to create rope, fabric, paper, even sails for ships. It was so useful, planters in colonial America were actually required by law to grow it. So what really happened here? How does a plant so easy to grow with so many valuable uses get twisted into something downright evil? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I have had this episode topic on my mind for so dang long, ever since the Prohibition episode way back when, number 21. Because it just does not make sense. How does alcohol get banned for a hot minute, and then they go, woops that was dumb, nevermind but the ban on cannabis has lasted as long as it has, 88 years. Alcohol is a way more dangerous drug, yes drug. We don’t even think of it as a drug because it’s so normalized and socially accepted. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges, alcohol kills around 500 Americans every single day. And that death rate has risen by a staggering 70% in the last decade alone, much of that during the Covid 19 pandemic. Do you know how many Americans die every day from cannabis use? None. Like literally almost none. There are zero reported cases ever of life threatening marijuana overdoses. That’s not a thing. Any deaths are going to be accidental and questionably even related to marijuana use or caused by lung issues from smoking anything, in general, not just marijuana. So, why? Why is alcohol so okay? It’s literally poison. And cannabis is so not okay. It’s literally medicine. And before you dismiss me as an overly enthusiastic pot head. I’m not. I don’t even do it. I do drink on occasion though. So I’m actually fairly unbiased. If anything, I should be biased in favor of alcohol. But anyone looking at this with any common sense at all should see what I see. It doesn’t make sense. What the heck happened? The answer to that may surprise you. We really gotta fix this one.
A quick note on the terminology, cannabis vs. marijuana. Cannabis is the scientific name of the plant, there’s cannabis sativa, cannabis indica, cannabis ruderalis, etc. This plant, cannabis, has all kinds of uses. Some strains of it contain more THC than other strains. Cannabis plants with less than 0.3% THC are called hemp plants. They are more or less lacking the psychoactive component, tetrahydrocannabinol or THC. Cannabis plants with 0.3% or more THC we can call marijuana plants. But even that name is fairly new, and fairly strategic, it’s propaganda, we’ll get into that later. They’re all cannabis though, just with varying amounts of the chemical that gets you high. Cannabis is indigenous to Asia, central Asia we believe. But it grows well in many climates - warm climates, cool climates, mountains, lowlands. It’s a hearty plant, kind of like a weed. Huh, wonder how it got that nickname?
Tracing it all the way back, it seems to have originated in Central Asia, that’s where we see the most strains of the plant. Asia is also where we get some of the first archaeological evidence of humans gathering it, cultivating it, using it. An excavation at an archaeological site from 8,000 BC on the Oki Islands near Japan uncovered cannabis achenes which are the fruit of the plant, essentially, they contain the seeds. So it’s theorized that these ancient Japanese people were using the plant for some purpose at that site. May be just a coincidence but they might have been using it. Now, plants are tricky archaeologically, because they decompose. So it’s hard to find traces of them from a super long time ago. In Neolithic China, we have imprints from cannabis plants on pottery from the Yangshao culture which existed 5,000 to 3,000 years ago. So they are pressing the plant into wet clay to leave an impression in the pottery which is one way to make plant evidence last that long. We know the Chinese also used cannabis, hemp, later to make clothes, shoes, rope, and an early form of paper. But this use as pottery decoration is the earliest evidence from China. Samples of hemp fabric have been found in Korea dating back to 3,000 BC.
And then, as valuable trade goods tend to do, cannabis starts to move. We have evidence that ancient Assyrians burned it as an aromatic. They called it qunabu meaning “a way to produce smoke,” and this is possibly where the word cannabis comes from, from qunabu. We have evidence of it from the iron age Kingdom of Judah around 800 BC. They’ve found cannabis residue on two altars at Tel Arad which is an archaeological site in Israel. And, based on the evidence, it seems as though they were burning it for psychoactive purposes, to get high, right? Not recreationally but probably for ritualistic reasons. So they’ve discovered that property of cannabis at least by 800 BC, but probably much earlier than that, after having used it as a fiber for several thousand years already. The Scythians, the Thracians (thray-shuns), the Dacians (dah-shuns), all of these ancient cultures are using it. The Dacians (dah-shuns) were a pre-Roman civilization from around 500 BC and there’s evidence that cannabis was used by their shamans to induce trance. We think this because their shamans were called kapnobatai which means those who walk on smoke or those who walk on clouds. We also have evidence of cannabis in India by around 500 BC but we don’t actually see it in their writing until around the 1100s. The classical Greek historian Herodotus recorded in 480 BC that the inhabitants of Scythia, which was also a pre-Roman civilization from 900 BC to about mid 200s AD, inhaled the vapors of hemp seed smoke as a part of rituals but also recreationally. And this may be the first solid account of recreational cannabis use although I’m sure it had been happening as soon as they figured out it had psychoactive properties. Herodotus wrote about this but they’ve also found actual hemp seeds at ancient Scythian sites.
By the 200s AD we have written evidence from China coming from the Shennong Bencaojing, which is a book about agriculture and medicinal plants, describing burning cannabis in incense burners and inhaling the smoke in order to enjoy the psychoactive effects. So this stuff is sort of low key all over the ancient world. They’re using it for fiber, right, fabric, paper, shoes. They’re using it for rituals. They’re using it recreationally. And they’re also using it medicinally. Ancient Egyptians used it to treat glaucoma and inflammation. Indians used it as an anti-phlegmatic and anesthetic but also to treat leprosy and dysentery, cure fever, and encourage sleep. It was even thought to prolong life. The ancient Greeks used it for inflammation, earaches, and swelling. The ancient Romans boiled cannabis roots and used them as a treatment for gout, arthritis, and chronic pain. The Arabians used it for migraines, pain, and syphilis. The ancient Chinese compiled a list of over 100 medical cannabis uses.
By the 1100s and 1200s, it really takes off in the Middle East and Africa. Not unlike coffee, it’s popular in Muslim countries because of their ban on alcohol. Like caffeine, cannabis was an accepted mind altering substance. But smoking wasn’t really popular until tobacco came on the scene in the 1500s after its quote “discovery” in the Americas. They would burn cannabis like incense and inhale the smoke but they mostly consumed it as edibles before smoking became popular. So it’s all over Asia, India, the Middle East, Africa. They’re thoroughly enjoying all aspects of the cannabis plant. By the early 1500s, Henry VIII picked up on it and started encouraging hemp cultivation in England in order to expand the navy. Hemp fiber was very useful for making ropes and sails which were needed to build ships. The English also noticed its medicinal properties though, documenting it as a treatment for menstrual cramps, convulsions, rheumatism, gout, joint pain, muscle spasms, insomnia, and childbirth. So Henry VIII brings it into the white world, for lack of a better term. But the Spanish have a hand in spreading it too. Early Spanish explorer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, which is a crazy last name by the way - cabeza de Vaca means head of a cow. He wrote about the many groups of indigenous people he encountered between 1527 and 1537 quote “Throughout the country they produce stupefaction by using a certain smoke, and will give everything they have in order to get it,” end quote. Now he doesn’t call it cannabis so could it have been something else? Maybe. Cannabis is not native to the Americas so if it got there it came with the Spanish and that would have been very early for indigenous people to already be habitually using it. So question mark on that one. But we know it does arrive in the Americas for sure not long after that. The Spanish began cultivating industrial hemp in Chile starting around 1545. It makes its way to North America too, maybe from the Spanish, maybe from the English though the timeline would be tight there. In 1607, Jamestown settler Gabriel Archer reported hemp being grown by indigenous groups at the main Powhaton village which is now Richmond, Virginia. In 1613, Samuel Argall, also a Jamestown guy, reported wild hemp quote “better than that in England” growing along the upper Potomac River in present day Virginia. But, once again, it’s not indigenous to the Americas so any cannabis growing there was originally brought by European explorers. By 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed an Act that required all planters to grow quote “both English and Indian hemp” on their plantations.
Cannabis continued to be grown in America, mostly as a fiber for making sails and rope and stuff but by the 1840s it caught on in a big way medicinally and became an ingredient in many over the counter medicines. This was partly due to an Irish doctor named William Brooke O’Shaughnessy who traveled to India in 1842 and sort of rediscovered its medicinal properties. He was basically like “oh, yeah we totally forgot about that, we’ve just been using it for rope and stuff.” And he sort of reintroduced medical marijuana to the western world. It was even added to the US Pharmacopeia in 1850 as a treatment for opioid withdrawal, pain, nausea and vomiting and as a way to stimulate an appetite. And it would be used as a common medicine over the next 50, 60, 70 years mostly as a painkiller and sedative. But Americans were not using cannabis recreationally. I mean, some of them had to have been, but it wasn’t like a thing that everyone was doing. It wasn’t seen as a recreational drug at the time. It was just medicine. But that all started to change in 1910.
In 1910, there was a bloody, violent conflict in Mexico - the Mexican Revolution. And this led to a lot of Mexican immigrants, refugees really, entering the United States. And you know who did use cannabis recreationally? Mexicans. They smoked it, for fun. They smoked weed. And they brought this with them to the US. Now, the Americans were not stoked about all of these Mexican immigrants. There was a lot of xenophobia and fear surrounding this influx of foreigners especially when the Great Depression hit in 1929 because so many people lost their jobs. So many people were unemployed and couldn’t find work and they felt like they were having to compete with Mexican immigrants for these low level jobs. So many Americans really came to fear and despise Mexican immigrants. And what did Mexican immigrants do? They smoked cannabis. And with this growing fear we see hysterical claims emerge about cannabis, that it caused violence, a quote “lust for blood.” We have newspaper articles like this headline from the New York Times in 1925 that reads quote “Mexican, Crazed by Marijuana, Runs Amuck with Butcher Knife.”
This is actually when the term cannabis which is what the plant is actually scientifically called, was replaced with the term marijuana in the US. Marijuana is an anglicized version of what it was called in Mexico and so by switching to that name, it was a way of promoting the foreignness of the drug. “That’s their thing. It’s not our thing.” And this name switch may have helped stoke the xenophobia surrounding Mexican immigrants and their drug of choice. It helped to sow division in the minds of Americans between us and them. Fun fact, we do not actually know the origins of the word marijuana. Matt Thompson explains in an NPR article quote “One theory holds that Chinese immigrants to western Mexico lent the plant its name; a theoretical combination of syllables that could plausibly have referred to the plant in Chinese (ma ren hua) might have just become Spanishized into "marijuana." Or perhaps it came from a colloquial Spanish way of saying "Chinese oregano" — mejorana (chino). Or maybe Angolan slaves brought to Brazil by the Portuguese carried with them the Bantu word for cannabis: ma-kaña. Maybe the term simply originated in South America itself, as a portmanteau of the Spanish girl's names Maria and Juana,” end quote. But wherever it came from originally, the term marijuana did not make its way to the US until Mexican immigrants arrived in the early 1900s and it was happily adopted, seemingly strategically, as a way to stoke anti-Mexican and consequently anti-cannabis sentiment.
Of note, another group was also beginning to use cannabis recreationally by the 1920s - Black people, mostly jazz musicians in New Orleans. And New Orleans was actually the first US city to ban it. It was seen as a dangerous vice used by groups who were perceived by the white majority as inferior races and social deviants. But the real beginning of the end for cannabis in the US was ushered in by a man named Harry Anslinger. Anslinger came on the scene in 1930 as the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics which would eventually transform into the modern-day DEA or Drug Enforcement Administration. Towards the beginning of Anslinger’s 32 year long career in this position, prohibition was repealed, 1933. So alcohol is no longer illegal. And that was like their main thing kind of. I mean there was cocaine and heroin which had both been outlawed in 1914 but a very small percentage of the population was actually using them. You didn’t need a whole Federal Bureau to enforce that. So Anslinger’s like “Well shoot. What are we going to do now?” And he turns his attention to cannabis which had already started to be demonized by fear and racism towards Mexican immigrants and Black musicians. Marijuana, this evil foreign drug with a foreign name, nevermind that we’ve been growing it in this country for over 300 years and were once even required by law to do so. Anslinger previously had no problem with it. He’s even on record calling the idea that it made people violent or insane a quote “absurd fallacy.” He said that. But now, now that alcohol is legal again and barely anyone is doing cocaine and heroine, now he sees the weakness of his position. Is he really necessary? Is the Federal Bureau of Narcotics even necessary anymore? He needs to enforce something. So he decides to wage war on all drugs, including cannabis.
And at that point he decides to believe the outrageous newspaper headlines from the 1920s that he had previously called an absurd fallacy. He goes on the radio, stating that young people are quote “slaves to this narcotic, continuing addiction until they deteriorate mentally, become insane, turn to violent crime and murder,” end quote. According to Cydney Adams in an article for CBS News quote “In particular, he latched on to the story of a young man named Victor Licata, who had hacked his family to death with an ax, supposedly while high on cannabis. It was discovered many years later, however, that Licata had a history of mental illness in his family, and there was no proof he ever used the drug,” end quote. So Anslinger is trying to convince himself and the rest of the country that cannabis is in fact dangerous. He reaches out to scientists, right he’s halfway trying to do this the right way. He asks 30 scientists who had studied it, you know “is it dangerous? Does it make people violent and crazy?” And 29 of them told him “no, it’s not dangerous.” But one scientist, one out of the 30 agreed with him, for whatever reason, that cannabis was a dangerous drug and that is the only opinion he presented to the public. And then the press took it and ran with it and sensationalized the heck out of it until cannabis was seen as evil, one of the most dangerous drugs.
So Anslinger is trying to save his own job, make his position necessary still after prohibition ended, but he’s also clearly very racist. He was quick to point out that Black people and latinos were the main cannabis users. He called them quote “degenerate races” and claimed that it made them quote “forget their place in the fabric of American society.” According to Encyclopedia Britannica, he actually said quote “reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” end quote. He argued that Black jazz musicians were making what he called satanic music because of the influence of cannabis. And he also claimed that cannabis use would make white women more likely to engage in interracial relations with Black men. With all of this propaganda, sensationalized media, and fearmongering helped along by the 1936 film “Reefer Madness,” Anslinger helps introduce the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 which made possessing or selling marijuana illegal in the US. This also makes it illegal to study scientifically anymore. Convenient.
So 1937, it’s illegal. But by the 1960s, it gains considerable popularity and not just among minority groups. The youth are all over it. They aren’t buying Anslinger’s lies anymore. College students, anti-war activists, hippies, the counterculture right, they partake in cannabis recreationally, despite the illegality of it. They don’t care. They knew it was harmless, not even because 29 scientists told them so, but because they did it themselves and nothing bad happened to any of them. President John F. Kennedy even had further studies done in response to its recent rise in popularity. He commissioned reports that found that cannabis did not induce violence or lead to more dangerous drug use. And in 1969, Anslinger’s Marihuana Tax Act was actually found to be unconstitutional in a Supreme Court case for violating the 5th amendment. Because those arrested for violating it were forced to incriminate themselves in order to comply with the law which you can’t do.
And that all seems like a step in the right direction. But, the very next year, 1970, the government, under president Richard Nixon, passed the Controlled Substances Act. And this was kind of outrageous. It classified cannabis, marijana, as a Schedule 1 drug along with LSD and heroin. According to the DEA, straight from the DEA website as of this recording, January 2025, quote “Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are: heroin, LSD, marijuana, ecstasy, etc.” The obvious problem with this classification being the part about no currently accepted medical use. We know it has medical uses. It’s always had medical uses. It was a medicine long before it was a recreational drug, since ancient times. But it was removed from the US pharmacopeia in 1942 after Anslinger’s ban. And Nixon completely ignored studies that stated as much. He ignored a 1972 report from the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse suggesting that marijuana was misunderstood and recommending partial prohibition and much lower penalties for possession. Ignored it. So at the time, cannabis had no quote “currently accepted” medical use. Okay, fine, they weren’t currently accepted. Umm… they are now. Cannabis has been officially used to treat cancer patients and people with AIDS for decades. They actually manufacture prescription medications based on cannabis these days. How is it still a schedule 1 drug in 2025? No currently accepted medical use is completely out the window at this point. 39 states have legalized medical marijuana. But it’s still federally considered schedule 1. Granted, they are making moves to reduce it from Schedule I to Schedule III as of last spring but these things take time. This came after a push from former President Joe Biden to review federal marijuana law and pardon thousands of Americans convicted of possession. He said quote “Criminal records for marijuana use and possession have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs,” end quote. According to the Associated Press article where I got that info quote “The DEA didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment.” So who knows if they’re going to do anything about it. There’s a whole new administration now, who knows.
But it is a problem. Biden’s onto something major there calling it a needless barrier. Because convictions for marijuana possession way disproportionately affect minorities. According to Encyclopedia Britannica quote “African Americans in the early 21st century were nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested on marijuana-related charges—despite both groups having similar usage rates,” end quote. And think of all the money we the people are spending on that, hiring police officers to arrest these guys for having dried up leaves in their pockets, providing them with court appointed lawyers, having court cases with juries and judges and bailiffs, and all the other employees associated with that paid by our taxes, throwing them in jail for god knows how long, housing them, feeding them, clothing them, guarding them. We pay for all that. We do. All for a couple of dried leaves that science has proven again and again are not dangerous. It’s crazy that any resistance at all still exists to decriminalizing cannabis. On the flip side, think how much money we the people could make off of it if it were legal, like alcohol, controlling it, selling it, taxing it. We’d go from a huge deficit, a money pit trying to enforce laws against it, to a surplus, a government taxed, likely highly taxed, commodity, a valuable cash crop stimulating agriculture and business. It would bring in so much tax money and stimulate the economy. It’s a no brainer. But there’s clearly still resistance. So where is it coming from?
We’ll get into that in a minute, but first, I have another Vital Fact brought to you by this week’s sponsor, Vital Spring, the world’s first premium mineral replenisher. Nixon’s left knee cramps changed American history. In 1960 he severely injured his left knee, but really didn’t take the injury seriously. That led him to a hospital stay right before his famous televised debate with JFK – the first televised presidential debate in history. He ended up looking disturbingly sickly on camera, and, a few weeks later, lost that major election. Minerals are key to avoid muscle cramps or nerve pain. Whether you need to replenish your minerals after a hard workout, or maybe you wake up with aches and pains, the magnesium, electrolytes and minerals in Vital Spring can help your muscles and nerves function their best. Add Vital Spring to your next glass of water to experience it for yourself. I’ve been drinking it recently and I have to say, I’m digging it. It has this really nice subtle lemon taste and I truly feel refreshed after downing a glass, like a 16th century Hapsburg slurping from a secret Slovenian spring… I’m such a nerd. But seriously if you want to learn more or to try it for yourself, check out vital-spring.com. It’s linked in the description.
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Where is all the resistance coming from? Why is the US government still so hesitant to legalize cannabis or even reduce restrictions on it?
I mean they worked real hard to demonize it. They’ve worked on that for over a hundred years. There was the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act which wasn’t even constitutional. There was the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, thanks to Nixon. In 1976 the parent’s movement against marijuana began. In 1982, First Lady Nancy Reagan started the “just say no” campaign. In 1983 the DARE program, the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program was started. I’ll never forget it. I went through that program in school in the 90s. I’m sure many of you did too. They basically just told you about all the drugs out there and all of the awesome things they do like they’re reading out a menu at an ice cream shop. No, but really, the DARE program was actually discontinued when studies found that it actually increased the likelihood that children would do drugs. How crazy is that? That’s how dang misguided they were. And as someone who educates children professionally I’m just shaking my head because you know that program was designed by some white men in a government office somewhere who knew absolutely nothing about children or education or how to properly convey information to children and instead of scaring them away from drugs they were actually selling them on the idea. You know what let’s see actually. I’m going to Google it. Who designed the Dare program? LAPD chief of police Daryl Gates and co. Yeah, so basically exactly what I thought. They should have hired a teacher for that mess. Just goes to show you how underappreciated our craft is. The poetic justice is almost too much. In 1986, Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act which raised marijuana penalties and created mandatory sentences similar to those for heroin. And in 1989, George H. W. Bush declared a “New War on Drugs” which continued anti-marijuana campaigns.
I mean they really pushed it. Granted a lot of this was for all drugs, not just cannabis, many of which were actually dangerous and addictive and life threatening, like heroin. The problem is that cannabis was lumped in with all the others and it should not have been. But that stems back to the early demonization of it by Anslinger and xenophobic, Mexican fearing Americans during the Great Depression who lumped it in with all the baddies. Maybe. I mean it’s still pretty murky. Matt Thompson brings up an interesting point in that NPR article I mentioned earlier. He says quote “here's the thing, though. The "pot was outlawed because MEXICANS" argument is complicated by the fact that Mexico was also cracking down on the drug around the same time, as Isaac Campos documents in his book Home Grown: Marijuana and the Origins of Mexico's War on Drugs. Mexico's prohibition of pot actually came in 1920, a full 17 years before the U.S. federal government pot crackdown started (with the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937). And while there may have been a class dimension to the movement against marijuana in Mexico, Campos suggests, people were banning the drug because they were seriously freaked out about what it could do,” end quote. He points to all those newspaper articles from the 1920s about people high on marijuana ax murdering people and stuff and poses the question quote “Are historical accounts of pot usage — including references to Mexican "locoweed" — even talking about the same drug we know as marijuana today?” end quote. Or is it possible, the subjects of those articles were doing another drug entirely. Because there are a lot of articles like this. What are the chances they’re all made up? These are major national newspapers, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times. Thompson points to a 1905 article from the LA Times titled “Delirium or death: terrible effects produced by certain plants and weeds grown in Mexico” that reads quote “Not long ago a man who had smoken a marihuana cigarette attacked and killed a policeman and badly wounded three others; six policemen were needed to disarm him and march him to the police station where he had to be put into a straight jacket. Such occurrences are frequent. People who smoke marihuana finally lose their mind and never recover it, but their brains dry up and they die, most of times suddenly,” end quote. But, the thing is, we know marijuana, cannabis, does not have this effect on people at all. If anything it has the opposite effect. So what gives? And the same sorts of stories are appearing in Mexican newspapers at that time where they definitely aren’t based on racism against Mexicans. Thompson says quote “according to Campos' book, these accounts in the American press echoed stories that had been appearing in Mexican newspapers well before. Campos cites story after story — most pre-1900 — containing similar details: a soldier "driven mad by mariguana" and attacking his fellow soldiers (El Monitor Republicano, 1878), a pot-crazed soldier murdering two colleagues and injuring two others (La Voz de México, 1888), a prisoner stabbing two fellow inmates to death after smoking up (El Pais, 1899),” end quote. He suggests that this could have been driven by class discrimination in Mexico instead of racism because there was a lot of that and, to be honest, class discrimination is linked to racism. Because the lower class in Mexico was and still is mostly indigenous Mexicans as opposed to those who are more ethnically Spanish. But, Campos points out in his book that it was mostly the lower class in Mexico that was afraid of Marijuana, not the rich. So that doesn’t really make sense.
It’s almost like those newspaper articles are talking about a different drug, a different plant entirely, one they call Mexican “locoweed” and possibly mistakenly believed to be cannabis. But, locoweed is a real thing, a different plant. It’s scientific name is astragalus but it’s also called milkvetch and it’s been used in Chinese medicine for centuries. It doesn’t seem to cause what the newspapers are describing either. But there is a plant indigenous to Central America I found that might produce these results. Its scientific name is Datura stramonium but it’s also called thornapple, jimson weed, and devil’s trumpet. According to Wikipedia quote “D. stramonium has frequently been employed in traditional medicine to treat a variety of ailments. It has also been used as a hallucinogen… taken… to cause intense, sacred or occult visions. It is unlikely ever to become a major drug of abuse owing to effects upon both mind and body frequently perceived as being highly unpleasant, giving rise to a state of profound and long-lasting disorientation or delirium with a potentially fatal outcome,” end quote. It also lists quote “bizarre behavior” as a symptom of Datura stramonium intoxication. Could the Mexican locoweed described in the newspaper articles actually have been Datura stramonium? Or some other plant even. Mexico is dotted with tropical rainforests. According to the National Park Service, quote “It is likely that there may be many millions of species of plants, insects and microorganisms still undiscovered in tropical rainforests.” Who knows how many Mexican rainforest plants we don’t even know about. I can’t stop thinking about the mystery plant Spanish explorer Cabeza de Vaca, the head of a cow guy reported indigenous groups using before Spain even brought cannabis to the Americas, quote “Throughout the country they produce stupefaction by using a certain smoke, and will give everything they have in order to get it,” end quote. How do they have cannabis before it’s officially brought over from Spain in 1545? It’s not indigenous to the Americas. Was that some other cannabis-like plant? How many Mexican locoweeds are there?
So, I don’t know, there’s a chance the newspaper articles in both Mexico and the US at the turn of the 20th century were mistaken. There’s a chance they confused another drug entirely for cannabis. There’s also a chance those stories were being sensationalized, blown out of proportion by fear. And, in the US at least, a lot of that fear stemmed from racism, fear of foreign invaders coming in to take our jobs. Unfortunately, it’s not an antiquated problem. It’s still very much an issue in America today. You know, I always kind of thought there was more to it, more of a conspiracy, like the paper industry trying to crush the competition by taking down hemp. Or the pharmaceutical industry trying to take out all last vestiges of natural, herbal medicine so they could push their hard to get and therefore more expensive chemical concoctions. But really, I think it’s simpler than all that. I think it comes down to basic, age old human nature, a natural fear of otherness. A distrust of those outside our circle, outside our tribe, competition with other tribes. It goes back to our very ape days. Except now, we’ve evolved. We’re far more intelligent and we’ve learned how to wage mental warfare to destroy our enemies. And I think that’s part of what happened with cannabis, it went down as collateral in a mental war against otherness. They brainwashed us for decades and now that the haze is starting to lift and we’re starting to come out of it, we look back and we go “wait, what? What happened? That doesn’t even make sense.” Because it only makes sense when you’re in the haze. It makes so much sense that you pass laws and start campaigns and push programs into schools and ignore scientists, and arrest millions upon millions of people using taxpayer dollars. And it’s all based on absolutely nothing. It’s a cautionary tale. Apply this same phenomenon, this brainwashing, this mental warfare, this haze in other areas, it’s a scary thing we do. To make people believe, truly believe that something innocent, something harmless is pure evil. You guys might think I’m being dramatic but consider Nazi Germany. Now let me repeat that last bit again, word for word, but with your Nazi Germany glasses on this time. I said it makes so much sense that you pass laws and start campaigns and push programs into schools and ignore scientists, and arrest millions upon millions of people using taxpayer dollars. And it’s all based on absolutely nothing. The haze. It’s a scary evolutionary adaptation and we have not seen the last of it.
Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix, I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow History Fix on whatever app you’re using to listen, and help me spread the word by telling a few friends about it. That’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.
Information used in this episode was sourced from NPR, CBS News, History.com, American Addiction Centers, the University of Georgia, Nature Magazine, Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, Mount Sinai Medical Center, FindLaw, the American Association of Medical Sciences, the Associated Press, the National Park Service, and of course the good ‘ol US Drug Enforcement Administration. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.
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