Nimbin HEMP Embassy

The HEMP Embassy has always actively advocated the reintegration of the hemp plant into people's lives.

In the 1930's Hemp was thrust aside in the rush to embrace the emerging synthetics industry, and in the desire to overtake the hemp industry altogether, they threw out the baby with the bath water in a deluge of negative publicity. The rising temperance movement was targeted with this publicity, and after the failed experiment in alcohol prohibition, the movement was left with the prohibition of other drugs as a consolation prize, which just happened to allow a small group of pharmaceutical companies to gain a monopoly on medical drug production and pricing.

We feel that Hemp has been demonised by industrial competitors and venal politicians for their own advantage, depriving humanity of a very useful plant, which, in the drug context, is far less harmful than alcohol, heroin, amphetamines, cocaine, or even antidepressants.

At the beginning of what we know about man's historical relationship with hemp, ten thousand years ago in China, it was used for fibre, oil, medicine, and as an entheogen (drug used to achieve a spiritual state). Four thousand years ago they made papyrus in Egypt. The plant was spreading. Two thousand years ago the Egyptians found a way to make paper from hemp. A thousand years ago hemp found its way to Europe, and was used for rope, sails, cloth, fuel, paper, paint, food and medicine. Five hundred years ago when Portuguese sailing ships began to explore beyond the known shores, the demand for hemp rope and sails grew rapidly making hemp a resource of strategic importance to all seafaring nations. When explorers got to North America, there was already a native strain of hemp growing there. The circle was complete. From its beginnings in China hemp had come to be a vital resource grown all around the world. It was as important to trade then as oil is now.

The year 1839 saw the introduction of the screw propeller which spelt the end of the sailing ship era and also the first Opium War in China broke out when Britain backed the right of British merchants to sell opium in China, which the Chinese government had wanted to stop. It was essentially a trade war to open up Chinese markets, but hinged on Opium.

In the New World goldrushes of the 1800s there was racial tension between Chinese and European miners, reflected in laws passed by governments of the day. Opium was then considered a "filthy Chinese practice" and this is ironic considering opium was forced on the Chinese to balance the Tea trade going the other way.

While being an opium smoker was socially unacceptable, in the late eighteen hundreds miracle cures, nostrums, tonics, baby soothers and patent medicines multiplied, adroitly using the media to market their wares. There were no regulations at the time to control any of this. They were consumed by a gullible public, perhaps avoiding the expense of doctors. Some people became addicted to preparations containing opiates or cocaine. By the time alcohol prohibition came around, the general populace were familiar with the concept of addiction.

The Twenties had brought notions of town planning, public education and public health. There were campaigns to increase literacy generally and reduce mortality rates in children. This included school health, school milk and vaccination programs.

Science though is not the only influence on world affairs. The Christian church does not have a visible history of using entheogens, and generally views drugs as more the Devil's work than God's. (Wine, as used in Christian rituals, is not used for intoxication or to achieve a spiritual state.) Many Christian women of the Twenties campaigned for voting rights and temperance. They saw alcohol as a destroyer of families, and helped bring about the US prohibition era. Alcoholics and drug addicts were seen as slaves to their drugs, and it was thought by many wishful thinkers that prohibition laws would make those slaves free.

These other drugs were generally thought of as Un-Christian, Un-American or Un-Australian and originating with another race. Opium was touted as a Chinese drug, cocaine was South American, and cannabis was Mexican or Arabic. Racism visibly entered the equation.

Some newspapers of the Thirties exploited all these sentiments mercilessly. So did politicians.

A cheaper fast-yellowing paper was by then being made from bleached woodchip for newspapers, and nylon rope came onto the market. Synthetics were seen as a sunrise industry and enthusiastically embraced as the way of the future at the time.

All of these factors contributed to governments seeking ways to control drug use, and not allow people to self medicate. Pharmaceutical companies and regulations ensuring the purity and safety of food and drugs emerged. While this move from quackery to government and science approved medicine had its good points it also created the medical and pharmaceutical monopolies of today.

States rights in the US are part of the equation. The US constitution gave the states rights to avoid the potential tyranny of a central government, but the Federal US government has consistently sought ways to gain power over the states, and uses interstate commerce provisions to deem crimes federal and take jurisdiction. The states have not always agreed with the federal view, and frictions do exist.

The prohibition of alcohol came and went as it was deemed a failure, but the prohibition of a number of drugs remained, including hemp/cannabis. With alcohol prohibition the rise of enterprise level gangs, public corruption, gang warfare, and crime was an unexpected consequence of such good intentions. While the continued prohibition of other drugs may have mollified the temperance movement and allies, it also left territory for the abusers of alcohol prohibition to move into.

America in its ascendancy promoted and encouraged the adoption of like laws through the UN and trade agreements. It was an attempt to achieve globally, by the same means an aim that had failed locally. In this case legislating for conformity created a new criminal class and attracted a non-conformist reaction.

While only a few used cannabis and police did not have computer records this probably did not affect a huge number of lives statistically, but in the Sixties cannabis use spread among all classes of the younger white generation, and increased in use each year following.

Richard Nixon saw the general increase in drug experimentation and use as a matter of national urgency and gave us the term "Drug War" as he and his successors sought to control a cultural phenomenon. Cannabis was declared the front line. One generation of beliefs declared war on another generations.

By that time computers had made it possible for every misdemeanour of your youth to haunt your whole life.

Now there are so many drug users in prison that governments are privatising prisons in a bid to reduce the expense. The Drug War might look sane to some from the outside, but most within see it as a form of fearful madness with one type of human outlawing another and discriminating on the basis of a small point of difference. As a self proclaimed real criminal in Grafton jail once told me with dismay, "They lower the tone of the place! Used to be all real crims in here!" - I did not bother telling him I was there for cannabis.

Please try to imagine walking in the shoes of a cannabis smoker. Help end prohibition. Seek saner solutions.

8500 BC: Chinese history tells that hemp was used for fibre, oil, and as medicine.

3727 BC: Cannabis called a "superior" herb in the world's first medical text, Shen Nung's Pen Ts'ao, in China.

2700 BC: The oldest complete human body ever found was wearing a hemp blouse with a silk like quality in the Alps near the Italian border. The body had been buried by ice for four thousand years, and was exposed by a heat wave.

The oldest "stash": Nearly two pounds of still-green plant material found in a 2,700-year-old grave in the Gobi Desert was identified in 2008 as the world's oldest marijuana stash, according to a paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany. A barrage of tests proves the marijuana possessed potent psychoactive properties and casts doubt on the theory that the ancients only grew the plant for hemp in order to make clothing, rope and other objects. The body is assumed to be that of a shaman, and in the absence of smoking implements, that the cannabis was ingested or thrown on a fire and inhaled as practiced by the later Scythians,

2000 B.C. - 1400 B.C. Cannabis mentioned in the Atharvaveda (Science of Charms) as "sacred grass". Referred to as bhang or bhanga. The legend of Shiva, Lord of Bhang

1550BC: The Ebers Papyrus (named after George Ebers) is an ancient Egyptian medical text (era 1,550 BC). It's the oldest known (complete) surviving medical text book still in existence, and mentions medical marihuana (known then as Sum-Sum-et).

1500 BC: Cannabis-using Scythians sweep through Europe and Asia, settle down everywhere, and invent the scythe.

700 B.C. - 600 B.C. The Zoroastrian Zend-Avesta, an ancient Persian religious text of several hundred volumes, and said to have been written by Zarathustra (Zoroaster), refers to bhang as Zoroaster's "good narcotic"

450 BC: Hemp was being cultivated in the middle east for the same purposes as China. Herodotus records Scythians and Thracians as consuming cannabis and making fine linens of hemp. Cannabis was thought to be an Indo-European word specifically of Scythian Origin. The Scythians are considered largely responsible for the spread of cannabis into Europe.

Herodotus, an early Greek ethnographer, in the 5th Century BC wrote of the Scythians and their use of cannabis.

300 BC: Carthage and Rome struggle for political and commercial power over hemp and spice trade routes in Mediterranean.

100 AD: Roman surgeon Dioscorides names the plant cannabis sativa and describes various medicinal uses.
Pliny tells of industrial uses and writes a manual on farming hemp.

390 AD: A 14 year old girl dies in childbirth near Jerusalem. In 1993 researchers find residue of the drug with the skeleton of the girl.The researchers said the marijuana probably was used by a mid-wife trying to speed the birth, as well as ease the pain. "Until now," the researchers wrote in a letter to the journal Nature, "physical evidence of cannabis (marijuana) use in the ancient Middle East has not yet been obtained."

The seven researchers -- from Hebrew University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and the National Police Headquarters forensic division -- said references to marijuana as a medicine are seen as far back as 1,600 B.C. in Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek and Roman writings. But physical evidence that the hemp weed, cannabis sativa, was used for that purpose had been missing.

500 AD: First botanical drawing of hemp in Constantinopolitanus. (Latinised version of Constantinople, then a centre of learning.)

1000 AD approx: Hemp was first introduced into Europe, and by the sixteenth century it was known to be the most widely cultivated crop in the world producing rope, sails, cloth, fuel, paper, paint, food and medicine. The English word 'hempe' first listed in a dictionary.

1090 AD: The Assassin movement, called the "new propaganda" by its members, was inaugurated by al-Hasan ibn-al-Sabbah (died in 1124), probably a Persian from Tus, who claimed descent from the Himyarite kings of South Arabia. The motives were evidently personal ambition and desire for vengeance on the part of the heresiarch." (heresiarch: leader of heretical group) "As a young man in al-Rayy, al-Hassan received instruction in the Batinite system, and after spending a year and a half in Egypt returned to his native land as a Fatimid missionary. Here in 1090 he gained possession of the strong mountain fortress Alamut, north-west of Qazwin. Strategically situated on an extension of the Alburz chain, 10200 feet above sea level, and on the difficult but shortest road between the shores of the Caspian and the Persian highlands, this "eagle's nest," as the name probably means, gave ibn-al-Sabbah and his successors a central stronghold of primary importance. Its possession was the first historical fact in the life of the new order.

From Alamut the grand master with his disciples made surprise raids in various directions which netted other fortresses. In pursuit of their ends they made free and treacherous use of the dagger, reducing assassination to an art. Their secret organization, based on Ismailite antecedents, developed an agnosticism which aimed to emancipate the initiate from the trammels of doctrine, enlightened him as to the superfluity of prophets and encouraged him to believe nothing and dare all. Below the grand master stood the grand priors, each in charge of a particular district. After these came the ordinary propagandists. The lowest degree of the order comprised the "fida'is", who stood ready to execute whatever orders the grand master issued. A graphic, though late and secondhand, description of the method by which the master of Alamut is said to have hypnotized his "self-sacrificing ones" with the use of hashish has come down to us from Marco Polo, who passed in that neighborhood in 1271 or 1272. After describing in glowing terms the magnificent garden surrounding the elegant pavilions and palaces built by the grand master at Alamut, Polo proceeds:

"Now no man was allowed to enter the Garden save those whom he intended to be his Ashishin. There was a fortress at the entrance to the Garden, strong enough to resist all the world, and there was no other way to get in. He kept at his Court a number of the youths of the country, from twelve to twenty years of age, such as had a taste for soldiering.. Then he would introduce them into his Garden, some four, or six, or ten at a time, having first made them drink a certain potion which cast them into a deep sleep, and then causing them to be lifted and carried in. So when they awoke they found themselves in the Garden.

"When therefore they awoke, and found themselves in a place so charming, they deemed that it was Paradise in very truth. And the ladies and damsels dallied with them to their hearts' content. .."

"So when the Old Man would have any prince slain, he would say to such a youth: 'Go thou and slay So and So; and when thou returnest my Angels shall bear thee into Paradise. And shouldst thou die, natheless even so will I send my Angels to carry thee back into Paradise.'"

(from 'The Book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian', translated by Henry Yule, London, 1875.)

The Assassination in 1092 of the illustrious vizir of the Saljug sultanate, Nizam-al-Mulk, by a fida'i disguised as a Sufi, was the first of a series of mysterious murders which plunged the Muslim world into terror. When in the same year the Saljug Sultan Malikshah bestirred himself and sent a disciplinary force against the fortress, its garrison made a night sortie and repelled the besieging army. Other attempts by caliphs and sultans proved equally futile until finally the Mongolian Hulagu, who destroyed the caliphate, seized the fortress in 1256 together with its subsidary castles in Persia. Since the Assassin books and records were destroyed, our information about this strange and spectacular order is derived mainly from hostile sources.

As early as the last years of the eleventh century the Assassins had succeeded in setting firm foot in Syria and winning as convert the Saljug prince of Aleppo, Ridwan ibn-Tutush (died in 1113). By 1140 they had captured the hill fortress of Masyad and many others in northern Syria, including al-Kahf, al-Qadmus and al-'Ullayqah. Even Shayzar (modern Sayjar) on the Orontes was temporarily occupied by the Assassins, whom Usamah calls Isma'ilites. One of their most famous masters in Syria was Rachid-al-Din Sinan (died in 1192), who resided at Masyad and bore the title 'shakkh al-jabal', translated by the Crusades' chroniclers as "the old man of the mountain". It was Rashid's henchmen who struck awe and terror into the hearts of the Crusaders. After the capture of Masyad in 1260 by the Mongols, the Mamluk Sultan Baybars in 1272 dealt the Syrian Assassins the final blow. Since then the Assassins have been sparsely scattered through northern Syria, Persia, 'Uman, Zanzibar, and especially India, where they number about 150000 and go by the name of Thojas or Mowlas. They all acknowledge as titular head the Aga Khan of Bombay, who claims descent through the last grand master of Alamut from Isma'il, the seventh imam, receives over a tenth of the revenues of his followers, even in Syria, and spends most of his time as a sportsman between Paris and London.

Credit for entry above: THE ASSASSINS by Philip K. Hitti
From _The Book of Grass: An Anthology on Indian Hemp_, edited by George Andrews and Simon Vinkenoog.

1150 AD: Moslems use hemp to start Europe's first paper mill. Most paper is made from hemp for the next 700 years.

1155 AD - 1221 AD: Persian legend of the Sufi master Sheik Haidar's of Khorasan's personal discovery of Cannabis and it's subsequent spread to Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria. Another of the earliest written narratives of the use of Cannabis as an inebriant.

1271 AD: The eating of Hemp was so well known that Marco Polo described its consumption in the secret order of Hashishins, who used the narcotic to fool initiates into thinking they had experienced the afterlife. The Assassins were an early terrorist group. These were people with serious political motivation. (see 1090 AD) Note that the drugs were given to stupefy, so that initiates would awaken in a fake paradise, and believe the master had transported them there through a potion. The cannabis was not a reward or incitement, just a means of rendering initiates unconscious.

1419: Henry the Navigator of Portugal born. Up till now ships had hugged the coastline, but under Henry ships began exploration beyond the shores. On the basis of old texts read by Henry, the Madeira Islands were rediscovered in 1420 and claimed by Portugal. In 1427 the Azores were discovered. It was the beginning of the Age of Discovery

"The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in human history starting in the 15th Century and continuing into the 17th Century, during which Europeans explored the world by ocean searching for trading partners and particular trade goods. The most desired trading goods were gold, silver and spices. Western Europeans used new sailing ship technologies, new maps, and advances in astronomy to seek a viable trade route to Asia for valuable spices which would be uncontested by Mediterranean powers. In terms of shipping advances, the most important developments were the creation of the carrack and caravel designs in Portugal. These vessels evolved from medieval European designs from the North Sea and both the Christian and Islamic Mediterranean. They were the first ships that could leave the relatively placid and calm Mediterranean, Baltic or North Sea and sail safely on the open Atlantic." Wikipedia

1492 AD: Hempen sails, caulking and rigging ignite age of discovery and help Columbus and his ships reach America. Many puritans follow over the next few centuries.

1545: Hemp agriculture crosses the continent overland to Chile. Dutch achieve Golden Age through hemp commerce. Explorers find 'wilde hempe' in North America.

1564: King Phillip of Spain orders hemp grown throughout his empire, from modern-day Argentina to Oregon.

1571: "The Age of Sail was the period in which international trade and naval warfare were dominated by sailing ships, lasting from the 16th to the mid 19th century. This is a significant period during which square-rigged sailing ships carried European settlers to many parts of the world in one of the most expansive human migrations in recorded history. Like most periodic eras the definition is inexact and close enough to serve as a general description. The age of sail runs roughly from the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the last significant engagement in which oar-propelled galleys played a major role, to the Battle of Hampton Roads in 1862, in which the steam-powered CSS Virginia destroyed the sailing ships USS Cumberland and USS Congress, finally culminating with the advance of steam power, rendering sail power in warfare obsolete." Wikipedia

1616-1654: Nicholas Culpepper (1616-1654), listed a variety of medical uses of the common european hemp (Cannabis sativa), including anti-inflammatory, analgesic, and anti parasitic activity

1620: Mayflower carried the Pilgrim Fathers to New Plymouth. America beckons to many religious groups looking for a new start for their followers to escape persecution or worldliness.

1762: In the U.S. the state of Virginia rewarded farmers with bounties for hemp culture and manufacture, and imposed penalties upon those who did not produce it. George Washington grew hemp for fibre and recreational use, and Thomas Jefferson acquired the first American patent for his hemp break, a device used to separate the hemp stalk into usable hurds and fiber with greater speed than the retting of past. Without hemp America could not have successfully waged the revolution, and for the next one hundred and fifty years hemp enjoyed the position as America's top cash crop.

1772: Samuel Taylor "Estese" Coleridge born in England. Writes beautiful poetry, but spends his life battling opium addiction. (1772-1834)

1807: Czar Alexander of Russia was forced to sign the treaty of Tilser, which cut off all legal Russian trade with Great Britain, its allies, or any other neutral nation ship acting as agents for Great Britain. Napoleon hoped to stop Russian hemp from reaching England, thereby destroying Britains navy by forcing it to cannibalise sails, ropes and rigging from other ships; Napoleon believed that Britain, starved of hemp, would be forced to end its blockade of France and the continent. As a result of Napoleons actions, hemp, which normally sold at twenty five pounds per tonne, reached a price of one hundred and eighteen pounds per tonne in 1808.

1815: The first paddlewheel steamships began to ply between the British ports of Liverpool and Glasgow. It is the first sign of changing times in the shipping business. Shipping will slowly change to powered craft over the following century.

1818: The old (left) coat of arms for the Belgian town of Hamme was granted on January 31, 1818 and confirmed on May 13, 1913. The arms show on the right half a branch of a hemp plant and on the left half a branch of a flax plant (with blue flower). Both were important crops in the early 19th century. Hemp was used for ropes, flax for linen.

1822: Thomas De Quincy published "Confessions of an English Opium Eater", which became his masterpiece. In addition, he wrote numerous essays on political, social, critical, historical and philosophical subjects.

1839: The first Opium War between Great Britain and China. Early in the 19th cent., British merchants began smuggling opium into China in order to balance their purchases of tea for export to Britain. In 1839, China enforced its prohibitions on the importation of opium by destroying at Guangzhou (Canton) a large quantity of opium confiscated from British merchants. Great Britain, which had been looking to end China's restrictions on foreign trade, responded by sending gunboats to attack several Chinese coastal cities. China, unable to withstand modern arms, was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843). These provided that the ports of Guangzhou, Jinmen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai should be open to British trade and residence; in addition Hong Kong was ceded to the British. Within a few years other Western powers signed similar treaties with China and received commercial and residential privileges, and the Western domination of China's treaty ports began.

William B. O’Shaughnessy (1809–1889/90), an Irish medical doctor stationed
in Calcutta, India, published in 1839 a comprehensive study on Indian hemp. Thanks
mainly to his "On the Preparations of the Indian Hemp or Gunjah", Cannabis indica now
also became recognised within European-school medicine. O’Shaugnessy used various
hemp compounds in his investigations, partly with great success, against the following
indications: rheumatism, rabies, cholera, tetanus, convulsions and delirium tremens.
With hashish he had found a well-suited medicine to give his patients relief, and in the
case of cramps, even total disappearance of symptoms. For concluding remarks, he
wrote: ‘The presented cases are a summary of my experience with cannabis indica, and
I believe that this medicine is an anticonvulsivum of great value’ (O’Shaughnessy, 1839).

In England Thomas Petit Smith, an engineer, built a screw steamship that proved a complete success. The vessel was a hundred and twenty five feet long, twenty-two foot beam, and thirteen feet deep, and named .the Archimedes. He took this vessel to Bristol in 1842, where marine engineer Isambard K. Brunel, (see 1840) at once recognised its advantages, changed the "Great Britain"'s plans, and introduced a screw propeller in place of the paddlewheels.

1840: The Great Western Company in Britain employ the chief marine architect and engineer of that time, Isambard K. Brunel. The Great Western Company asked him to devise a vessel that would eclipse any craft afloat, and he advised the building of a three thousand ton iron ship. His plans resulted in the Great Britain. Brunel's original designs were for a side-wheeler, but were changed to a screw propeller while the hull was being built. Thereafter the use of a screw propeller grew more and more common, and the design evolved into the even more efficient propellers of today. The Great Britain still carried masts and sails in case of engine problems. The glory days of sail may have been numbered, but shipping still needed rope and the public were slow to trust and accept these new metal hulled vessels and their engines. Sailships remained viable into the 1920s.

1842: Baudelaire, 19th century French poet, translator, and literary and art critic, received his inheritance in April 1842 and rapidly proceeded to dissipate it on the lifestyle of a dandified man of letters, spending freely on clothes, books, paintings, expensive food and wines, and, not least, hashish and opium, which he first experimented with in his Paris apartment at the Hôtel Pimodan (now the Hôtel Lauzun) on the Île Saint-Louis between 1843 and 1845.

1847: Mormons settle in Utah under Brigham Young, after years of moving around since beginning in New York with Joseph Smith's vision around 1830.

1850: Tree-pulp papermaking becomes more cost-effective than hemp through the rise of assembly line manufacturing methods.
Hemp continues to be used for rope, birdseed, and other products. Constant efforts to improve hemp and hemp products by producers and others.
The Gold Rush brings many Chinese. Opium seen as a Chinese drug. Racism enters the equation.

1856: The second Opium War broke out following an allegedly illegal Chinese search of a British-registered ship, the Arrow, in Guangzhou. British and French troops took Guangzhou and Tianjin and compelled the Chinese to accept the treaties of Tianjin (1858), to which France, Russia, and the United States were also party. China agreed to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legations in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. China's subsequent attempt to block the entry of diplomats into Beijing as well as Britain's determination to enforce the new treaty terms led to a renewal of the war in 1859. This time the British and French occupied Beijing and burned the imperial summer palace (Yuan ming yuan). The Beijing conventions of 1860, by which China was forced to reaffirm the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and make additional concessions, concluded the hostilities.

Opium in anglo-saxon countries was sometimes referred to as "a filthy Chinese practice". This seems highly hypocritical when it was the west that forced Opium upon them to maintain Tea supplies.

1865: "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" was published in 1865, by Rev. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, an English writer and brilliant mathematician, under the pen-name he had first used some nine years earlier - Lewis Carroll. "Through the Looking Glass" followed.Although he spent so much of his life in the academic environment, Dodgson's real passions were always artistic. He loved the theatre and the company of 'theatricals'. He loved artists and their work. He courted the bohemian life in a way that sometimes compromised the required dignity of his position as an Oxford don. Earlier, in 1861 he had become a deacon of the Anglican church, but, despite his religious background, and in direct defiance of the laws of his college, he refused to become a priest. Through the image of the caterpillar with a hookah he will forever be associated with cannabis.

1869: The Prohibition Party is formed. Gerrit Smith, twice Abolitionist candidate for President, an associate of John Brown, and a crusading prohibitionist, declares: "Our involuntary slaves are set free, but our millions of voluntary slaves still clang their chains. The lot of the literal slave, of him whom others have enslaved, is indeed a hard one; nevertheless, it is a paradise compared with the lot of him who has enslaved himself to alcohol." [Quoted in Sinclar, op. cit. pp. 83-84]

1874: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union is founded in Cleveland. In 1883, Frances Willard a leader of the W.C.T.U. forms the World's Woman's Christian Temperance Union.

1882: Laws in the United States, and the world, making "temperance education" a part of the required course in public schools are enacted.
The Personal Liberty League of the United States is founded to oppose the increasing momentum of movements for compulsory abstinence from alcohol. [Catlin, op. cit. p. 114]

1886: Congress makes temperance education mandatory in the District of Columbia, and in territorial, military, and naval schools. By 1900, all the states have similar laws. [Crafts et. al., op. cit. p. 72]

1890:Queen Victoria"s personal physician, J.R. Reynolds described it in 1890 as "One of the most valuable medicines we possess." In another Lancet article published in 1890, he described the use of cannabis indica for treating insomnia in the senile, alcoholic delerium, neuralgia, migraine, spastic paralysis, and convulsions. He allegedly prescribed tincture of cannabis to Queen Victoria.herself for the treatment of menstrual cramps. Cannabis tincture and an extract made from resin were available from Peter Squire of Oxford St in 1864, and wholesale through the Society of Apothecaries by 1871. Chemists extracted stuff they called cannabene, cannabin tannin, cannabinnene etc but had no idea which, if any, was the "active ingredient" until cannabinol was isolated in 1895. THC was not isolated until 1964.

1893: German inventor Rudolph Diesel published a paper entitled "The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine," which described an engine in which air is compressed by a piston to a very high pressure, causing a high temperature. Fuel is then injected and ignited by the compression temperature. Intended fuel is vegetable and seed oils. Vision of a "people's engine" Petrochemical industry does not encourage this view, and see's alternative use of seed oils instead of gasoline as threat to future sales.

1894:The Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report (1894) to the British government, comprising some seven volumes and 3,281 pages, is by far the most complete and systematic study of marijuana undertaken to date. Because of the rarity and, perhaps, the formidable size of this document, the wealth of information contained in it has not found its way into contemporary writings on this subject. This is indeed unfortunate, as many of the issues concerning marijuana being argued in the United States today were dealt with in the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report.

"Viewing the subject generally, it may be added that the moderate use of these drugs is the rule, and that the excessive use is comparatively exceptional. The moderate use practically produces no ill effects. In all but the most exceptional cases, the injury from habitual moderate use is not appreciable. The excessive use may certainly be accepted as very injurious, though it must be admitted that in many excessive consumers the injury is not clearly marked. The injury done by the excessive use is, however, confined almost exclusively to the consumer himself; the effect on society is rarely appreciable. It has been the most striking feature in this inquiry to find how little the effects of hemp drugs have obtruded themselves on observation. The large number of witnesses of all classes who professed never to have seen these effects, the vague statements made by many who professed to have observed them, the very few witnesses who could so recall a case as to give any definite account of it, and the manner in which a large proportion of these cases broke down on the first attempt to examine them, are facts which combine to show most clearly how little injury society has hitherto sustained from hemp drugs " : From the report.

The English approach was that if people were doing something you didn't want them to, that wasn't covered by the commandments, you taxed it and made it expensive. Putting them in jail would only cost the government to no benefit.

1903: Wikipedia says Coca-Cola used to contain an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass, but in 1903 it was removed, in an atmosphere of rising public concern over drug laced beverages and patent medicines. Coca-Cola still contains coca flavouring. After 1904, instead of using fresh leaves, Coca-Cola started using "spent" leaves—the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with cocaine trace levels left over at a molecular level. To this day, Coca-Cola uses as an ingredient a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared at a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.

1905: The rise of "patent medicines", "tonics", "baby soothers", "colic cures" and "cure-alls" mercilessly marketed to a gullible public and often containing addictive ingredients leads to attempts to control and regulate medical compounds. Public awareness and fear of "addiction" grows. Self medication is to be frowned upon and medication control given to pharmaceutical companies and medical doctors.

1909: Shanghai International Opium Conference was held at the insistence of USA, supported by European powers, China, Japan, Siam and Persia.

1910: The Foster Anti-narcotic Bill of 1910, the first of a series of draft statutes that led to the Harrison Act, included cannabis. Only the vigorous lobbying of the wholesale drug industry prevented its appearance in the final legislation.

1911: An Opium Conference at the Hague drafted the first treaty which attempted to control opium and cocaine through world wide agreement. In that year, Henry Finger, a California druggist newly appointed as a delegate to the Hague conference wanted the US delegation to propose cannabis control because of California’s problem with a “large influx of Hindoos….demanding cannabis indica” but was told that Italy already had a proposal.( See http://www.cfdp.ca/giffen.htm)

1912: Hague International Convention on Narcotics - to control the production and distribution of raw and prepared opium (morphine and cocaine); it required parties to Convention to ‘examine the possibility of making it a penal offence to be in illegal possession of’ drugs covered by the treaty.'

1915: Utah passed the first state anti-marijuana law. Mormons who had gone to Mexico in 1910 returned smoking marijuana. It was later outlawed in that state as a result of the Utah legislature enacting all Mormon religious prohibitions as criminal laws. Thus Utah first state to enact laws against use of marijuana.

1917: George W. Schlicten patented the Hemp Decorticator; a farm-machine that mechanically separates the fibre in the Hemp stalk. Heralds serious threat to wood pulping industry.

1920: In England the Dangerous Drugs Act came into force. Of interest here is that while the Americans also outlawed the use of heroin for medical purposes, the English upheld this usage and even found the provision of opiates, in this case heroin, to addicts to be acceptable medical practice.

The Hague treaty of 1912 was 'as leaky as a sieve' because it allowed the states to determine for themselves when and how they would fulfil their obligations with regard to opium, which of course kept the use of opium legal until that time. The chemical derivatives did, however, fall under this commitment: that their use was illegal, making these substances more than opium, the object of the battle. To make this battle more effective the League of Nations held two conferences which led to two Geneva Conventions: one of 11 February and one on 19 February 1925.

1925: Geneva Convention adds cannabis to Hague Convention narcotic list at the urging of the South African colonial government. A permanent Central Opium Board to supervise international trade in controlled drugs is set up.

In 1925, South Africa asked the Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Dangerous Drugs to consider the inclusion of “marijuana”. The secretariat distributed a questionnaire seeking information about the production, use, and trafficking of this drug. Despite this, the 1925 Convention did not yet include marijuana on the list of narcotics. The Egyptian delegate then introduced a special motion to include it, which was passed.

Signatories were to make it illegal to export Indian Hemp to any country where its use was prohibited. Where sale was permitted, sales were to be monitored by the use of certificates.

1929: The term “cannabis indica” was replaced by “cannabis sativa”in the Hague narcotic list. This was a consequence of a British firm seeking to export “cannabis africanis” to Canada. Advice was sought, and the advice was to use the all-inclusive term “cannabis sativa”.

1930: The (Federal) Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was established in July that year when President Herbert Hoover appointed that same Harry J. Anslinger its first Commissioner of Narcotics, a position he held under four U.S. presidents, spanning more than three decades.In meetings with hemp industry representatives he tells them that any new laws wont affect legitimate hemp producers.

In America each state has it's own drug laws, under State's Rights guaranteed by the US Constitution. The American Federal Government has sought to gain control in this area by relying on the Commerce and Trade provisions of the Constitution to justify national drug laws, and to try to make them binding on the individual states, otherwise federal authorities could only intervene when illegal activities crossed state lines.

When the first set of uniform drug laws were presented to the forty something states, only five or so took them up within the year. Individual states were not that worried about it that there was any great hurry. That's when the "demon weed, marihuana" stories hit the headlines, scaring the voters, and thus making uniform drug laws a high priority for any state politician that wanted votes.

Anslinger never tires of the "marihuana causes death, murder, and insanity" line the whole thirty three years he is in office. He has had more influence on Federal US Drug Policy than any other.

1931: Convention on the Limitation Period in the International Sale of Goods (New York) - signatories to give estimates of legitimate controlled drug needs. Embargoes against signatories exceeding estimates.

1933: At 5:32 P.M. on December 5, 1933, Utah became the required 36th state to ratify the 21st Amendment, thus officially ending National Prohibition. Alcohol controls were gone, but those on other drugs remained in place.

1936: Church group made"Tell Your Children" as an educational film, directed by Louis Gasnier, but the footage was soon bought by "exploitation" film maker Dwain Esper, some extra salacious footage inserted, and it was re-released as "Reefer Madness" in 1938. It was not a success until rediscovered by NORML in the Seventies.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reefer_Madness

1937: Marijuana Tax Act - $1.00 on every hemp transaction regardless of size, and a mountain of paperwork to be filled in, passed on Anslinger's brief advice. Crippling blow to reviving hemp industry. Sterilised seed for birdfeed exempted from definition of Marihuana, because this was only irreplaceable use of hemp that was acknowledged. Nothing else adds condition to a bird, or helps them sing, like hempseed. Read the Marijuana Tax Act at: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/taxact/mjtaxact.htm

Sunrise industries proclaim product advantages, gain preferential treatment as "the next big thing", and try to gain commercial advantage over competitors. The petrochemical, drug, and woodpulp paper industries all competed with Hemp products.

Congress was lobbied by William C. Woodward, of the American Medical Association, and Ralph Lozier of the National Oil Seeds Institute, representing the interests of lubricant and paint manufacturers. Woodward testified that the plant was perfectly legal and harmless, and said, tellingly:
"We cannot understand yet, Mr Chairman, why this bill should have been prepared in secret for two years without any initiative, even to the profession, that it was being prepared... No medical man would identify this bill with a medicine untill he read it through, because marihuana is not a drug, simply a name given to cannabis..."
He later wrote to the committee, warning that:
"The obvious purpose and effect of this bill is to impose so many restrictions on the medicinal use as to prevent such use altogether... It may serve to deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further research may prove to be of substantial value"

Ralph Loziers of the National Oil Seed Institute testified to the members of the Tax Act committee that "hemp seed... is used in all the Oriental nations and also in a part of Russia as food. It is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people every day are using hemp in the orient as food. They have been doing that for many generations, especially in periods of famine....". As Loziers noted, it wasn’t just the possibilities of an important food industry which would be squashed by the Marijuana Tax Act, but also the paint and varnish industry would be greatly affected as hemp seed oil was a valuable drying agent and in the two years prior to the installation of the Tax Act 179 million pounds of hemp seed had been imported into the US for this purpose alone. Anslinger said his few words, the same ones, and the Bill was passed.

1938: “New Billion-Dollar Crop” article published by Popular Mechanics. This article revealed the details of the new machine, a decorticator, that removed the fibre from the stalk thereby drastically reducing the human labour factor.

"Assassin of Youth" by H. J. Anslinger & Cortney Riley Cooper published. It is a scaremongering diatribe based on an earlier pamphlet by Anslinger.

"Its first effect is sudden, violent, uncontrollable laughter; then come dangerous hallucinations -space expands - time slows down, almost stands still....fixed ideas come next, conjuring up monstrous extravagances...leading finally to acts of shocking violence, ending often in incurable insanity."
(opening lines...)

Movie called "Marijuana - Assassin Of Youth" made with Luana Walters, Arthur Gardner, Fay McKenzie, Michael Owen, Dorothy Short, Dorothy Vaughan, Earl Dwire, Fern Emmett, Henry Roquemore, Hudson Fausset, Eddie Johnson, Gay Sheridan,
Directed by Elmer Clifton, Writing credits: Charles A. Browne, Elmer Clifton (story), Leo J. McCarthy
Hilarious exploitation scare film showing good girls turning into fiends after smoking wacky weed. Some versions had the moonlight nude scenes cut. A.K.A. "Assassin of Youth."

1941: Henry Ford demonstrates hemp-fibre bodied car.[Similar product to fibreglass]

1942: Japanese take the Phillipines, cutting off America's supply of imported Manilla Hemp products. "Hemp for Victory" Campaign to encourage farmers to cultivate hemp. Exemption from active duty one of the incentives.

1943: "Marihuana, Assassin of Youth, Feeding the God Moloch", by the Rev. Robert Devine published.

1955: US Hemp farming again banned. The wartime need for rope has ended.

For some time America even denied wartime hemp had been officially grown, until embarassing evidence came into the public domain in the nineteen nineties, forcing an admission.

1961: United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs adopted at America's urging. Because of international resistance, the penal measures eventually adopted are moderate and devised to avoid conflict with the different legal systems of the Parties.Other countries are increasingly required to adopt Federal U.S. style drug laws. Marihuana is still classed as a narcotic.

1963: Anslinger finally steps down after 33 years of shaping and enforcing US drug policy.

1964: THC isolated in vitro. The extremely delicate and costly equipment needed to manufacture it has left THC solely in the hands of professional laboratories under regulated, contract to a limited number of bona-fide drug researchers.

1965: Teenage Baby Boomers experiment with drugs. Pot invades white america. Flower Power and Hippies challenge cultural assunptions.

1971: United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances. The major novelty in these two conventions was the attention to providing facilities for medical treatment, care and rehabilitation of addicts. Moreover, as Western social attitudes towards drug use became more relaxed in the 1960s and 1970s, the search for more effective non-penal methods of treating and rehabilitating drug users resulted in a more elastic interpretation of international obligations by some states.
However, this did not result in a fundamental change. On the contrary, under the influence of the United States, law enforcement co-operation became a priority for the UN. When, by the mid-1980s, the problem of money laundering grew, so did the growth of the global consciousness of the dangers of the illicit traffic and the need for greater international co-operation.This lead to the 1988 Convention.

1976: California decriminalises on New Years day. Minnesota follows on the fourth. Ohio in November. Maine decrininalises.

1978: By now California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon -- have in effect decriminalized minor marijuana offences. Some recriminalise after a year or so leaving nine states

In Holland a new policy option is introduced, that of toleration. This implies that activities that in themselves are punishable by law are nevertheless allowed to continue, if the policy makers decide that this option causes less harm. This will be decided on a local level, in a meeting of the mayor, chief of the police and the public prosecutor. So called "house dealers" had been dealing cannabis in youth centres in the years before, but now the decision can be made to allow them to do their job. Furthermore, coffee shops emerge, shops that do sell coffee, tea and soft drinks (in some cases alcoholic drinks also), but whose ultimate reason for existence is the sale of cannabis products. These too are generally left alone, unless they violate the regulations that have been established by the local authorities. The status of these regulations is a curious one: they are binding on a local level, but do not have the force of law. The result is that regional differences in policy crop up and continue to exist till today.

1988: United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

Dutch policy towards the coffee shops is formalised, along the lines that were developed in Amsterdam. Coffee shops are not allowed to advertise their trade, sell hard drugs, be the cause of nuisance, sell to youngsters under 18 (in some municipalities this age is 16) or sell wholesale. What "advertising" means precisely differs from one municipality to the next. In 1994 the criteria are standardised even more: the age limit becomes 18, advertising is better circumscribed. The maximum amount of cannabis that can be sold per customer is set at 30 grams - and dropped to 5 grams in 1996. Local differences still exist in the number of coffee shops allowed and in the sale of alcohol on the premises.

2003: Canada passes medical marijuana bill, forced to supply patients by courts. Due to unworkability of existing marihuana laws cannabis decriminalised to end legal deadlock. New US Federal Drug Czar appalled, makes veiled threats, but will not attend Canadian enquiry to argue against it.

After an appeals court found an initiative to decriminalise cannabis valid, Alaska voters will have a chance to vote for decriminalization on the 2004 ballot. But it may be a moot point, given last month's appeals court ruling that there is no law against marijuana possession in the home in Alaska.

2004: US Supreme Court refuses to deny doctors the right to suggest cannabis. Declines the case on basis of free speech. Feds wanted ruling denying right to even suggest it. Nine states are decriminalised, and thirty five states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances.

Britain amended its drug laws in 2004 to downgrade cannabis from a Class B drug to a Class C "soft" drug.

2005: On Tuesday, June 7, 2005, the US Supreme Court dealt a blow to the medical marijuana movement, ruling that the federal government can still ban possession of the drug in states that have eliminated sanctions for its use in treating symptoms of illness.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court ruled that Congress's constitutional authority to regulate the interstate market in drugs, licit or illicit, extends to small, homegrown quantities of doctor-recommended marijuana consumed under California's Compassionate Use Act, which was adopted by an overwhelming majority of voters in 1996.

The ruling does not overturn laws in California and 10 other states, mostly in the West, that permit medical use of marijuana. In 2003, Maryland reduced the maximum fine for medical users of less than an ounce of the drug to $100.

But the ruling does mean that those who try to use marijuana as a medical treatment risk legal action by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration or other federal agencies and that the state laws provide no defense.

July 29th: Marc Emery, Greg Williams, Michelle Rainey, and other Cannabis Culture activists arrested in Canada pending extradition to US for cross border seed sales.

2006: British officials reject an appeal to reclassify cannabis as a Class B prohibited substance. Their rejection was in accordance with the recommendations of the British Advisory Council on the Misuses of Drugs (ACMD) which determined that marijuana's relative health risks do not warrant increasing penalties for those who use it.

"The harmfulness of cannabis to the individual remains substantially less than the harmfulness caused by substances currently controlled under the [law] as Class B," such as amphetamines, the ACMD concluded. The agency further added that cannabis presented only a "very small risk" to users' mental health, including the onset of schizophrenia.

Today: The Federal American government is still trying to stop the world from smoking pot, even for medical purposes as authorised by some of its own state legislatures.

Australia is party to these treaties and has similar laws, though some Australian states have altered or are thinking of altering them. Some Euopean nations are changing their laws. Some U.S. states have long refused to conform to their federal model too. Essentially, this is also a consequence of the United States Federal Government's continuing desire to gain greater power than that granted to it under the American Constitution, both over it's own states, and the rest of the world.

"The reasons the pro-marijuana lobby wants marijuana legal have little to do with getting high, and a great deal to do with fighting oil giants like Saddam Hussein, Exxon and Iran. The pro-marijuana groups claim that hemp is such a versatile raw material that its products not only compete with petroleum, but with coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, pharmaceutical, timber and textile companies. It is estimated that methane and methanol production alone from hemp grown as bio-mass could replace 90% of the world's energy needs. If they're right, this is not good news for oil interests, and could account for the continuation of marijuana prohibition." Hugh Downs, (US) ABC Radio Network journalist.

There is that, but I have tried the legal drugs, and some illegal ones, and the one I find least harmful is Cannabis. I'd prefer to see it legal. The furore around it is out of all proportion. The humble plant has aroused some obscure, but powerful fear in conservative forces. None of them can say clearly why or how marihuana is evil, but take it as a tenet of some common faith without question.

An excellent historical perspective on HEMP Part-1 and Part-2
by Jasmin Malik Chua

The Nimbin MardiGrass Law Reform Rally will be held on the First Sunday in May every year to encourage Australia to change its laws, and for all to have a good time.

Remenber, it is easier to argue with the wise, than it is to argue with the ignorant. Stay cool.

If you feel you have information that should be included in this history, or that something is incorrect, feel free to send that information and inclusion will be considered.......

Thank you for pot smoking and may the force be busy elsewhere attending real crimes......