Table Of ContentMARIHUANA
The First
Twelve Thousand Years
MARIHUANA
The First
Twelve Thousand Years
Ernest L. Abel
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Librazy of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Abel, Ernest L 1943-
Marihuana, the iust twelve thousand years.
Bibliography: p.
lncludes index.
1. Marihuana-History. 2. Marihuana. 1. Tit ie.
[DNLM: 1. Cannabis. 2. Drug abuse-History.
QV77.7 A139m)
BF209.C3A23 615'.7827 SQ-15606
ISBN 978-1-4899-2191-8 ISBN 978-1-4899-2189-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-2189-5
This limited facsimile edition has been issued
for the purpose of keeping this title available
to the scientific community.
10 9 8 7 6
© 1980 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Plenum Press, New York in 1980
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1980
AII rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microillming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
To the Buckley clan:
BoB, GLAD, BARB, JoYcE,
MAUREEN, VIC, PHIL,
SUE, }ASON,
and
BECKY
Contents
Introduction ix
I THE EARLY YEARS
1 Cannabis in the Ancient World 3
2 Hashish and the Arabs 36
II THE HEMP ERA
3 Rope and Riches 61
4 Cannabis Comes to the New World 76
ill THE MARIHUANA AND HASHISH ERA
5 New Uses for the Old Hemp Plant 105
6 The Indian Hemp Drug Debate 122
7 The African Dagga Cultures 136
8 The Hashish Club 148
9 Hashish in America In
N A NATION OF DRUG TAKERS
10 America's Drug Users 189
11 Reefer Racism 200
vii
viii CONTENTS
12 The Jazz Era 214
13 Outlawing Marihuana 237
Epilogue 248
Bibliography 273
Index 283
Introduction
Of all the plants men have ever grown, none has been praised and
denounced as often as marihuana (Cannabis sativa). Throughout the
ages, marihuana has been extolled as one of man's greatest benefactors
and cursed as one of his greatest scourges. Marihuana is undoubtedly
a herb that has been many things to many people. Armies and navies
have used it to make war, men and women to make love. Hunters
and fishermen have snared the most ferocious creatures, from the
tiger to the shark, in its herculean weave. Fashion designers have
dressed the most elegant women in its supple knit. Hangmen have
snapped the necks of thieves and murderers with its fiber. Obstetricians
have eased the pain of childbirth with its leaves. Farmers have crushed
its seeds and used the oil within to light their lamps. Mourners have
thrown its seeds into blazing fires and have had their sorrow transformed
into blissful ecstasy by the fumes that filled the air.
Marihuana has been known by many names: hemp, hashish,
dagga, bhang, loco weed, grass-the list is endless. Formally christened
Cannabis sativa in 1753 by Carl Linnaeus, marihuana is one of nature's
hardiest specimens. It needs little care to thrive. One need not talk to it,
sing to it, or play soothing tranquil Brahms lullabies to coax it to grow. It
is as vigorous as a weed. It is ubiquitous. It fluorishes under nearly every
possible climatic condition.
It sprouts from the earth not meekly, not cautiously in suspense of
where it is and what it may find, but defiantly, arrogantly, confident that
whatever the conditions it has the stamina to survive.
It is not a magnanimous herb. Plants unfortunate enough to fall in
the shade of its serrated leaflets will find that marihuana does not share
its sunlight. It wants it all. Marihuana also does not like to share its
territory. It encroaches on its neighbors. Its roots gobble up all the nutri
ents in the soil, and like a vampire it sucks the life blood from the earth.
Marihuana is a very rapidly growing plant, attaining a usual height
of three to twenty feet at maturity. Five hundred years ago, the French
ix
X INTRODUcriON
author Rabelais wrote that it was "sown at the first coming of the swal
lows and pulled out of the ground when the cicadies began to get
hoarse."
Marihuana is dioecious, which means that there are sexually dis
tinct male and female plants. At one time, farmers believed that only the
females produced the intoxicating hashish resin. Now it is known that
both sexes produce this gummy secretion. The male, however, manufac
tures less resin and produces flowers earlier than the female. To prevent
a pollinating marriage, cannabis growers destroy these males as soon as
they are detected. Had he known of this age-old custom, Freud might
have written an insightful treatise on the symbolism of this bit of agricul
tural castration.
The intoxicating resin is secreted by glandular hairs located around
the flowers and to a certain extent in the lower portions of the plant. The
actual substance in the resin responsible for the plant's inebriating ef
fects is a chemical called delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (~9-THC). In very
hot climates, as in India and North Africa, so much resin is produced
that the plant appears to be covered with a sticky dew even as it bakes
under the parching rays of the hot sun. This resin serves as a protective
shield preventing loss of water from the plant to the dry air. And of
course, the more resin, the more A9-THC likely to be present.
Cannabis seeds are brownish and rather hard. When pressed, they
yield a yellowish-green oil once used to make soap, lamp oil, paint, and
varnish. Bird fanciers claim that hemp seed stimulates birds to develop
superior plumage. While the seeds contain far less ~9-THC than the
leaves or flowers, the chemical is still present. Although there are no
reports of any birds flying into trees or houses after feasting on a meal of
cannabis seeds, it was by burning these seeds and inhaling the fumes
given off that some ancient societies first experienced cannabis's intoxi
cating powers.
The stem of the plant is square and hollow and covered with
strong fibers. The first step in removing these fibers is called retting and
involves soaking the stems so that partial decomposition occurs. This
disengages the nonfibrous tissue. The stem is then bent so that the fibers
can separate. Once separated, they can be stripped away and spun into
thread or twisted into cordage and rope.
Cannabis will grow under most conditions that will support life. It is
inherently indestructible. Long after other species of plants have disap
peared because of drought, infestation, or climatic changes, cannabis
will still exist. Cannabis is one of nature's best examples of survival of
the fittest.
Depending on the conditions under which it grows, cannabis will
either produce more resin or more fiber. When raised in hot, dry eli-
INTRODUCTION xi
mates, resin is produced in great quantities and fiber quality is poor. In
countries with mild, humid weather, less resin is produced and the fiber
is stronger and more durable.
It is because of these climate-related characteristics that most Euro
peans knew very little of the intoxicating properties of the cannabis plant
until the nineteenth century when hashish was imported from India and
the Arab countries. Prior to this time, cannabis was merely a valuable
source of fiber and seed oil to most Europeans, nothing more.
In India, Persia, and the Arab countries, the main value of the
plant resided in its inebriating resin. People in these countries were
also among the first to use cannabis fiber to make nets and ropes. But the
sticky covering on the plant was what they valued most, especially
where alcohol was proscribed by religious doctrine.
Depending on his personal interests, the cannabis farmer could
increase his yield of fiber or resin by various measures. To produce a
plant with a better fiber, he grew his plants very close to one another.
This reduced the amount of sunlight falling on individual plants and
promoted the growth of long stems and fibers. To obtain more resin, he
sowed his seeds farther apart. This gave each plant more sunlight and
forced the plant to secrete more resin in order to keep itself from drying
out. But regardless of whether he was after the fiber or the resin, male
plants were always destroyed before they could court the females, since
the production of seeds by the female invariably reduced the quality of
fiber and resin.
Cannabis was harvested by various methods. If the fiber were
primarily of interest, the stems would be cut fairly close to the ground
with a specially designed sickle with the blade set at right angles to the
handle.
Harvesting the resin was a different matter. People who grew can
nabis for personal pleasure simply snipped some leaves whenever the
desire moved them. In countries such as Nepal where cannabis became
part of the agricultural economy, the resin was gathered more systemat
ically but in a less sanitary fashion: after the female plants were ripe with
their sticky coverings, workers were hired to run naked through the
cannabis fields. As they brushed against the plants, a certain amount of
resin would adhere to their bodies. At the end of each run they would
scrape the sticky resin from their bodies and start again. Since cannabis
resin and water do not mix very well, the perspiration from their sweat
ing bodies did not find its way into these scrapings. (The same cannot be
said for whatever else was on their bodies.) After the harvesting was
through, the scrapings were shaped into bricks and readied for market.
Buyers were rarely finicky about anything other than how pleasureable
was the intoxication they felt when they consumed their purchases.
