Cannabis Laws - History

History

See also: Legal history of cannabis in the United States

Cannabis has been in use for thousands of years. Some baths in Ancient Rome were scented by burning cannabis. In India cannabis has long been used in religious rituals. In the Arab world, the use of hashish has been widespread for many centuries, despite prohibition of its use in orthodox Islam.

Under the name cannabis, 19th century medical practitioners sold the drug (usually as a tincture), popularizing the word amongst English-speakers. In 1894, the Report of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission commissioned by the UK Secretary of State and the government of India, was instrumental in the decision not to criminalize the drug in those countries. From the year 1860, different states in the United States started to implement regulations for sales of Cannabis sativa.A 1905 Bulletin from the US Department of Agriculture lists twenty-nine states with laws mentioning cannabis. In 1925, a change of the International Opium Convention banned exportation of Indian hemp to countries that have prohibited its use. Importing countries were required to issue certificates approving the importation and stating that the shipment was to be used "exclusively for medical or scientific purposes".

In 1937 the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration crafted the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, the first US national law making cannabis possession illegal via an unpayable tax on the drug.

The name marijuana (Mexican Spanish marihuana, mariguana) is associated almost exclusively with the plant's psychoactive use. The term is now well known in English largely due to the efforts of American drug prohibitionists during the 1920s and 1930s. Mexico itself had passed prohibition in 1925, following the International Opium Convention.

The use of cannabis became widespread in the Western world due to rise and influence of the counterculture beginning in the late 1960s. In the late 1990s in California Dennis Peron started a movement to legalize medical cannabis.