Botanical Timeline

"A History untold, is a legacy denied"

2737 B.C.E

• Earliest recorded use of cannabis as a medicine

  • Found in a text call "Shennong Ben Cao Jing"

    • Essentially the Chinese Pharmacopeia

    • Was listed cannabis as one of the "most fundamental herbs"

      
      

Across the world and a "few" years later...

1606

• Cannabis was introduced to North America via Port Royal, Arcadia

  • British Crown commonly used hemp for textiles

    • Used to produce ropes, sails, fishing nets, clothing, etc.

1619

• The Crown mandated that every home in Jamestown to grow hemp

  • Virginia legislation eventually made it illegal to not grow

• FIRST SLAVES ARRIVE IN VIRGINIA COLONY

  • officially establishing the start of American slavery

.....

• The hemp business becomes a "staple of industrial society"

  • There was a high demand in products, especially from the cotton industry

    • Hemp was used for bailing and bagging cotton

1760

• George Washington predicts that hemp industry would surpass the profitability of tobacco.

  • However, high labor costs dampened those projections

    • This lead to the production and cultivation being heavily dependent on slave labor

  • Washington himself had hemp grown on his own land, by his own extensive slave force

Over the next 200(+) years, hemp became the third larges agricultural commodity behind cotton and tobacco....

1850

• The U.S. Census takes count of 8,327 hemp plantations

  • Averaging approximately 2000 acres each

• According to one Lexington, Kentucky resident during this boom...

  • "It was almost impossible to hire a workman to break a crop of hemp because the work was very dirty and so laborious that scarcely any white man will work at it"

    • Its been recorded that around time, Kentucky residents referred to hemp as the "nigger crop"

      • Believing "no one knew, could handle, or understood the hemp plant as well as "the negro"

  • Kentucky eventually became the "hemp capital of the world

    • Producing over 40,000 tons which equated to roughly $5 million

      
      

1859

• Cannabis was added to the U.S. Pharmacopeia

  • Introduced by Dr. William O'Shaughnessy who learned about the medicinal properties while traveling in India

• By 1900, Cannabis made up 50% of prescriptions written for patients and was a common OTC option

  • Eli Lilly & Parke Davis were common manufacturers

    • Later became what is known as "Phizer"

1861-1865

• Hemp industry declines due to destruction and disruption caused by the Civil War

1914

• The ten dollar bill was printed on hemp paper, and depicted a hemp harvest on the "tail" side.

1920s

• Media start pointing finger at Mexican immigrants as the responsible party for introducing smokable cannabis to the United States

  • Many of which who were fleeing the Mexican Revolution

• Jazz/Black community adopt the practice as a form of self care

  • viewed as a medicine for the marginalized living in poor and repressive condition

  • Lewis Armstrong mentions it in his biography

    • "It makes you fell god man. it relaxes you, I makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a negro and makes you fell wanted..and when you're with another T-Smoker, I makes you fell a special sense of kinship"

1924

• Dr. Charles E. De M. Sajous highlights three areas of indication for cannabis medicine in his Analytic Cyclopedia of Pratical Medicine.

  • Sedative

  • Analgesic (Relieves Pain)

  • "And other Uses"

Despite medical documentation and history of harmless use, we couldn't stop what was already in motion...

1930

• U.S. Treasury & Andrew Mellon, hire Harry Anslinger as new Director of Federal bureau of Narcotics (known today as the D.E.A)

  • Position and appointment were created and developed under the Department of Treasury, NOT the Public Health Department

  • Specifically appointed to address Drug Cartel Tax Evasion

    • NOT an issue of public health, but solely taxation

  • Understanding the posing threat that industrial cannabis applied to the current market and its leaders (Mellon), cannabis soon became the new fuel for our next, and far from last, political Injustice.

    • F***ED FACT: Anslinger was married to the niece of Secretary Mellon, who was also the head financier of Dupont, one of the leading Industrial companies that could be at a loss with continued cannabis industry growth.

1936

• Anslinger began to popularized propaganda to create social support for a "Marijuana" Prohibition Campaign ("Reefer Madness" [1936 Film] include)

  • making radically racial claims in regard to effects of smoking cannabis

    • “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, results from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and others.”

1937

• "The Marihuana Tax Act"

  • deemed the cultivation, production, prescription, retail, possession, or use of cannabis without procurement of a "Marihunana Tax Stamp"

  • Opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA)

    • "[AMA] knows of no evidence that marijuana is a dangerous drug"

  • Another examples how prohibition was not fueled by medical or scientific establishments, but instead industrialists and politicians seeking person gains

1938

• "Popular Mechanics" Magazine dubs hemp as "The New Billion Dollar Crop"

  • citing over 25,000 uses and applications

    • Echoing George Washington & Thomas Jefferson hundreds of years earlier

1941

• Henry Ford makes a functioning car from Hemp Plastic which was also fueled by hemp ethanol

  • The goal in mind was "..to grow automobiles from the soil"

1942

• Cannabis removed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia

  • Despite the AMA declaring they know no evidence of harm

  • USDA initiates "Hemp for Victory" Program during WWII

    • encouraging farmers to grow as much as possible for the military

  • The LaGuardia Committee & NY Academy of Medicine research social and medical implication of cannabis use

1963

• With the help of U.S. Government funding, renowned cannabis researcher Dr. Raphael Machoulam, identified the chemical structures of CBD (1963) & Delta-9 THC (1964)

  • Career earned him the nickname "The Father of Cannabis Research"

1970

• Congress passes The Controlled Substance Act (CSA) under the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention & Control Act

  • Signed into law by President Nixon

    • Nixon later appointed the Shaffer Commission to study links between cannabis and drug abuse

      • Commission declared that cannabis should be decriminalized in 1972

        • State there was a complete lack of evidence to support the notion that it was a dangerous or addictive substance

      • Oregon was the only state to proceed with the decriminalization recommendation in '73

1971

• At the start of summer, President Nixon officially declares War on Drugs

  • Increasing law enforcement agency funding, size, along with federal drug control agencies

    • Ensnaring millions of American into our systems

• Under the "Next Administration" American Universities were prohibited from studying and researching the cannabis plant

1988

• William Devane & Allyn Howlett discover Cannabinoid Receptor 1 (CB1 Receptor)

  • They used radioactively tagged derivatives of THC to I.D. & map a network of G-protein coupled receptors throughout the human body

• From '80-'95, four classical components of the Endocannabinoid System

  • CB1 Receptors, CB2 Receptors, Anandomide, & 2-AG

1994

• During an interview with Harpers Magazine, President Nixon's former Chief Domestic Advisor (John Ehrlichman) admitted that the Nixon Party & White House used the Ware on Drugs to disrupt "hippie" & Black communities

  • Another example of legal decisions having little regard to public health

  • "[Nixon 1968 Campaign & White House After] had tow enemies, the ant-war left * black people..knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either..we can disrupt those communities"

  • "...We could arest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and villify them night after night on the evening news."

1996

• California legalizes cannabis for medical use

  • followed by Oregon, Washington, & Alaska in 1998

    • Through this modern day medical use, we learned a lot about different medical applications/consumption methods and how they effect various ailments

    • Much of which has been backed by research over the decades of miseducation

1999

• U.S. Government files a patent (#6630507) on cannabinoids as antioxidants & neuroprotectant

  • usually in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as Isechemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases

2000s

• Research on the ECS continues and additional key components and factors

  • Some are beginning to refer as "ECS Dome"

    • complex homeostatic regulatory system which includes the ECS and other mediators and Neurotransmitter systems

      • Ex: Serotonergic System

  • All helping to expand our knowledge on how other botanicals work in restoring balance/regeneration in the body

2018

• Farm Bill removes Hemp from definition of "marijuana"

  • In turn, this removed it entirely from the Controlled Substance Act

    • Bringing the CBD "Boom"

• FDA approves Epidiolex for treatment of seizures in young children

2020

• Safe Banking & M.O.R.E. Act Pass on the House Floor

  • Neither have made it through Senate

*All of this information was mostly gathered from following this video and others including Rachel Knox, as well as through the links provided in the text

I will continue to update this as progress continues, so please comment anything I may have missed...new or dated.*

Happy Huffs!