Marijuana, weed, bud, dank , ganja, “medical marijuana” — whatever you call your friendly neighborhood cannabis, it’s actually got a stranger and longer history than you likely knew. Its public image nowadays may be all glitter bongs and pot-smoking patron saint Disney kids like Miley Cyrus (with an occasional assist from Snoop Dogg), but it’s been used for everything from stomach complaints to anesthetic throughout history. And if you were an American between about 1850 and the 1930s, you could get it in a huge variety of over-the-counter medicines if you popped to the pharmacy for a headache cure. If anything, America’s probably spent a little more time with legal weed than it has without.
Cannabis tends to show up in the news for three reasons: drug busts, legalization policies, and medical innovation. A new process involving brewing cannabis’s main psychotropic ingredient from scratch, for example, has just been perfected in Germany, and might be a breakthrough for cancer drugs. Now that Canada a North American country has fully legalized the plant, we are on the forefront of weedization….. globally. So we thought, we would find the most interesting facts about marijuana for our readers. Just so next time your smoking with your friends having stoner talk you could throw out some random facts and look smart, cause you shop at weedsmart!!!
See what I did there, its funny. Laugh.
1.Cannabis May Appear In Homer’s Odyssey
The identity of a particular drug called nepenthe in Homer’s Odyssey, the famous ancient epic about the tragic Trojan War, has caused a lot of controversy over the centuries. Nepenthe is described as a drug that banishes sorrow, and Helen of Troy, she who launched a thousand ships, serves it to herself and her guests to cheer them up. Various ideas have been posited for what nepenthe actually might be, but one theory is that it’s cannabis. (It’s possible, however, that Homer just made it up.)
2. And In 1001 Tales Of The Arabian Nights
3. Cannabis is legal and is not even classified as a drug in North Korea….. I was just as shook too
The status of cannabis in North Korea is unclear due to the lack of sources available to the outside world, with some observers stating that cannabis is effectively legal, or at least tolerated, in the country and others arguing that this is a misapprehension and that the drug is illegal.
4. In Colorado, recreational cannabis dispensaries outnumber Starbucks locations 3 to 1
We are not surprised.
5. The first thing ever bought and sold across the Internet was a bag of cannabis – we give homage to these kids our founders
In 1971 or 1972, Stanford students using Arpanet accounts at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory engaged in a commercial transaction with their counterparts at Massachussetts Institute of Technology. Before Amazon, before eBay, the seminal act of e-commerce was a drug deal. The students used the network to quietly arrange the sale of an undetermined amount of marijuana.
6. The Word “Marijuana” Comes From The Mexican Revolution
How did we end up with the term marijuana (and then mary jane and all its other variants) for a plant whose scientific name sounds completely different? An investigation by Al-Jazeera America found that it, and the first anti-cannabis laws, came from the same place: immigrants driven north by the Mexican Revolution.
7. The United States is estimated to produce the most cannabis in the world….. Good job Cali!!!!!
8. Suicide rates have dropped in Colorado since its legalization
According to the study: “Our results suggest that the passage of a medical marijuana law is associated with an almost 5% reduction in total suicide rate, an 11% reduction in the suicide rate of age 20-29 males, and a 9% reduction in the suicide rate of 30-39 males.” These three are happy people.
9. The first recorded use of marijuana happened in China more than 4,700 years ago
Chinese Emperor Shen Nung used it to treat such maladies as gout, malaria and rheumatism. It was banned in 500 B.C. because it was believed to cause young people to disrespect the elderly.
10. The truth serum
The United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS) experimented with the use of mescaline, scopolamine, and marijuana as possible truth drugs during World War II. In the case of the CIA and marijuana, however, it is more like an entire warehouse of information is available! In fact, the link between the United States intelligence agencies and weed predates the 1947 formation of the CIA. Ever since then, the CIA has publicly decried marijuana, but in private, it has used cannabis for a wide range of purposes and even allegedly went as far as creating its own strain!
