From time immemorial Cannabis has grown, been grown and used for countless purposes. Worldwide, Cannabis provided clothing, food, feed and bedding for livestock, medicine and a spiritual and social enhancer. But things changed brutally, only a hundred years ago.
The modern prohibition of the Cannabis sativa L. plant (also known as hemp, marihuana, भांग, dagga, конопля, ganja, 麻, pot, ntsangu, haschisch, canapa, riamba, قنب, siddhi, kif, cáñamo, bangui, 大麻, chanvre, konopí…) originated before 1925 in Brazil, Egypt and South Africa. The United States came much, much later.
But it was only in 1925 that Cannabis acquired a marked world character that continues to this day, as it entered international law for the first time. The 1925 Opium Convention generated treaties that continue to be in force worldwide today (like the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961).
In 1925, the Geneva Opium Convention included ‘Indian hemp’ upon request from Egypt. For the first time, Cannabis had become an internationally-controlled substance. The conservative Brazilian, Egyptian and South African governments had managed to extend to the entire planet their racist, colonially-biased and intolerant views of an ancestral plant.
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31 October, 2024