Cannabis Timeline
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
1500 BC : Cannabis-smoking Scythians sweep through Europe and Asia, settling and inventing the scythe.
1400 BC : Cultural and religious use of ganga or cannabis, and charas or hashish (resin) recorded used by Hindus in India.
c30 AD : Jesus teaches :Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man (Matthew 15:11).
70 AD : 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.
1563 AD : English Queen Elizabeth I decrees that land owners with more than 60 acres must grow hemp or be fined 5 pounds.
1621 AD : The Anatomy of Melancholy claims cannabis is a treatment for depression.
1637 AD : The General Court at Hartford, Conneticut, orders that all families plant one teaspoon of cannabis seeds.
1763 AD : New English Dictionary says cannabis root applied to skin eases inflammation.
1776 AD : Declaration of Independence drafted on hemp paper.
1791 AD : President Washington sets duties on hemp to encourage domestic industry. "Make the most of the Indian Hemp Seed" ........President George Washington. (Library of USA Congress 1794 vol. 33 p.270). President Jefferson calls hemp a necessity and urges farmers to grow hemp instead of tobacco.
1845 AD : Psychologist and inventor of modern psychopharmacology and psychotimimetric 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 hemorrhage, dysmenorrhea, hysteria, alcohol withdrawal and loss of appetite.
1870 AD : Cannabis listed in US Pharmacopoeia as a medicine.
1876 AD : Hashish served at American Centennial Exposition.
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.
1941 AD : Henry Ford's car runs on cannabis.
1962 AD : President Kennedy using cannabis as a pain relief.
1964 AD : THC, tetrahydracannabinol, first isolated
1967 AD : SOMA Times Petition in the UK urges legalisation of cannabis. The Beatles sign it. 3,000 people hold a 'smoke-in' in Hyde Park.. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones are arrested and imprisoned for cannabis. This prompts a Times editorial 'Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?'. The convictions are quashed on appeal.. In the UK 2,393 persons arrested for cannabis offences.. In the USA over 3,000 joints mailed to addresses at random by Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies.
1968 AD : Campaign to stop US soldiers in Vietnam from taking cannabis - they switch to heroin.
1975 AD : Jamaica Studies reveal good health amongst prolific cannabis users. "No impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability, and cognitive style, and tests of memory."
1976 AD : USA New York Times (Jan 5) declares 'Scientists find nothing really harmful about pot'.
1976 AD : DuPont declares cannabis is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco and calls for its decriminalisation.
1977 AD : President Carter thinks cannabis should be legalised.
1981 AD : The Coptic Study claims 'No harm to human brain or intelligence' through cannabis use.
1987 AD : The USA Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy says: "Cannabis can be used on an episodic but continual basis without evidence of social or psychic dysfunction. In many users the term dependence with its obvious connotations, probably is mis-applied... The chief opposition to the drug rests on a moral and political, and not toxicologic, foundation".
1988 AD : 6 September : DEA chief administrative judge, Judge Young, rules the US government should allow the medicinal use of cannabis. He says "Marijuana in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substance known to man". DEA rejects report.
1991 AD : THC receptors found in the brain.
1991 AD : UK 40,000 people arrested for cannabis.
1992 AD : "Medicines often produce side effects. Sometimes they are physically unpleasant. Cannabis too has discomforting side effects, but these are not physical they are political"... The Economist March 28th 1992
1992 AD : USA over 340,000 arrests for cannabis.
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 : Over 72,000 UK citizens arrested for cannabis offences.
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'.
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.
1996 AD : June : Scottish Nationalist conference votes to allow cultivation for personal use and research into medical uses of cannabis states "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."
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 nonsmoking of marijuana."
Volume 155 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Clinical Care Medicine 1997
1997 AD : In the USA a $2 million study to prove cannabis smoking can cause cancer fails and announces that it does not. The release of the report is delayed due to 'lack of supplies'.
1998 AD : June 12: The UK Government has granted a license to grow and possess cannabis for the purposes of medical trials, to Dr Geoffrey Guy of GW Pharmaceuticals. The crop at a secret location in south-east England, is guarded by electrified razor-wire fences, security cameras and guard dogs.
1999 AD : March 21: USA: Government Study Labels Marijuana A Useful Medicine
2000 AD: May 6: Hundreds of thousands of people march for the end of the War on Cannabis
2000 AD: September 14: USA CA: Feds Rule Doctors May Recommend Pot
2000 AD: October 20: UK: Cannabis Less Harmful Than Aspirin, Says Scientist:
2000 AD: November 24: USA: CA: Study Of Pot's Benefits To AIDS Patients Gets DEA's Blessing
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