The Wikipedia article on marijuana mentions its, er, pharmacological use being documented going back centuries in Asia. It also mentions evidence that Shakespeare might have used it, seeing as archaeologists have found residue of it in pipes.
Here in the US, Washington and Jefferson grew hemp/marijuana, although whether they grew it to make ropes & paper or to get mellow is a matter of debate for another thread. Reefer Madness seems to suggest that [white] parents were concerned about their kids doing it as recently as 1936.
So what’s the scoop? Was MJ known as a good high among Europeans and/or white US settlers basically forever? Or was it considered mainly an Asian thing (Europe) and/or a black thing (US) until the 20th century?
No, they grew hemp. There is zero evidence that the high-THC breeds of hemp known as marijuana were cultivated anywhere in the United States during the Eighteenth Century.
Modern Westerners learned of the psychoactive properties of cannabis via the British colonization of India. Dr. O’Shaughnessy introduced it to England in the 1840’s, as a medicine, and it spread very slowly through Europe and the United States as a recreational drug. It was considered “Oriental”, Indian or Turkish, even in the United States. (By that, I mean that it was considered an Asian import; in the US at that time it was mostly white people who were doing the toking.)
In the Twentieth Century, there was a wave of Mexican immigration to the US during the Mexican Civil War after 1910, and some of the immigrants toked. This gave a second kick to recreational use, especially among lower economic classes. After that marijuana might be considered either an Oriental import or a Hispanic thing or even a black thing, depending on where or who you were.
Which ones are the ‘white’ people again? Obviously Persians and Arabs were using it when they named their hired killers ‘assassins’ (Persian: حشیشیون Hašišiyun (UniPers), Arabic: الحشاشين Ḥashshāshīn, also Hashishin, Hassassin, or Hashashiyyin), something that sounded like ‘hashish’ to Europeans, although the actual root of the name may be different.
It seems the OP needs to refine the definition of “white”, but insofar as early use in the U.S. the following might be useful:
An elderly man I knew claimed to have smoked mj as early as 1933. He was working in railroad construction in the western states, a trade that tended to draw a “rough” element from all walks of life, so there’s no telling where it came from.
I’ve seen references to mj as a street drug in New York City in the late 1800’s. Again, it seems to have been a lower-class vice, common in places like the Bowery.
I recall reading (can’t remember where, so no cite) that mj was in use among older hispanic residents in the high country of Colorado & New Mexico in the mid 1800’s. Of course Hispanic settlement in this region predates the American revolution, so there’s no telling how long it had been used there, but the tradition of mj use seems to have arrived from Mexico.
HRYK. Evidence of the inhalation of cannabis smoke can be found in the 3rd millennium BC, as indicated by charred cannabis seeds found in a ritual brazier at an ancient burial site in present day Romania.
loco weed would refer to other plants, a problem for grazing cattle, and probably understood by cowboys. But it may have been used in song to refer to marijuana use by humans as well. It is sometimes used as a reference to marijuana now, but less commonly than the alliterative* wacky weed*, or just* weed*.
Marijuana as a psychoactive had been in continuous and widespread use in the Middle East since at least the 16th century. Yet despite this, somehow nobody in Turkey, Greece or Spain ever learned of it for another 200 years?
Datq point: William H. Patterson Jr.'s biography of Riobert A. Heinlein documents that marijuana was available off campus at the US Naval Academy (Annapolis MD) in the early 1930s when Heinlein was a cadet there.