I’m trying to find a serious cite on this, and all I’m finding is hemp cultivation references. The person I’m conversing with is citing a History Channel documentary (cue weird-hair Ancient Aliens guy - “I know it’s not Purple Sticky Bud… but it’s Purple Sticky Bud”) claiming that the Founding Fathers were all smokers. I’m dubious of his claim, but I want to give him a decent citation rather than dismissing it out of hand.
Looks like it was cultivated in the 17th century however not smoked until the mid 1800s.
“In short, marijuana was readily available in the United States through much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its effects were known, and it was occasionally used for recreational purposes. But use was at best limited, local, and temporary. Not until after 1920 did marijuana come into general use–– and not until the 1960s did it become a popular drug.”
Hemp was an important cash crop, the main source for material for making rope. Burning it up made little sense.
As for getting buzzed, Americans in the 18th and early 19th century had plenty of alcohol in their diet (it was the only safe thing to drink). Hard cider and beer were part of every meal, and used whenever people were thirsty (even children). There was no need for any further buzz.
Yeah, alcoholic cider was their staple beverage. I recall a tour guide at Monticello saying that if Thomas Jefferson and his contemporaries were around today, we would consider them as constantly being under the influence of alcohol.
I agree with RealiyChuck.
I wish it were otherwise, but cultivation of MJ as a recreational drug is probably a 20th century phenomenon.
However, there are indications that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were experimenting with the plant and in a way that would only enhance its psychogenic effects. Cecil disagrees with me on this, but he may be <gasp> incorrect.
Hemp cultivation for rope making was big business all throughout the New World, but I’ve never seen much evidence that it was a common recreational drug back then. I think what happened is 20th and 21st century pot heads read a little bit of history and found out that Jefferson and Washington cultivated hemp (among other things) and basically thought “whoa, dudes were blazin up!”
For whatever reason, while its psychoactive properties were known it wasn’t commonly used for that reason by white settlers. Their drugs of choice were alcohol and tobacco (and I guess caffeine.) Most people back then would probably be constantly under the influence of that trifecta.
I don’t know the botany involved, but I wonder if the difference is sort of like the difference between “field corn” and “sweet corn.” Field corn looks like corn, but doesn’t taste like corn, its taste is akin to that of chalk. Field corn is grown to make cow feed and to be turned into ethanol, so the properties that are important for sweet corn (namely, taste) just don’t exist in field corn.
It’s possible that 18th and 17th century hemp, since it was primarily being grown to turn into rope and other related products, wasn’t being cultivated for maximum potency/THC concentration so the hemp back then actually may not have given a very good high.
Well, to make the fibers to make rope or yarn or thread, you first strip off the leaves, then you soak it underwater until it rots, then pound to separate the fibers from the plant matter. Leaves are available to dry and smoke, or cook with, or make other beverages/products with. Hash has also been smoked for generations [probably ‘finger hash’ made by rubbing together the hands to ball up the resins deposited on the hands from processing hemp stalks for fibermaking,] and Herodotus reports scythians fuming in sweat lodges with hemp seeds. Also I might also mention that what appears to be leaf marijuana has been found in tombs, seemingly indicating that marijuana use for what could be medicinal, recreational or religious use was known. I might point out that many Americans as far back as the 1600s came from Western Europe, and had done military service in areas such as Morocco, India or even southeast Asia, exposing them to the use of bhang, kif, hash and other consumables made of marijuana and hash. [not sure if I should separate out marijuana use into weed and hash or not?]
IIRC there were laws in colonial times that required farmers to devote some of their acreage to hemp. Given the strategic importance of rope and canvas in the 18th century–probably even greater than that of rubber during the second World War–it’s easy to see why such laws existed.
Gagundathar, while cannabis might not have been cultivated for the purpose of recreational intoxication until the modern era, it was used medicinally in most of the ancient Old World.
Oddly enough, when researching California’s experience with cannabis prohibition, which began here in 1915, I found that one of the earliest reported arrests involved a woman who used it for relief of digestive problems.
When America was being settled, a big part of the economy was built on a new and wonderful drug that was taking off around the world - tobacco. It is a whole lot easier to get the final product, people use a lot more of it, it was new and, best of all, people who used it came back for more. They couldn’t seem to get enough. As a product, cannabis was boring and old.
I am only guessing but I would bet that if you compared the two products at the time, tobacco would give you the better buzz and it goes so well with all the booze they were drinking.
Hemp was grown for rope making during WW2; it is commonly seen in the plains states and is known as "ditch weed’ as it simply can’t be eradicated. When I lived in South Dakota i was told that one could get a high of sorts from it but that it wasn’t worth the effort to process it since it was so easy to buy good stuff. I have no personal experience with “ditch weed.”
“Feral hemp, or ditchweed, is a remnant of the hemp once grown on more than 400,000 acres by
U.S. farmers. It contains extremely low levels of THC, as low as .05 percent. It has no drug value, but does offer important environmental benefits as a nesting habitat for birds”
From:* Hemp and Marijuana: Myths & Realities*
by David P. West, Ph.D.
Exactly as I understood it: they are pretty different plants. One is bred for hemp (textiles, rope, paper etc), the other for the THC content in its leaves.
So I think there would need to be evidence that there were also plants being cultivated in North America specifically for their THC content.
So to this total-non farmer it sort of sounds like the whole field corn vs sweet corn issue (which I didn’t actually know about until seeing the documentary King Corn), where they may be the same plant but have very different properties.
Look, no-one thought anything of men getting together and quaffing booze or smoking huge amounts of ‘baccy. Plenty of period letters, memoirs, tales and what not mention these. But there’s not one period mention of smoking dope, even tho it was perfectly legal. It had some minor mention for medicinal purposes.
When I hear about people using the seeds and leaves, it makes me think the cannabis was being used as a regular herb like rosemary thyme or mint. They weren’t getting high. That doesn’t mean cannabis wasn’t in every self-respecting herbalist’s apothecary. They weren’t getting stoned though. Anyone using cannabis to get stoned would quickly realize the good stuff is the female buds, not leaves and seeds.
The leaves and seeds are nutritious though, from what I’ve heard.